MFC 85B – Bruce Young Its 0500 hours ANZAC Day 2005, a cold & miserable morning in Christchurch & I have a cold. I have decided that rather than gather in the cold & dark to remember my mates I will accept the challenge posed on this website & do my remembering in writing. I am part of the team producing a verbal history of the NZ involvement in Vietnam & can use that format as my own process of remembering. I am one of several ex-RF Cadet's who served in W3, others I remember being Bill Blair, Craig Cocker, Frank Ryan, Dave Spence, John Barkle, Roger Wait. I had trained in the school of hard knocks for 3 years and was a qualified infantry instructor before posting in early 1968 to 1 Battalion Depot [1 Bn Depot] Burnham. I trained there under guys who were ex-Borneo & early Victor coy veterans, I was impressionable & I wanted to do what they had already done. I particularly remember Cpl Ralph Kingi for the skills he taught me & the respect he & other veterans showed me for my enthusiasm. I was only 18 years old, too young for operational service, but I did train under Bob Upton & others who would became W3 a year later. I passed well on my mortar module in 1 Bn Depot & stayed with mortars as a career move, it being pointed out that mortars had a higher percentage of NCOs’ than any other subunit. I was posted to 1RNZIR in Malaysia in May 1969 as a mortar section NCO & was selected for the mortar section that would deploy with W3. The training in Malaysia was always interesting & I did some stints as MFC [mortar fire controller, travelling with the rifle platoons], mostly with 3Pl, although I loathed the old British radio sets that weighed a ton & never worked in the bush. W3 seemed well prepared as a sub-unit & were a happy bunch to go campaigning with. I arrived in Vietnam four
days before my 20th birthday. I remember two things from that day: 2.
After an uneventful landing & being given a 20 round magazine of ammunition for my rifle, the fright returned on the truck
ride north to Nui Dat when we were surrounded by people in black pyjamas, supposedly the dress of the enemy. I was about
to shoot 20 viet cong when I noticed the Aussie truck driver was very relaxed & it finally clicked that everyone
in Vietnam wore black pyjamas. I also noticed others on the truck were very tense but perhaps I had spooked them..! My 20th birthday was celebrated on a TAOR patrol, where a bunch of us from no particular sub-unit were sent out with an Aussie Cpl from another coy to familiarise us with the environment. It poured hard with rain & we were in 6’ foot high grass the whole time. When we stopped right on last light to establish an ‘ambush’ position I was told to deploy my claymore directional mine to my front & stepped off into the darkness in what I thought was a straight line. The next morning when I went to collect the claymore by following the lead I found it sited within metres of my bedspace & pointing into my position. Had I fired it during the night my birthday present to myself would have been 900 ball bearings & an early trip home. I was learning… I discovered early on that being on the mortar line was 95% boredom & 5% yippee when patrols asked for DF or contact fire. I started in Dec 1969 substituting with the other MFC, replacing Larry O’Brien for periods with 1PL during Op Marsden while at FSPB Picton, & it was with 1PL that I had my first contacts. By March 1970 I had a permanent swap with Vince Butler in 2PL under Bob Upton. Between training in Malaysia & ops in Vietnam I had now served with all three rifle platoons. Promoted corporal while on top of the Nui Thi Vai mountains late in the tour, I wrote home "promoted in the field, I must be doing something right". MFC work suited my personality. I was my own boss for much of the time; I became an accomplished navigator & was an eager participant in any activity where I could fire the ‘guns’. The majority of fire support was provided from 105mm field guns, mostly Aussie but on occasion 161 Bty or the Americans. The practice of firing DF’s required a degree of safety because navigation in the bush was an imprecise science & there had been occasions when fire had hit misplaced friendly units. The normal requirement was to add a safe margin of 1000 metres to the location where the fire was required, on a bearing from the friendly position through the DF grid reference. This didn’t make sense to me as the platoon could be short or long on its supposed location so I always used ‘false’ direction [from the DF location at right angles to a side] so that as the fire was adjusted it could also be used to establish our position by back bearing. So what if the battery commander didn't agree, he was Australian, he wasn't there & it worked. As an immature youth I took great pleasure in having fired every type of gun available for close support including 8” howitzers with a safety radius of 800 metres. I loved doing “danger close” DF with the shells landing inside the 250 metre safety zone usually required around any friendly position. While supporting 2PL in a NDP south of the Horseshoe, I used 8” as close support for a DF & Ginge burnt his hands from the 6 inch chunks of shrapnel that landed beside us. On another occasion in the Light Green I fired 8” at a group of VC across a clearing but the US battery required Pentagon approval before special ammunition [consisting of dispersible munitions] could be used. After a wait of 20 minutes Lcpl Young’s fire mission was approved at the highest level of the American war machine & a young Kiwi got to expend thousands of dollars of American taxpayers’ money. I don’t think I hit anything, given the delay. I just loved the feeling that everyone else was in Vietnam to support the infantry, that any patrol could ask for support of any kind & it was usually available. Back in 2005 the ANZAC dawn services are now underway. So how do I remember..? Of the three people killed while with W3 I was closest to Tom Cooper. Tom & I enjoyed each others company as often as we could, over a beer in the Nui Dat lines or in Vung Tau. He was a quiet sort of guy with a solid sense of humour, a genuine Maori of Billy T ilk. He had enjoyed Vietnam in much the way I had, moments of terror & many good memories, we each had a good feeling about who we were & what we were doing. Tom was happy, brave, competent. He died of wounds in an accident on 10 October 1970; three others were also wounded by friendly fire. His loss hurt the company deeply given the circumstances & the fact that W3 was within days of finishing operations altogether. On 10 November I was waiting at Vung Tau airport for the Hercules coming to take a whole heap of us back to Singapore. We were early (the air force would never have been late...) & a group of us were sitting & yakking on a steel container on top of an airport trailer. I remember we had each been given a bottle of New Zealand wine to help us celebrate the end of our tour back in Singapore. I recognised the container as a casket used to transport bodies out of country, & it had a label on it. Without much thought I flicked the label over & read Tom’s name. This was the casket Tom’s body had been sent home in a month earlier. Now in a fluke of timing it was back at Vung Tau just as we were leaving. I initially thought that Tom was in the casket & travelling home on the Hercules with us. But the timing was all wrong, there was no ceremony, it was just an empty casket. Tom had arrived back in New Zealand before us, but he had somehow managed to also be present with us in Vietnam on the day we left. In our enthusiasm to be gone we would not have stopped to think of Tom, or Dave, or John, had not Tom been there in spirit to remind us. But that changed... We still remember them |
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