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[Film reel sound (15 secs)]
3500 New Zealanders were on operations in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972 - this country's
most sustained and most controversial war effort of the 20th century. Kiwis were in
the air, in offices and operating theatres and hospital wards, tunnels and jungles of
Vietnam during the near-decade of New Zealand's allegiance with the US-led coalition. They
served closely with Australian forces fighting the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.
Nursing sister Daphne Shaw, rifleman Bruce Knight and helicopter
pilot Brian Senn are among those who came home.
[Last Post plays (12 secs)]
37 of their brothers- and sisters-in-arms did not.
[Helicopter rotor blades (8 secs)]
[Film reel sound (5 secs)]
I'm very glad I went to Vietnam, 'cause I think I did something. The reason I went was
to look after the New Zealand troops. And I feel I did a good job and that they appreciated
what we did and you see that when you go to the reunions and things now. The girls were
always looked after so it continues 40 years on.
We were just probably relieved we got to come back unscathed. We never used to talk about
the guys that died, got killed over there, not that we ever forgot them, just sort
of a taboo. It hasn't been until 20 or 30 years later that you actually talked about them.
I think my time in Vietnam also made me a lot wiser and a lot more secure with
the army and maybe a lot more secure within myself.
[Film reel sound (5 secs)]
In Vietnam I served at the 1 Aust Field Hospital at Vung Tau, which was the hospital that treated
the Australian and New Zealand soldiers that were injured or got ill in Vietnam. My job
was mainly as a ward sister working in the wards or in ICU for the post-surgery patients.
When I arrived in Vietnam it was a bit of a shock to the system because I arrived in
the Bristol freighter, got off-loaded out onto the tarmac and that was it, I was just left
there and nobody knew 'cause the Bristol freighter just stopped, dropped me and took off. I was
left there all on my little lonesome till some kind soul picked me up in a Jeep and
took me over to the hospitals. When I was standing there on my own I sorta thought "Why
am I here? What have I done to deserve to be just left here?" and there were lots of
planes flying around and choppers and things and I thought "Oh dear, I hope nobody drops
any bombs here or anything." I think the reason must because the Bristol freighter was a bit
late getting there, or nearly a day late, and I think they'd sort of forgotten that
there should be another New Zealand nurse coming up. So it was just an administrative
error somewhere.
Yeah, that's me, I reckon it's probably the only time I got behind the camera. Obviously
I'd lost a bet if I've got four beers in my hand. Now, my old movie camera, it's a damned
good one, or was the best you could buy at the time. Got it from the American PX [Post Exchange] for
$157. NPC, haven't had it out of the box for years.
And out of that long-closed Pandora's Box, along with the camera and old film reels,
come a rush of memories. After nearly 40 years, there's finally a soundtrack for Bruce Knight's
home movies of the Vietnam War. Nicknamed 'Sniper', Knight was well known for his singular
vision and crack aim -- both down the barrel of a gun and through the viewfinders of
the cameras he carried in his kit. A country boy turned soldier at 19, Knight's hours of
silent footage were shot in the early 1970s in Singapore en route to and from Vietnam
and during his year-long tour of duty with Victor 5 Infantry Company. They give a taste
of life in Australian and New Zealand bases, telling a story common to thousands of Kiwi
infantrymen based in Nui Dat, South Vietnam of downtime behind barbed wire.
[Film reel sound (6 secs)]
Well, I was a little, I found the conditions okay. I was a little bit older than a lot of the
ones, I was 27 when I went to Vietnam, so I'd been around the world a bit and I knew
I wasn't going to the Royal Albert Hall, I was going to a war zone. The accommodation
was acceptable, it was fairly basic. You had a bed and you had a fan, you had a window.
The shower block there, that was okay, you know, you just had a canvas bag with a shower hose on it.
When we got there we had no hot water but one of the guys was an electrician
and he soon had the water sorted out. I don't know how he got the electricity to it, but
he was a clever guy. So we were the probably luckiest platoon of the lot because we had
hot water. The latrines were a different story though, horrible things. They were just one
big pit with a wall around it, much the same height as that, it was the same size as that,
with one big bench seat with I think six to eight holes in it, and that's what you sat
on. But the stench was shocking. We reckoned that the mesh didn't keep the flies out, it
kept the flies in because it was just shocking. You never opened your mouth and breathed in
the latrines 'cause you'd breathe a fly in. You'll see the corrugated iron, that was blast
walls. They're about five foot high, so when you slept you were down below the wall by
about two feet. So if the base as attacked only a direct hit would take a tent out and
its occupants.
We got pretty good food really, Mr Wattie used to send us up boxes of tinned fruit
and stuff. One time he sent a whole Herc load of tinned sweet corn, I was sick of eating
sweet corn, but never mind, because the Vietnamese didn't like it very much. But we always, the
girls always loved CASEVAC day when the plane came up from Penang and the Australian
aircrew girl used to bring us fresh bread and sausage rolls. And so that was very much appreciated.
But as I said before, we used to go around to the restaurants quite often and there was
very much a French influence still on the cooking, they had some beautiful food. They had one
Chinese restaurant there, or Vietnamese, who used to make the most beautiful chicken
and sweet corn soup, but you had to take your own container. We didn't have a lot of containers
but what we did have was these urine-collection bags with a pull-string top, so we used to
go in and get two litres of chicken and sweet corn soup in our urine-bag.
You know, we used to go down there. If you had an Aussie mate you used to meet up down
there. And the barber's shop, you know, he used to give you a shave, haircut, shave with
a cut-throat razor but it got closed down because the barber must have got a lot of
intelligence out of that post because he was killed on a patrol, what's called a TOAR patrol
-- a Tactical Area of Responsibility patrol, not that far from the base, so he was a Communist.
Our relationships with the servicemen were pretty good really, they treated the girls
very well. We used to have a New Zealand...it wasn't a club, but about once a month when
the boys were down on leave we would go into town to the Grand Hotel and have a
meal, so we kept the New Zealand context together. But all the other troops -- the Australians,
the Americans and things -- were always very respectful to the girls.
As far as recreation, there wasn't very much. You worked in the day and partied at night. And unfortunately
that's what happened, because you couldn't really go very far 'cause the girls were outnumbered
by about twenty to one at any party so you always danced and were looked after with drinks.
Yes, very protected.
[Film reel sound (5 secs)]
Now, if you read your history about war, 75% of all soldiers who go to hospitals go
because they're sick, not because they've been shot or anything, because if you get
shot you die. And it was one of the hardest things I ever had was trying to teach young
medic soldiers that in fact you're going to be looking after coughs, colds, sprained
ankles, malaria, those sorts of things. You're not going to see a lot of people that have
got sucking chest wounds and minus their legs and things because they just don't live.
Because we knew, or knew of most of the troops, whenever we heard that there was a New Zealand
dust off, of course there was the anxiety of who was it, was it someone I know well
or not? So when the boy Winton was killed his brother came because they were serving
together, which was quite unusual, and I was one of the ones that sort of said to John
"I'm sorry, your brother's dead." So it was very, very personal. We used to write letters home
for them and this sort of thing so we knew a lot of personal details about them, you
know, writing home after a guy had got a Dear John letter or something. They sort of opened
their hearts to you, but they felt you could because you were a New Zealander.
And that was a very privileged communications that you had with some of the troops. You had mainly
Australian and New Zealand servicemen but we also treated ARVN troops, that was the
South Vietnamese troops, and from time to time we had POWs as well. We used to look
after some of the Vietnamese civilian injured occasionally, like if a little child got run
over. We had a little boy we called Pooh Bear. He got run over by an Australian truck and
[it] ended up we had to amputate one leg. So we looked after him for some months after
he'd been injured and when his mum and dad came to collect him he didn't want to go with
them, he wanted to stay with us. So we thought we must've given him reasonable care. We used
to take him swimming and all sorts of things, and he was a delightful little child.
Intelligence wanted prisoners, they wanted to get some information, preferably on D445,
which was the North Vietnamese regiment that we had fought with. We started to move up into
the Nui Tai base, or the Wolvertons as the Americans called it, 'cause there was a song
(Don't Go On) Wolverton Mountain, 'cause you'll get killed sort of thing, so they nick-named
it the Wolvertons. The Americans had been up there about four or five years previous
and had lost a about 120 men and they never went back. Anyhow, we were heading up this track
and it was well-used, and we started to move up a more steeper area of the hill. The track
was on a virtually...it was shale rock each side, and we walked across the top of a ridge
and it was only about that wide, probably a metre wide if I recall in some parts. And
up in front of us there was an outcrop of rock where the track went into it and wound
through, sort of in an 'S'. But what we'd noticed on the way up was what looked like
to us, we just ignored them, what looked like
artillery shells being buried in the ground
'cause there was wire sticking up out of the ground. Other people saw it and didn't say anything,
but I thought 'Something wrong here, but hey, no one else said anything, they must've seen
them.' And these what we saw in the ground were mines. What they'd done was set the Claymore mines
as far as the rock outcrop, and these mines probably went for 100 yards at least. Roko [Ruka Hudson]
lost both legs, Doc Takuta lost one leg, Porker Charles got shrapnel through his gut
which took out his spleen and other bits and pieces. [Counts one, two, three] Alan Kerr
at the time didn't know he was wounded. Ross, with superficial wounds,
and the others were from the ensuing, it wasn't a fight but they were throwing grenades at us all the time,
and with the rock shale you get splinters and some of the guys got hurt, and even if
you got a small splinter in yourself you always were medevaced out. We called in artillery,
we'd been pinned down for 10 hours, we virtually called in artillery on our own position
to cover ourselves while we got back. They were only probably 40 metres in front of us, and
this was after we'd medevac'ed everybody. But before the medevacs went out the helicopter
came in, Alan Kerr collapsed just in front of me, he had shrapnel in the base of his neck
He was the last, we had to call a helicopter in to get him out. I can remember his screams
as he was lifted off onto the jungle penetrator.
A big ambush came in and you do a reverse triage in war, so you treat he least injured
first. And the ones that are really badly injured they sort of hang around till the
end and then you give it a go if there's something. Mind you, that's the way surgery develops.
War advances surgery more than anything else in the world, because they'll give it a go.
There was one Australian lad, a young corporal who had been hit by a Claymore, and so he
had lost one leg, one arm, one eye, and a whole lot of abdominal wounds. But he did
live and we did send him home to his parents' and I had contact with them for some years
afterwards, and in fact until he died.
Some of the helicopter pilots were bloody heroes as far as we're concerned, like getting
medevacs out.
When we got hit on the Nui Thi Vai's base they could've quite easily been shot down.
Helicopter pilot Brian Senn doesn't think himself a hero for his Vietnam War service. He
was just following orders, doing what he's trained for. He loved the thrill of flying
Iroquois helicopters, the challenge of extracting New Zealand and Australian Special Air Service
troopers from dense jungle while under enemy fire.
The first one here, there's just a wisp of red smoke coming out of the jungle, and that
would have been the SAS patrol would have popped a smoke can and it would have sent
up, so already zero-one would have been in radio contact with them and ask them to pop
the smoke and to identify, so we knew we were going to the right place and it was the right
guys on the ground. 'Cause later on it got to the point where at night when there were
dust-offs you'd ask them to pop a strobe and several strobes would come up so the enemy
were on radio frequencies, and then you don't know where you're going so you just have to
go home. [To confuse you? So then at that stage you just have to abandon it?] Mmm.
[Right] That's why they had different coloured smokes. They'd pop a smoke and you'd say "I
see a red smoke" or "I see a blue smoke", 'cause if another smoke turned up it could
be the wrong one. So that was the first thing: to get to the right place, and you'd
come in to the hover and whilst coming in, again all grounders stood by their communications
-- zero-one and the guys on the ground -- that the enemy were south-west of us here or whatever.
So the gunships what were coming in would do their gunnery and they'd be firing rockets
into the area to supress anything that might be coming from that area and you might even
have your own guns on your left-hand side of the aircraft firing into the
jungle, maybe. So there you can see the gunship come in to pass, the firing pass, just pulling
out of it there. And this photograph was taken from zero-three sitting back so it's zero-two actually doing the
extraction. And in the next one I've got zero-two is sitting there winching, and you can see
the wire, the winch wire coming down, and down here you can see some SAS guys on the
wire, two of them, so it's quite a long winch actually if you look at it. So at this stage it's
quite late, there may still be somebody on the ground. The last one, two people would come together,
you'd never leave just one guy on the ground by himself. And they'd be perhaps firing into
the jungle, I'm not too sure, depending on the circumstances. So you winch them up, and
then here, this one is taken actually in the aircraft. You can see the crew and gunner
who operated the winch, so he's moved out of his seat here to gun the M60, and see these
pylons here, he's moved out of his seat to operate the winch. So the first SAS guy that
came on board, his first role was to get straight in to the pylon seat with the crew and gunner's
gun, and if need be be firing into the jungle, whatever was appropriate for a defensive thing.
And you can see the guy here being dragged aboard. And eventually the last photograph
is of that same fellow, we've obviously come out of the hover now because the crewman
has swung the winch in, and this fella here is happy, he's no longer manning the gun so
obviously we've left the site, we're flying away. And there's the other SAS guy who we
saw earlier being dragged on board and you can see the look of joy on his face, the relief
that he's got out of it. He's still alive and the helicopters have picked him up.
[Helicopter rotor sound (5secs)]
[Film reel sound (6 secs)]
Oh we would've been there 'cause we were out of the place. We were going through our happy
pills -- those are a whole lot of pills you take to de-worm you and all sorts of other things.
And that was just a time when... New Zealanders, like very hospitable people,
invited some of the Aussies across to the battalion headquarters and put on a hangi
for them. See all the meat was, I heard, was flown over from New Zealand for them, as was some
of the beer. I think we fed about 600 all up, I could be wrong, but that's the figure
I seem to have in mind. And that's the whole company together about a week before we left
Vietnam. The Vietnamese kindly gave us some rum, and well I didn't drink at all then.
I took a swig of it and the smell of it just about took my breath away. I think there was
probably a dozen bottles or something for each platoon. Some of the guys had a swig
and couldn't handle it. One guy, Mike Armstrong, reckoned he could drink half a bottle.
He just about had to have CPR to get him going again 'cause it just about bowled him over.
It was just horrible. You know, the smell of it just put me off, I can still smell it
now when I think about it.
Yes, I was aware of what was going on. I'd been involved in Wellington at one stage just before
I left to go to Vietnam, I was down there with Pam Miley actually, and we were in Courtenay
Place and there was a bit of a protest on about the Vietnam War. Neither Pam nor I are
very backward at coming forward and we sort of said a few things and we got a bit involved
and what people thought our ancestry was. So I was aware of what was happening, and
of course we'd heard of what happened to the 161 Battery when they came home and their march
down Queen Street, and the throwing tomatoes and eggs and things at them so we did know,
yes. The protestors had their beliefs, and I guess, you know, we live in a democratic
country, which allows us to protest, and I would hate to ever see New Zealand
say that we couldn't. I think some of the soldiers did take it quite personally, at the
way that people were protesting, particularly 'cause all of our guys were professional soldiers.
They weren't drafted like the Americans, they weren't sent over as conscientious objectors
as some of the Australians were into the medical field -- they were very professional men and
I think they felt a little bit hurt that even though they were doing their duty they were
sort of spat on and regarded as something that came up out the sewer.
[Film reel sound (5 secs)]
In 2006 the New Zealand government signed a memorandum of understanding with Vietnam
War veterans and their families. Reconciliation for perceived injustices related to service, and
redress for exposure to toxins while on operations. In 2008 a trust was established to support
veterans' children, the Crown formally apologised and veterans were officially welcomed home
with a parade and national reunion.
Tribute '08 launched the MOU really, and I think that it tried to show the soldiers that
people were thinking about them and trying to do something which made what they did fair.
It's like everything in life, it doesn't matter what you do there's always going to be some
that aren't quite satisfied with what the outcome is, but I think it has made quite
a lot of difference. It's a very slow process though. And of course we're all getting older
and we don't have that much longer on this mortal life, as they say, so everybody wants
everything done very quickly and unfortunately it hasn't happened as quickly in some cases.
No, I think it changed me a bit. Well, I mean, as I said I was a bit older, so I saw what happened
to some of the younger girls who went up there, particularly from the Australian girls
who just could not cope with the day-to-day existence up there. And I believe that it
was because I was older.
There's one thing I believe in and that is the troops that fought in Vietnam are the
last true Anzacs. We were attached to the Australian Regiment who weren't part of the
Americans, we weren't part of any other country, it was just the Australian and New Zealanders.
The modern confrontations they've been having lately, they're skirmishes as far as
I'm concerned, and the Australians and New Zealanders haven't been as close as we were
in Vietnam ever again.
[Military drum beat (40 secs)]
[MC explaining 37 flags memorial (11 secs)]