Delta Coy 4RAR/NZ (ANZAC), 2nd tour, 1971-1972

Delta Company 4RAR/NZ (ANZAC), 2nd tour, 1971-1972

There is a comfortable feeling that comes with belonging to a winning team; a mixture of confidence and excitement.

Of course any team is only as good as it's weakest member, so perhaps Delta Company was luckier than most, because it seemed that we had less than our share of weak members and therefore, we were a strong side.

It would be pointless to say that we were the best company - we thought we were, naturally, but then any company worth its salt thinks that. All we can fairly say of ourselves, then, is that we were different.

We were also lucky - if you count two contacts (and we prefer to call them battles, for a contact is short and sweet and these were neither) with two separate enemy main force units as being lucky.

But the point is that by the end of those contacts, we were welded very solidly together as a company. All of us, regardless of rank, station or experience knew the impact of an RPG round in the trees above our heads, or the blunt slap of an AK47 round.

We had experienced the same triumph and felt the same fear and we had all looked squarely into the black jaws of an enemy bunker complex and then waited in the dark for those jaws to snap shut. So perhaps more than any company, we were tempered by fire.

I thought this trip was first class ! (Pte "Red" Herring, Cpl Harry Duggan, Pte Chris Clarke, 2Lt Kevin Byrne, Pte Harry Stevenhaagen, Cpl Paul Menner, Pte Jeff Douglas).

We had many "characters" - far too many to mention here and in any case it would be invidious to do so. Each member of the company was a character in his own right, contributing to the aim as best he knew how, whether for good, bad or indifferent. Everyone had his own part to play and in so doing was valuable.

If we were lucky, then we were unlucky also, for Delta Company took the lions share of casualties. But at the time there could be no regrets; because each man realised that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs and sorrow could not be allowed to linger to the detriment of the task in hand.

WO2 Noel Huish checks his flank.

If a token was to be struck for those eight members, then it was fittingly done at a simple memorial service on top of Nui Dat Hill, an evening or two before we finally left the Province. An outward sign, if you like, that we knew them all, we loved them all and that we missed them all.

And the enemy; what of them? Some agree that they were better than us. Certainly they were good. Well motivated, ruthless, tough, incredibly tenacious and very cunning. A fine enemy, from whom we must learn a' lot.

We were the last Australian rifle company to leave South Vietnam and this in itself made us unique. We remained in Vung Tau for three months after the battalion left, accompanied by the ever efficient and cheerful cavalry troop, which went to make up the Delta Company Group.

Treatment in the scrub. (Gnr ken Hayes, Cpls Mick O'Sullivan, Bevan Willison, Pte Mick Gilpin)

The job was, if anything, more difficult now, for we were the only group in 1st Australian Task Force capable or experienced enough to maintain the security of the administrative units. The task was to keep alert and be constantly ready,

in case a final effort should be made to send the Australians home with their tails between their legs.

It was a trying time for everyone, with those two dark enemies of the soldier, boredom and frustration, often nipping at our heels. But as in every other difficult situation, we got through, and came safely home.

And it would be a strange man indeed who could look back in years to come and not say with pride "I was in Delta Company, 4 RAR".