Saturday 24 April 2010
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The Forgotten Men
The Canberra billet which I guarded in 1970. Taken in 2006 with an extra floor added. Excuse the blurry shot. Between November 1964 and Dec...
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It's difficult, gentle reader, to ignore the soap opera in train across the Pacific, and once again, I am drawn like a moth to the fla... -
Fascism as a political movement exhibits four basic criteria. First, fascism it is not an ideology, but an activity. Secondly, it... -
Pic courtesy paho.org I have posted before about the potential for the Covid pandemic to work as a catalyst. Apart from that potential, ...
4 comments:
Good stuff.
The bastards got away though. Did any of your guys want to go after them before the tanks arrived?
Cav
I don't remember anyone actually expressing these sentiments back then, but it was a long time ago.
We had a similar occurrence where one of our platoons got a bit of a licking.
We were working with another Bn, and our company searched for the enemy whilst they were the blocking force.
It was a big encounter of company size enemy dug in and the Bn CO wanted tanks before they would move in.
Our other platoon managed to extract itself at great cost as we were at the opposite end of the system (all 23 of us!) unable to do much except draw the enemy's attention our way and hope for the best.
When the tanks and the other Bn arrived a day and a half later, the bunker system was empty.
We sat on high ground getting shrapnel from artillery whizzing past out ears and hot spent cartridge cases from the bushrangers landing on us - gee it was exciting - but it was one of the times where I thought this was it.
If the enemy knew there were only 23 of us they could have run over us in 10 minutes.
Still, we were worried for our mates because of the delay in the counter attack and we were quite prepared to take these guys on, even tough it seems foolhardy now. Hence my question....
We took casualities (1 KIA and 2 WIA) when 4 platoon attempted to assault through fairly early in the contact. Thinking about it now I think the decision was made - I'm not sure at what level - not to attempt another assault because of this. The bunkers were well constructed and completely invisible. They were pounded all afternoon by the Bushrangers and napalm from the Yanks, but were so well built that they seemed to survive this. The napalm strike was also way off target - closer to us than the bunkers.
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