Because it was obvious to the Viet Cong that after our cordon of Duc My, we must have been considering a similar operation against Binh Ba, special precautions had to be taken. They knew that we operated against villages using the cordon technique at night. If the Viet Cong were to lay an ambush on our approach route we could have been in difficulties, so it was vital that the preliminary reconnaissances' were undetected. Colonel Warr's plan called for a wide sweeping approach march which went out from Nui Dat towards Nui Nghe, swinging in to the east of the latter hill to enter the Gallia Plantation from the south-west corner, then passing through the plantation on an axis parallel to the airstrip. It was important that no one saw us during the approach or we would find either an ambush or a village empty of Viet Cong when we arrived. Therefore we had to skirt some two miles to the west of Duc My and we could not enter the plantation until after the tappers had stopped work and gone back into Binh Ba. This was likely to be just on dusk so we were faced with a final night move of nearly two miles through the plantation.
An assembly area for the battalion to re-form after the day approach march was selected in the jungle on the south-western edge of the plantation. The battalion would concentrate in this area by dusk and then move out into a forming-up area inside the plantation where the companies could shake out into their final order of march, rope up so that they would stay together, and then get some rest for a few hours before beginning the final movement around 11.30 p.m. B Company were given a special approach route which was to bring them into Binh Ba from the east. The other companies of the battalion, together with two companies from the Sixth Battalion (necessary because of the length of the cordon) were to place the cordon in position and remain in their positions on the day of the search, while B Company swept through the village, working towards the west.
The operation, called Operation Holsworthy, required much co-ordination with the Vietnamese authorities, for they had to interrogate the population and supply police to assist in moving people from their homes to the collection point. But because of the dangers and consequences of a security leak within any large headquarters, information was kept on a need-to-know basis until the morning of the interrogations. The police and interrogation teams supplied by Colonel Dat reported to the battalion base on the day preceding the cordon. Only then were they briefed on the operation and they came forward on APCs on the following morning. The provincial staff preferred to set up a central interrogation point on the Ba Ria soccer field where they were close to their base, rather then set up a great amount of tentage in the insecure area of Binh Ba for the few days which the interrogation of all males of military age would demand. Consequently, we had to arrange trucks from Vung Tau to come up Route 2 with an armoured escort on the day of the search, in order to take the men into Ba Ria and bring them back again.
A loudspeaker aircraft was to fly over Binh Ba at dawn, broad-casting instructions to the villagers and reassuring them that they would not be harmed. They were also told to notify the police escorting our soldiers if any person were sick and required medical attention.
This arrangement completed the preparations. Just as we were about to begin the final briefings, Captain Don Wilcox, the Intelligence Officer, was transferred to Task Force Headquarters to replace one of the Task Force intelligence staff who had been taken ill and had to return to Australia. I was appointed to replace Don on Battalion headquarters, and took over the running of the Intelligence Section on the morning before we departed for Binh Ba. My first act was to produce what I estimated might have been the Viet Cong provincial leader's operational contingency plan for dealing with an Australian thrust into Binh Ba, so that each of the company commanders would know what forces could be employed against them in the worst instance, and how these forces might be used. Unfortunately the format which I used for this contingency plan was very close to that actually employed by the Viet Cong and one of the American Psywar officers who were working with us mistook it for a captured plan which was going to be put into effect, so he took a little reassuring that we were not deliberately walking straight into a trap.
We left Nui Dat on the morning of August 7th, winding out of the base camp in a long column of companies one behind the other, to lessen the risk of being discovered during the approach to the assembly area. The battalion was strung out over two miles, and would have taken four hours at patrol pace to pass any one point. The companies departed in accordance with an elaborately planned time schedule, which worked surprisingly smoothly, with only short delays as the later companies waited near the start point for the earlier ones to depart.
The column took shape on the first few hundred yards on Route 2 before heading off into the trees to the north-west. The road had become plated with red mud which blended in a harmony of rich colours with the dark green of the rubber trees on either side of the road. The route we took and its accompanying sites were becoming familiar. One felt that the environment was growing more friendly towards us. Certainly we no longer sensed the presence of immediate hostility moving about amongst the rubber and banana trees which we had felt so sharply in the last week in May.
At the bottom of the gentle hill which Route 2 descended from the rubber trees, we crossed the first of several branches of the Song Cau, passing an enormous tree, which was a graceful study in the transfer of vertical forms to horizontal planes. The trunk rose straight up out of the earth, curving over until it flowed smoothly into one of several parallel horizontal layers of foliage which made up the character of the tree.
We diverged to the west, moving through the rubber plantation which led up the hill to the wide clearing of Landing Zone Hudson. Every time I crossed Hudson I counted the days back to May 24th and felt a growing difference in my attitude between then and now---not the least of which was the feeling of slight amazement that we had been on operations for on month, for two months, and so on. The next mile of our progress would pass quickly as my mind speculated on the length of the battalion's time in Vietnam and what was yet to be experienced.
On over the undulations of open country side we wound, around tall whip-like clumps of bamboo, or in between them when it was impossible to do otherwise, across swamps of black mud which the hundreds of marching boots churned to the consistency of sludgy porridge, until we reached the harbour area of thick jungle with small clearings dotted about in which platoons and companies were gathering, resting after the day of marching and eating from tins of cold meat, their meal since breakfast and their last until the following morning.
The battalion had completed the assembly by 6 p.m. and in failing light we moved out of the jungle, across a broad strip of turf, and into the plantation. A narrow horizontal strip of light which ran completely across our front separated the convergence of the dark cloud of rubber leaves overhead from the carpet of dark earth beneath. This light filtered through in a pale green swathe from the opposite edge of the plantation. Thousands of thin vertical black lines, the trunks of rubber trees, linked the horizontal strips of darkness and the dark silhouettes of the assembling soldiers flitted across this static pattern. We sat down, each man close to his neighbour, except for the sentries, who were some hundreds of yards out. Each man tied his rope between his own equipment and that of the man in front, because the first few hours of the night move had to be done in complete darkness as the moon did not rise until after midnight.
At 11 p.m. we stood up to move off and the first minor drama of the night occurred. The men in front had not allowed enough time for the men at the rear to put their equipment on before the former began to move off. Max Carroll experienced the anguish of feeling all his belongings whisked from his hands and disappearing into the total darkness which enveloped all, while he had visions of all the secret battalion instructions which he carried for co-ordination of the operation being scattered far and wide across Binh Ba. Fortunately, the front of the column was halted and most important items were recovered by several people who had lost them. We abandoned the idea of roping together after that move and relied on hand to shoulder contact for future night moves in the absence of any moonlight.
After an hour of shuffling around rubber trees and over the small banks and bunds which ran through the plantation, light began gradually to filter across our path as the moon rose, and we approached the edge of the airstrip where visibility was much better than in the rubber trees. Moving in front of the line of trees at the edge of the airstrip was like walking beneath a chalk cliff---the whiteness of the trunks and branches in the cold moonlight made them almost scarp-like above us.
The cordon went into position close to 4 a.m. and B Company began their search shortly after dawn. Soon afterwards the first groups of Vietnamese began coming into the Battalion Headquarters area for checking, a quick interrogation by myself, and transport to Ba Ria. The first group of villagers were rather bewildered, but a few simple jokes by our jovial regimental police thawed them out a little and they gave us good co-operation.
I was surprised at the willingness of the people to go where they were told, for not only had they been Viet Cong sympathisers, if not active guerrillas, but it must have been very inconvenient for them to have to change whatever plans they had made for the day's activities. However, the combination of the Vietnamese police and our soldiers experienced no trouble in handling the villagers and after an hour the curiosity of the children and the generosity of the soldiers with their rations had created a fairly warm atmosphere.
I sat in a small Hessian screen enclosure to which the Vietnamese were brought one at a time. My two main aims were to find out where the Viet Cong were in the vicinity of Binh Ba and to examine the attitude of the villagers towards the South Vietnamese Government, the Viet Cong and ourselves. I had never been involved with this sort of work before, and the only way which I knew to get information from the people was to be pleasant to them, so I conducted each interrogation accordingly. I used one of our Vietnamese native interpreters when talking to the villagers, not only because I did not speak Vietnamese, but because the interpreter formed a social bridge between myself and the person to whom I was talking. It seemed very important to get each Vietnamese to relax as much as possible and a good Vietnamese interpreter was able to do this far better then any European. This consideration was important not only for interrogation, but for general contact with Vietnamese officials and civilians, for a good interpreter knew the social form, he knew the local area, he could effect the right sort of introduction at the commencement of a conversation, he knew what humour to use, he could warn me if I put a foot wrong and he could suggest something I might do or say to the person to whom we were speaking which would produce a favourable reaction. Vietnamese humour is subtle and it is used in conversation to a greater extent than in western society. The Vietnamese are very perceptive, and those who are educated can express themselves well, not only by speech but facial expression and gesture. And while most of the Vietnamese were polite enough to make allowance for the more reserved mode of the westerners, one obviously cannot generate much warmth if people are always having to make allowances. Thus a good interpreter was one of the most important factors in building and maintaining an intelligence system amongst the Vietnamese. I was fortunate in having several good interpreters who had been supplied by the South Vietnamese Army. Two of them, Sergeants' Bic and Chinh, were very good at establishing effective and warm personal relations with people and they were quite indispensable to my work.
The villagers surprise me by the amount by which they were prepared to tell concerning the Viet Cong. Quite probably several gave me deliberately false information, but most of what they told me was verified later. The Viet Cong had reduced their activities in Binh Ba shortly after arrival of the Task Force at Nui Dat. The guerillas based in the village had gone into hiding in the jungle and larger units, such as the main force battalions had not used the village for a few months. However, the Viet Cong had not given up their taxation on the people. The plantation workers were paid around the fifth day of each month and the tax collectors had usually appeared on the seventh. On the night before our cordon had been placed around the village, a team of six armed collectors had come into the village and had begun to collect the August revenue and rice. Some of this team were caught by the cordon and were apprehended by the provincial security police at their interrogation in Ba Ria. This coincidence of operations at Binh Ba deprived the Viet Cong of nearly three hundred dollars (Australian) and one thousand litres of rice.
During the morning we met the French plantation manager, M. Pernes, and his engineer, M. Moro. For their own protection, they were required to come to the Battalion Headquarters for checking. We did not suspect them of any friendly inclinations towards the Viet Cong, but we felt that to have given them preferential treatment in front of the villagers would have labelled them too clearly as our assistants and this could have resulted in a swift Viet Cong reprisal against them before we were able to secure the village. They were an interesting pair. Pernes had been born in China and had spent most of his life in the Far East, particularly in North Vietnam before 1954. Moro had been a sergeant in the French Army and had decided to settle in Vietnam in the nineteen-fifties. I wondered why they continued to accept the apparent risks which they ran in attempting to continue working in war torn Vietnam without any protection. In fact the risks they ran were considerable, for they were always at the mercy of some individual Viet Cong guerilla who might have killed them without orders from the Viet Cong headquarters whose policy was to allow the Frenchmen to go about their businesses. Over fifty French employees of S.I.P.H. had been killed by the Viet Cong. But they were both waiting for better times to come and were riding out what they hope would only be a few more difficult years. Moro's chief joy was big game hunting, but the advent of the Viet Cong around Binh Ba had frightened away many of the animals, including the odd tiger and elephant, and the Viet Cong had forbidden movement into many of the best shooting areas. The difficulties of travelling around the province and they neighbouring rubber plantations, particularly those near Xuan loc, meant that social life was almost non-existent, except for the odd weekend drive to Saigon. Consequently both men were glad to see us and we got along with them very well. For our part, the presence of some civilised people living a few miles up the road from our base camp was perhaps the chief redeeming feature of Nui Dat. We were careful not to put pressure on the Frenchmen for intelligence, lest they become associated any more then necessary in the minds of the Viet Cong with our activities. there was much to be said for keeping the French in a state of benevolent neutrality.
The presence of the Frenchmen was of paramount importance to the village and this was appreciated by both sides, so a policy of neutrality seemed feasible. However, as time passed, natural affinities began to assert themselves and visits were exchanged more frequently while the activities of the Viet Cong in Binh Ba went into decline.
Another of those who I interrogated during the morning was Father Joseph. He was a dignified and gentle man, aged in his mid-forties. He had been well educated in the north and spoke French beautifully without the usual harsh accent of Vietnamese French. His black robes and beret, his fine smooth hands and rimless glasses lent him an air of authority. His personality was definite, frank and open and he appeared to be well aware of his authority even when cycling, for if dignity is inversely related to speed, mon Pere was the most dignified figure ever to mount a bicycle. Father Joseph welcomed us to Binh Ba on behalf of the Catholic population and asked that we stay in the village permanently. He said that we would receive little co-operation from the villagers if they felt that we were going to withdraw in a few days' time and leave Binh Ba open to the Viet Cong to return to control affairs. There had been considerable discontent amongst the people under Viet Cong rule, because of the constant imposition of taxes, conscription and other 'voluntary' labours and the people would welcome the return of the South Vietnamese Government authority, provided that it was on a permanent basis and that the Government could protect them from Viet Cong terrorism.
We made a special effort to ensure that the people knew that they would not be left alone to face the Viet Cong again. The long term plan for the village was to station a company of Vietnamese regional forces troops in the village, so one company of the Fifth battalion was stationed at Binh Ba together with a Vietnamese commando company until the regional troops were available. Captains' Boxall and Bade served in turn as advisors to the Vietnamese troops. The company defending Binh Ba faced a particularly anxious time, for there was a definite possibility that the Viet Cong would seek to recover their loss of face by smashing the Binh Ba company with a regimental attack. Of course support was available from Nui Dat in the event of a major attack, because the Binh Ba post was just within 105 mm artillery range and the squadron of APC's at Nui Dat could have driven reinforcements to Binh Ba in less than two hours. Nonetheless, the garrison of Binh Ba would have to hold off an attack against ten to one superiority in numbers until a counter attack was launched, so the company could never afford to relax its vigilance.
The provision of this company out of our own resources placed a heavy strain on the battalion, stretching our commitment by almost another third, for there was still the same need to patrol and defend the Nui Dat base and to constantly improve the living conditions in order to weather the monsoon which was due to continue until November. However, the importance of Binh Ba was such that it could not be allowed to slip back into Viet Cong Hands and the additional load had to be accepted.
After I had spoken to Father Joseph, I met several of the plantation secretaries. These men were local Vietnamese, who had worked their way up the promotional ladder and had occupied the highest positions open to the Vietnamese in the S.I.P.H. structure. These men had received a secondary education in the plantation school and spoke French fluently. They were in position of considerable authority over the other plantation workers, their wages were much greater and they lived in larger houses on the northern edge of the village. These men were an interesting group. Their high positions within a capitalist organization made them obvious targets for Viet Cong propaganda, abuse and victimisation, yet their natural ability and successful careers gave them a position of leadership in a nationalist sense. They were clearly aware of the two pressures acting on them and although they appeared to be very co-operative outwardly and would discuss Viet Cong activities which had occurred outside Binh Ba, they would give no information about the Viet Cong within the village.
This behaviour was also displayed by the third level of village society, the rubber tappers, factory workers, wood cutters, and peasant farmers. Quite clearly they did not like the Viet Cong, for they were prepared to give information about affairs which did not have a direct bearing about individuals living in the village, but few gave specific information on happenings within the village. Some of them asked us to remain permanently in the village and it was apparent that whatever propaganda the Viet Cong had directed against us had not been very effective. I was surprised at these attitudes, Because I had expected to encounter a marked degree of hostility and a general conviction the Viet Cong were the right side to support, for the latter had enjoyed several of local power when they were able to make the Government look impotent and indifferent to the fate of the villages. The attitudes of the people of Binh Ba had a profound effect on my approach to the Viet Cong because they had shown me that the Viet Cong had not been any more successful when in authority than the Government and hence there were good grounds for hoping that a stronger Government in the material sense would be successful against the Viet Cong in the long term.
While the provincial authorities were conducting their interrogations in Ba Ria over a period of three days, the members of the battalion were concentrating on meeting people around the village to establish a good image. We, as an operational battalion, could do little by ourselves by way of a civil aid programme except the provision of medical attention and the holding of discussions with several of the more prominent villagers to see what were the best avenues for the provision of more permanent aid under the control of the Task Force Civil Affairs team. In fact Binh Ba was not badly off for the essentials of life because S.I.P.H. ran their plantations with a keen social welfare policy. They provided a school and paid for teachers when they could be obtained, an S.I.P.H. doctor flew into Binh Ba every Friday to supervise the village dispensary and to treat serious cases which the medical orderly had not been able to handle, and the plantation authorities saw that the standard of housing was kept fairly high.
However, there was one matter of relative urgency where we could take some action. Route 2 had been closed to all traffic between Binh Ba and Hoa Long since our arrival, because the road ran through the Task Force base for nearly two miles. Until we were properly established in a firm defensive position and could spare the troops to maintain rigid control over all Vietnamese who desired to use the road, it had had to remain closed. Because the people to the north of Nui Dat had been cut off from the Ba Ria market they had been dependant either on their own village markets for commerce or on trade with the more distant Xuan Loc to the north. This state of affairs had to be ended as soon as possible and the occasion of restoration of Government control to Binh Ba was clearly a good opportunity, for we knew that Binh Ba under the protection of one of our companies, there could be no large enemy force which could either come down the road from the north, or occupy part of the road in the vicinity of Nui Dat. So a special road clearance operation was carried out to prepare the road for reopening to the people on Saturday, August 13th, ensuring that the Viet Cong did not retaliate with booby traps, mines or ambushes.
We anticipated that a great number of people from all of the northern villages such as Binh Gia, Ngai Giao, and La Van would swell the numbers from Binh Ba and it seemed sensible to provide as much assistance to the people with our trucks as we could. When the time came for the Vietnamese to board the first truck for Ba Ria, one soldier had been detailed to climb on the tail board first in order to help the small villagers up. The assistance was useless, for the man disappeared under a flood of seventy Vietnamese who poured onto the vehicle in a torrent, sweeping him to the rear and making his extrication a matter of extreme difficulty. During the first day the trucks moved some fifteen hundred people to Ba Ria.
The opening of the road was of particular importance to the people of Binh Gia for their access to Ba Ria had been severely restricted by the Viet Cong for some years. Denial of market facilities for wholesale transactions had forced up the cost of living in Binh Gia and had reduced the availability of goods, particularly foodstuffs, so the reopening of the road was greeted with great jubilation. We paid liaison visits to Binh Gia from Binh Ba by helicopter to explain the control arrangements for the road and to make permanent contact with the village leaders. This link proved particularly valuable for intelligence of Viet Cong movement around Binh Gia, and so our range of surveillance was extended by many miles for the remainder of our time at Nui Dat. Two weeks after the opening of the road we were surprised to see two truck loads of Vietnamese in their best array drive up to Battalion Headquarters at Nui Dat. We were asked to receive a deputation of thanks from Binh Gila, presented by the entire village council. They presented the battalion with gifts of baskets of limes, bunches of bananas, and several live chickens which Colonel Warr had to hold by their trussed feet at the presentation ceremony. The councillors stopped and talked to us for an hour about the new possibilities in store for the people of Binh Gia now that their isolation had been broken and the danger of their falling under Viet Cong control had receded.
As a result of the eviction of the Viet Cong from Binh Ba, we were able to follow up the cordon of Duc My with some attempt at personal contact with the assistance of the people. The need for civil aid was much greater than Binh Ba because the administration of S.I.P.H. did not extend to Duc My, although many of the Montagnards worked on the plantation. The acceptance of us by the people of Duc My was also surprising. As the battalion civil affairs officer I went down to Duc My with an interpreter shortly after we had arrived at Binh Ba in order to tell the villagers that we had come to stay and that we would help with any problems, such as urgent medical assistance for seriously ill people, transport to hospital in Ba Ria or anything else urgent they cared to request. When the interpreter announced our intentions of permanence in the area the Montagnards broke into a wild burst of clapping. After the talk I was invited into several of the houses to drink tea, eat bananas and have children presented to me. It seemed incredible that a few weeks beforehand I had been creeping around these houses in the depths of night.
Before the battalion was due to return from Binh Ba, an intelligence report was received that an important local Viet Cong headquarters was located to the east of the Gallia plantation. Because the battalion was close by, we were given the task of searching the area in which the headquarters was supposed to have been located. Although we spent several days on the search, no headquarters location or any trace of Viet Cong occupation was discovered. While we were engaged on this search, The first Viet Cong on the Nui Dat base was made. In the early hours of the morning of August 17th a barrage of mortar bombs and 75 mm. artillery shells fell on the area around the Task Force Headquarters. Fortunately few casualties were suffered, but the attack had obviously been mounted by a considerable force, it would have been unwise from the point of view of our future safety to have allowed the Viet Cong to have moved so close to the base without causing them some heavy loss. However, the Task Force Commander, Brigadier Jackson, was not in a position to respond with force for only one of the two battalions were in the base. Consequently the Fifth Battalion was ordered to return to Nui Dat as speedily as possible with due respect to the completion of the search for the Viet Cong headquarters. The battalion returned to the base on the following day, just after departure of D Company of the Sixth Battalion for a search of the area from which the mortars had fired onto the Task Force base. D Company of the Fifth Battalion was placed on standby should assistance had been required by the Sixth Battalion and the remainder of the battalion had held itself in readiness for instant action to either repel a heavy attack or go in pursuit of the withdrawing enemy.
After we arrived back at Nui Dat we received notification from Colonel Dat that the cordon of Binh Ba had netted a great number of Viet Cong cadre and guerillas based in the village. Some of these Viet Cong had been caught while visiting their families for a short period. The cordon had taken them completely by surprise, so all precautions taken had been effective. Also apprehended were Viet Cong sympathisers who had been giving material aid in unusually large amounts. In all, nearly seventy Viet Cong had been captured without the loss of a single man to the battalion. Two thousand people had been brought back under Government control and road access between the centre of the northern district of Phuoc Tuy, Duc Thanh, and Ba Ria had been re-established. This paved the way for the extension of Government control over another ten thousand people and extended our intelligence net by seven miles. We concluded that we would be unlikely to make such gains as easily again. Binh Ba had been the most significant of the local fruits to be gathered and we now had to be sure that we did not over extend ourselves and allow the Viet Cong to win their way back.
Captain Robert O'Neill
Intelligence Officer
5 RAR