Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

By 5.00, dawn was approaching. Throughout Nui Dat the Australian and New Zealand battalions prepared to move to Luscombe airfield.

‘On the double. Pick it up. Pick it up.’

At 5.30, Victor Company took up the all-round defensive harbour position at the airfield. The choppers were firing up.

The gunships left first. Reciprocating engines began to turn. Ignition, blue smoke, the smell of petrol fuel. From dead silence to thundering noise in one second. The helicopters rocked, rolled and shimmied as the blades rotated. The sunlight glinted on the whirling rotors. The lead gunship taxied out.

‘Mission control, this is Woody Woodpecker. Radio check over.’

‘Woody Woodpecker, I hear you five by.’

‘Affirmative. We’re lifting off.’

Harper pulled pitch. With a sudden juddering, the nose of the chopper dipped, the tail rose, the rotating blades began to go pop pop pop, and the gunship lifted off the ground. As was his custom, Harper saluted the soldiers below. He promised to do his job and keep the enemy pinned down while the troop insertions were underway. He said a prayer for all those poor bastards who would soon be face to face with the enemy.

‘Come back in one piece, Sam.’

By 6.00 the Australian companies had left. Now it was time for Victor Company.

‘Get ready to move,’ Sam called.

Already, the infantrymen were running at speed to board their assigned craft. Sam saw Lieutenant Haapu shepherding the platoon’s mortar section, orderly, signaller and medic on board the first chopper. Of all the platoon, the signaller was the one man the enemy snipers tried to take out. Without him to relay orders, and call for backup or a dustoff helicopter to pull out the wounded, you were in big trouble.

‘Move, move, move,’ Sam called.

The sun leapt into the sky like a chariot. Sam led his men through its spokes, moving swiftly to board their craft. There, the co-pilot acknowledged Sam with a nod. It was Seymour, one of the American basketball players. He and Sam counted in the men: George, Turei, Mandy Manderson, Jock Johanssen, Red Fleming and six riflemen. All were carrying extra pieces of equipment — disposable single-shot anti-tank rocket launchers that were strapped to their packs. If the enemy thought that bunkers would save them, these babies would get them out.

Sam gave Seymour the thumbs-up. The chopper rose, dipped and joined the battle formation. Six hundred metres below, the ground swept past.

Twenty minutes later, the landscape ahead began to explode and erupt.

‘It’s our artillery,’ Sam reassured the men. ‘They’re giving us cover fire to keep the Vietcong busy while we get in.’

There was a sudden increase in radio traffic, and the clattering air armada began to descend to the landing zone — the most dangerous moment of all for the fleet.

Sam heard the pilot radioing the support gunships.

‘One minute to dump time. Negative enemy sighted on LZ. Gunship Leader, I’m making a final approach for insertion. Is it a go, Woody Woodpecker?’

‘Roger. It’s a go.’

The chopper banked to the left and slid into the side of a dark mountain terrain. In a dizzying rush the ground came up and they were there — hovering above a small patch of barren ground surrounded by jungle. The chopper flared for a stop, swaying six metres off the ground.

Sam caught Red Fleming’s eye. ‘You okay?’ Sam asked.

‘I haven’t pissed my pants, Sarge, if that’s what you mean. Yet.’

Then, as if the pilot had said ‘Whoa’, the chopper was swaying three feet off the ground right above the landing zone.

‘Go go go ,’ Seymour called.

In a second Sam had jumped to the ground. The fine red soil was a whirlwind around him as he ran for the nearest cover and hit the dirt, rifle at the ready, waiting for the bullet that would announce an enemy sniper. His heart was beating so hard it interfered with his hearing.

Sam saw the rest of his men dropping to the ground. The chopper rocked forward. It picked up speed, climbing out over the tree line and away. Attempting to fool the enemy into thinking that a landing hadn’t been made. Laying a false trail to some other part of the region.

For the next fifteen minutes, Victor Company kept position as the remaining fleet poured in. At each landing, more troops and supplies. Then it was done — the entire battalion was on the ground.

Everything was quiet. As the last chopper lifted away Sam felt a frightening sense of isolation.

‘Holy Hone Hika,’ he said to himself. ‘This is it. This is really it .’

He was in the killing zone.

Day One

‘Let’s get the men moving,’ Major Worsnop said.

The landing completed, each company of ANZAC Battalion headed out to its assigned operational sector. Sam passed a young Aussie soldier.

‘Makes a change from beating up each other at base, eh?’ the soldier said. ‘Go get ’em, Kiwi.’

‘You too, digger.’

Victor Company’s destination was two hours’ march away in the south-west quadrant. The main distinguishing landmark was Two Horn mountain. The route took them through thick bamboo, then secondary jungle, and finally tall primary jungle. Over to the east, muffled detonations, like distant thunder, indicated that the Americans in Operation Bucephalus hadn’t been so lucky in their landing.

By early afternoon, Victor Company reached its position — Two Horn mountain loomed above them — and set up its base camp. Platoons were sent out to clear the area of enemy. By mid-afternoon the base camp’s defences had been primed: M60 machine-guns and claymore mines were positioned to ensure interlocking fields of fire. Sentries were posted.

At sundown, Major Worsnop called the company together.

‘I have opened our orders and can now tell you why we are here. As you may know, there has been increased enemy activity throughout Phuoc Tuy province. Command have been monitoring it for some time, but our intelligence information has now been able to confirm that enemy activity is being coordinated from a new logistic supply base somewhere here in the vicinity of Two Horn mountain. This base has been supplying Vietcong forces in Long Khanh, Bien Hoa, and Binh Tuy in addition to those in Phuoc Tuy province.

‘Up until now, we have been hitting at the enemy wherever they surface. Operation Bucephalus has been mounted to stop them at the source. In particular, the Americans have had intelligence reports that the enemy buildup is preparatory to an attack on the American airbase at Bien Hoa. Our mission is to stop the Vietcong before this happens. Once their base has been located, joint command will manoeuvre to destroy it.’

He handed over to Captain Fellowes, who gave his lieutenants an area of sweep. Lieutenant Haapu’s was a delta at the heart of an extended river system. A village further up one of the valleys. A whole system of tracks pushing further into the clouds and up into the mountain.

Lieutenant Haapu turned to Sam:

‘You begin patrolling in the morning.’

Sam did not sleep well that night. In this, his platoon’s first field action in Vietnam, the pressure was on him to perform. Could he deliver? Could he lead his men into battle and out? When the dawn flared, Sam saw that the sky was like a sea of opalescent waves, tinged with red and stretching to the end of forever. Within it, from east to west, stretched a broad band of cloud, broken into long, thin parallel masses, as if shoals of fish were seething just below its surface.

‘The mackerel sky,’ Sam whispered.

And he realised that the sky was like a sign — whatever was going to be would be, and whatever was going to happen would happen — and a sense of extraordinary calm came over him. In particular, he remembered the wild-eyed palomino on that day, years ago, when he was in his late teens. Dad and other horsebreakers had mustered a herd of wild mustangs from out of the Rimutaka Ranges. Arapeta was given first pick, and had chosen the palomino. For days he tried to break the stallion in. He used all his resources of wisdom and cunning but, in the end, resorted to the whip. Sam ran out and pulled the whip from him.