Just a point about your article on the land mine incidents: This tragic event happened on July 21, 1969, not on Sept. 21 as your article indicated.
I was in the same infantry company which was Alpha Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. 3rd Platoon was the platoon that was involved, I was in 2nd Platoon and we were several hundred meters away, stopped on the sides of a sand dune to listen to the lunar landing and have something to eat. This gave a good view of the surrounding area which was sandy scrubland since we were very close to the coast.
I saw the dirty gray brown smoke come up out of 3rd Platoon’s position and a second or so later heard the detonation at 9:40 AM.
One Australian was killed in the first mine incident and 18 were wounded.
Since so many had been injured, the Company Commander had enough to deal with, so both 1st and 2nd Platoons stayed in their locations — we were operating independently at this stage.
We were still in the same location when the second mine was detonated by Captain Anderson, the Regimental Medical Officer at 1:15 PM in the same location. He reportedly stepped out of the "safe" area that had been cleared by attached engineers. He was not killed but was blinded, one other survivor of the first blast was this time sadly killed and another five were wounded. One of the wounded was Lt Colonel David Butler, the battalion commanding officer who had arrived to check on the situation. He was out of action for some weeks before returning to duty. The wounds suffered by a number of others still continue to cause difficulties for them today.
The platoons were in constant contact by radio at the time both mines detonated, so the passage of information around the company was very quick and accurate.
The number of casualties just about wiped out the platoon considering the normal strength was one officer and 33 soldiers. Soldiers were then plucked from various jobs throughout the battalion to bring the platoon back to operational strength again.
The mines were stolen from the utterly useless minefield conceived by Brigadier Stuart Graham which ran 11 Km and contained in excess of 24,000 M16 mines.
This minefield was then a ready supply depot for the VC (Viet Cong) who lifted thousands of them and used them with great success against the Australians, the South Vietnamese military, and civilians in the area. The last recorded death from these mines was in 1997, when one of the local villagers set one off.
I currently live in Vietnam and have passed this area many times over the past 13 years.
It was a sad day and one not to be forgotten by any of us who were there.
Garry Adams
Tan Binh District,
Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon),
Vietnam
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