Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

That’s when a shadow settled over Sam like a big dark bird.

He looked up. The whole world had changed to whirlwind and deafening thunder. Something with murderous wings was settling, scything the sun, cutting it to shreds.

Slack-mouthed, George mouthed a word of awe. Fu-uck.

Immediately above was a hovering Huey Cobra gunship. It was so close that Sam felt he needed only to extend his hands upward and he would touch it. The turbines were whining, a battle cry, a high pitched scream, the noise driving into Sam’s brain. The whole world was vibrating, shattering to pieces.

The gunship dipped, its nose down and tail up. It bristled with an arsenal of miniguns, rocket pods and chin turret guns. The gunners were hanging from the two side doors.

All of a sudden the chopper bucked. Something clicked and dropped from its underbelly and, with a whoosh, a rocket flared away from the gunship. There was another bucking movement and a second rocket was on its way. The rockets trailed blue smoke across the mangroves and up towards the enemy. Then the target area erupted into juddering explosions. The hillside sizzled and smoked.

The enemy fire stopped. With a lazy insolence, the chopper turned at right angles. Its front windscreen flashed . It dipped and sidled off and over the swamp. The gunners strafed the area with tracers. At the last moment the sun glinted off a painting of a cartoon bird: Woody Woodpecker. With a cheeky wag of its tail the chopper lifted away and over the terrain.

Within seconds the convoy secured its position and Captain Fellowes stood the company down. It was almost as if the attack had never happened.

That evening, Victor Company put up its tents in the rubber plantation that was part of Nui Dat. An hour later, Sam sat with George and Turei in the Mess. Kiwis and Diggers ate in rowdy groups, but Aussies with Aussies and Kiwis with Kiwis.

‘Even in war time,’ Sam thought, ‘our friendly rivalry still exists. And if it sometimes boils over into baiting each other and punching each other, hey, that’s the way it’s always been.’

‘Man, Sarge, this food is the best,’ George said. ‘If I can’t have a woman at least food is the next best thing, eh? What do you reckon, Turei?’

But Turei was in the middle of an eyeballing competition with a red-headed Aussie who had taken a dislike to him.

‘The bastard’s trying to stare me out,’ Turei said.

Before he could do anything about it, through the Mess came a group of six airmen. In the middle was a tall, smiling, blond pilot. An Aussie soldier yelled: ‘Hey, Harper! Over here!’

The pilot nodded and made his way through the tables. He passed so close to the Kiwis that Sam could have reached out and touched him. Some of the men in the Mess began to whistle and stamp. One of them started to sing: ‘Ha-ha-ha haha!’ Others join in. ‘Ha-ha-ha haha! That’s Woody Woodpecker’s song!’

The blond pilot bowed low at the waist and pretended to be surprised at such adulation. That’s when everybody began to chuck bread rolls at him. Laughing, the pilot put up his hands to protect himself. He caught a roll in mid air and threw it back. As he did so, Sam made out the words USAF and the outline of a pair of wings on his jacket.

Victor Company’s training cycle started every day at 0500 hours with PT, wrestling and hand-to-hand combat exercises. Rappelling, climbing and classes on Escape and Evasion came next, followed in the afternoons by weapons recognition and drills, demolitions, map reading, compass and night movement. Platoon and section manoeuvres kept the company’s field skills honed sharp.

Not that Turei, whose position was grenadier, needed much extra practice. He was quickly an expert on placing claymore mines, and Captain Fellowes couldn’t get over his pinpoint targeting.

‘If only he knew,’ Sam said, ‘how much practice you’ve already had.’

‘I’ll say,’ George laughed. ‘All those assaults on police stations when you were a gang member, bro!’

The most important weapon and main fire support at platoon level, however, was the M60 general-purpose machine-gun — and in Sam’s platoon the two-man gun team of Mandy Manderson and Jock Johanssen were considered the best. Their skill might mean the difference between winning and losing the close-range fire fights favoured by the Vietcong. Should Manderson become a casualty, Johanssen would take control of the weapon.

‘I know you’re just a rifleman waiting for your chance to handle this baby,’ Manderson would say to him, ‘but you’ve got one hope and that’s no hope.’

‘Shit. I may have to do the job myself and rig it so you have a little acc-i-dent.’

The physical training was balanced with company and platoon briefings, map reconaissance and other lectures on field operations in Vietnam.

‘Gentlemen,’ Major Worsnop said, ‘Phuoc Tuy is bordered by the South China Sea and Saigon River estuaries. The population is just over 100,000, mainly concentrated along Routes 15, 23 and 44. Baria and Dat Do are the main urban centres but the major part of the population is rural. They are all around us. There are more of them than there are of us. And at least 25 per cent of them have family members on both sides of the conflict. What does this mean to us? It means that someone who looks friendly and acts friendly may not be friendly. One in four people you meet in the civilian population may well be, in fact, the enemy. But you won’t know it.’

He waited for this piece of information to sink in.

‘Why won’t you? Because some of them will appear during the day as simple villagers working in their fields. At night, however, they may become local National Liberation Front militia undertaking guerrilla activities. At the simplest level, they may simply be gathering intelligence on our strength and size to pass on to the professional Communist forces in the area. This is why, unlike the Americans, we do not have local Vietnamese civilians working as cooks and cleaners at Nui Dat. The enemy mortar attacks are close enough as it is.’

The men laughed. Over the last few nights, Nui Dat had been subjected to frequent Vietcong bomb drops.

‘The citizenry may be actively laying mines and preparing punji stake traps. Worse still, they may also be acting as local guides for the Communist main force units, allowing them to penetrate throughout our field of operation. Some will be armed.’

Major Worsnop paused. He ratcheted his briefing up a notch.

‘I spoke earlier of the professional Communist forces in the area. I repeat, gentlemen, that on this score there are also more of them than there are of us, and they have great cover — at least three quarters of Phuoc Tuy is jungle. Our intelligence tells us that the Communists have two provincial force battalions in the area made up of locally raised soldiers with modern — I repeat, modern — infantry weapons. Don’t believe the movies which portray them as some kind of peasant army. They are highly trained, remarkably adaptable to the terrain and extremely mobile.

‘As well as these two — D440 and D445 — the Communists have three regular-force CVC regiments in the area. These are the most dangerous of all the Communist forces in Phuoc Tuy. They are primarily professionals, like us: trained soldiers mainly from North Vietnam. They are well equipped and well supported by a rocket battalion. They have air backup from Hanoi. Never forget that we are outnumbered. The Communists are a formidable enemy and it would be a mistake to under-estimate them.

‘So why are we here, and what can we do against superior numbers? We are here to try to maintain the upper hand. Our strategy is to stay on the defensive but, primarily, to go on planned offensive operations. To maintain unrelenting operations so as to prevent the enemy from even thinking of mounting any major operation against us. How? By blocking their supply routes, their access to Dat Do and Baria. By ambushing them as they move. By mounting major operations against their bases. By ensuring they can’t gain even as much as a toehold in this province. Are there any questions?’