Dennis Ayoub tells the story.
"We had been at sea for a few days when an announcement was made at the evening meal. The 105 Field Battery, Royal Australian Artillery were on board and the gunners, who always fancied themselves, had decided to telegraph the Queen to inform her that they were on their way to Vietnam. A reply had been received from the Palace and silence was demanded while one of the artillery officers read it aloud. 'From the office of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II,' it said, or something like that. 'Her Majesty has learned of your embarkation to join the conflict in Vietnam. She wishes you God Speed in your voyage, a successful completion of your mission and a safe return to your loved ones.' The artillery blokes applauded but they were drowned out by hoots of derision from the Engineers and other units."
Engineers and artillerymen are about as far apart as you can get in the Australian Army. The Artillery see themselves as an elite, with a long historical tradition and a great pride in their personal appearance. But to the larrikin Engineers they are "dropshorts", whose inaccuracies are as likely to harm their comrades as they are to hit the enemy.
"Anyway," continues Dennis, "the next night the parade was hushed when (Staff Sergeant) Laurie Hodge got to his feet and yelled: 'Could we have some quiet please. 3 Field Troop has received the following telegraphic message which I would now like to read out. From Big Julie and Technicolour at the Railway Hotel. 'Bon voyage. Try not to get killed and we'll see you when you get back. Hope you don't mind if we screw your replacements while you're away! Cheers! ' ".
Big Julie and Technicolour were what Keith Kermode called "Railway Debs" at the troop's favourite drinking hole, the latter having earned her somewhat insensitive nickname from the large and livid birthmark on her face.
The gunners were furious and Laurie was whisked away by some officers. He didn't reappear for a couple of hours and, as far as Dennis knows, never told anyone what was said to him.
Throughout the voyage, the men were given lectures by 1RAR's Chaplain on the evils of communism and the need to defeat it in SouthEast Asia. The men's responses were varied.
"I really didn't need any convincing," says Mick McGrath. "I already hated commies."
Young Sparrow Christie had a different attitude, although it amounted to the same in the end.
"I thought it was all bullshit," he says. "It didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to get there and see some action."
Meanwhile, life was proceeding as normal – which means it was organised chaos.
Keith Kermode claims he was the first member of 3 Field Troop to be put on a charge. He won this singular honour by accidentally firing his gun between Waxy Rayner's legs during target practice, which involved shooting at balloons off the stern of the Sydney.
Mick Lee remembers enjoying blood and thunder games of deck hockey and tripling his ration of one beer per day by swapping his icecream coupons for the teetotallers' beer rations.
And Snow Wilson, horror-struck at being appointed Lieutenant Geoff Stewart's batman, wriggled out of the assignment by getting the medical officer to sign a "no sweating" chit, which meant he couldn't go to the ship's laundry with Lt Stewart's sheets because it was near the engine room.
Snow also recalls the sailors on the Sydney making a very strange request.
"Remembering that she was the troop-carrying vehicle, they realised even then that they were going to get no recognition for running people to and from Vietnam. They said, 'For God's sake, when you get off the ship throw something at somebody or shoot somebody so they'll take a shot at us so we can get recognised for war service. If nobody shoots at us, no matter how many trips we do, we'll never get recognition. ' And that turned out to be true."
Dave Cook, one of three Aboriginals in the troop, can only remember hanging off the side of the Sydney feeling sicker than he'd ever been in his life before.
While this was happening in the South China Seas, Gus Sant and I were already in Vietnam, having flown ahead to check out the scrubcovered hillside at Bien Hoa that was to be our home for the next few months.
We'd be encamped near the Americans, inside the wire, but there was nothing there. No water, no roads, no latrines. Nothing.
Before I'd left Australia, I had been summoned to meet the Engineer in Chief at Army Headquarters in Canberra, Brigadier Ed Logan, for a final briefing. Still largely unsure of what 3 Field Troop's exact role in Vietnam would be, I asked the Engineer in Chief a direct question.
"What are we supposed to do there, sir?"
The reply came back to me as I surveyed that halfbarren hillside near Bien Hoa.
"Just do what engineers do," he said. "Just be engineers."
2
A FOREIGN FIELD
Three Field Troop's landing at Vung Tao could have been heroic. But it was more comic than anything.
There they were, waiting on the Sydney's decks to clamber down rope ladders to the landing craft that bobbed below them. It was seven in the morning of 28th September, 1965. The air was thick with expectation and Aussie voices but, as the sun's first rays lit Vung Tao beach, it beckoned a in way more reminiscent of Suvla Bay than Bondi. The adrenalin flowed, an electrifying undercurrent to the lame jokes and bravado.
Les Colmer, who was my batman, remembers standing in the landing craft half expecting a volley of Viet Cong bullets to spray them as they churned through the surf. The ramp crashed down, a whistle was blown and they charged, then jogged, then walked up the beach. As the final frames of halfforgotten war films flickered and faded in their minds, the illusion was then completely shattered when they caught sight of their first Vietnamese – women and children selling Pepsi Cola to the country's newest arrivals.
Vung Tao is only about 40km SouthEast of Saigon as the crow flies, and Bien Hoa is about 20km NorthEast of the city, but it had been decided to fly all the men, their essential stores and tents there. The rest was to be unloaded at the docks in Saigon and transported by road.
I decided to fly down to Vung Tao to supervise my own Troop's arrival and it's just as well that I did. The arrangements were a complete shambles and the units that were supposed to meet the troops and organise their transit to Bien Hoa didn't turn up. I ended up organising the whole operation myself, even down to getting the stores loaded on to the transport planes. I was surprised as much as relieved when the rest of our gear eventually turned up a couple of days later. Some other units lost whole pallets of stores.
We had to spend one night at Vung Tao while they found space on the transport planes to take us to Bien Hoa. And if it was frustrating for me, it was even more disorientating for the new arrivals. Mick McGrath vividly recalls the not so simple task of getting his truck from the ship to the landing craft, to the beach and then to Bien Hoa.
"I was thrown over the side in me truck and rowed ashore on one of the landing craft, shoved up the beach and a big black MP waved me down the road telling me to go down there, keep moving, keep moving," says Mick. "So you keep on moving, can't see anybody else, can't even see another Australian vehicle anywhere. I ended up finding the boys and they said you can't get anywhere until tomorrow now because the planes aren't working any more today and we were getting flown.
"Anyway we had to look after ourselves and, with the help of some Yank hospitality, we ended up with a big gut full of American beer. I don't remember eating. I slept that first night on the floor of an APC (Armoured Personnel Carrier) and the next morning loaded the truck into a Hercules transport plane, got dropped at Bien Hoa and they just pointed me in the right direction.
"They said, 'You go down there guy and you follow