The 16th of September was a strange day for us ... we were lazing around Nui Dat waiting to see what bright idea Headquarters had for us next. We were starting to get really short and a few blokes were doing short timers calendars that counted down to the number of days before we went back to Oz. On a short timers calendar you don't count today and you count the last day as a Wakey (the morning that you wake up to go home). Naturally this reduces the actual number of days that you have left by two. We had 19 and a Wakey to go ... now were feeling really short when it was put in those terms. We watched the airstrip as the Advance Party flew out heading back to Woodside South Australia to get the base ready for the Battalion's return. Disillusionment was starting to set in ... we didn't know why we were being pulled out ... we were winning (as far as we knew) ... there was huge party back at the Dat that night and blokes really wrote themselves off. The party went into all hours of the morning ... Moose Harris (the CSM) came into the big tent about 2:00 am and said "Why don't you blokes keep the noise down".

"Why don't you fuck off" was the answer ... I didn't see it but Neil Moody says it was quite a sight watching this big bear of a man, standing there in his shorty pjyamas bottoms, absolutely speechless. The blokes thought that they were going to be on a charge for sure ... but Moose just went back to bed ... and nothing more was heard about it ... the party continued.

The next day we moved out of Nui Dat (severly hung over) to search east of Xuyen Moc ... and riding in an enclosed, hot and smelly APC, with diesel fumes ... does nothing for a severe hangover. No sooner had we got to our area of operations than we heard that elements of 3/33rd were infiltrating the area north of Duc Thanh. 4RAR/NZ Battalion would be the sweeping force and 3RAR would be the blocking force. We moved into ambush positions. We sat and waited.

On 20 September 1971 (15 & a Wakey) we heard that 4 RAR were in heavy contact with 3/33rd NVA Regiment. 4 RAR were taking a hiding but still pushing forward ... we sat in our ambush positions silently saying a prayer for our brothers-in-arms in 4 RAR.

21 September (14 & a Wakey) Delta Company 3 RAR working under operational command of 4 RAR, attacked 3/33rd in their bunkers ... go boys go!

22 September (13 & a Wakey) A Squadron 3 Cavalary Regiment locates a camp north of Thua Tich, consisting of 24 huts, lecture rooms and 10 bunkers. We broke out of our ambush positions and headed up to Thua Tich to destroy the camp.

We kept ambushing at night as we headed to Thua Tich. One night the artillery observer (an officer) was worried that we were making too much noise in the ambush positions.

"Seargant, you're troops are making too much noise. The NVA will hear us and know where we are".

"Yeh" said Dogs "What do you want to be the last bloke killed in Vietnam?"

"Shut them up! That's an order!"

Dogs in a stage whisper "All right (cough, cough) shut up (burp) you blokes". Then through the camp all you could hear was blokes coughing, farting, sneezing, burping.

The next morning we found a fresh track that had been heading for our camp. About 20 metres from our perimeter it had detoured 90 degrees to go around our camp. By the width and depth of the track it looked like the whole of 3/33rd had passed our positions. We were getting too short for this bullshit. We showed Dogs the track, but decided not to let the officer know. He would only get excited and report it back to HQ and they would want us to follow it up. We had taken a short cut to Thua Tic (straight up the main road) and given false locstats (location positions) ... we were stuck out on our own ... like a pimple on a bum.

As we headed north to Thua Tich we heard that Delta Company had finished operations with 4 RAR and were heading back to Nui Dat. 7 Platoon arrived at Thua Tich days before the rest of the Company (the rest of the company scrub bashed north, while we were on the main road). We sat around and waited for the rest of Charlie Company to arrive.

29 September 1971 Charlie Company took out the fortified village and destroyed the lot ... (6 & a Wakey).

30 September 1971 we sat around Thua Tich guarding the engineers as they set explosive charges to finish off anything that we hadn't destroyed. By this time the ginger beers gave us free C4 explosive to use for our quick brews. On an earlier bunkers system we had stolen all their explosives and they had to reset the charges. (5 & a Wakey).