Long tan, p.22
Long Tan, page 22
In the United States Anne was fully accepted to travel with me and our embassy in Washington paid top-dollar allowances. We needed a car to see the sights en route to attachments with the US Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the USAF Joint Warfare School and Parachute Trials unit at Fort Walton Beach, Florida. We bought a nice used dark blue 1964 Mustang coupe for US $500 and drove south to Fort Bragg to be met by a snowstorm during which we found most local cars could not handle the conditions. The Mustang, with my experiences from snow in Tasmania, did it beautifully. I add a brand-new Mustang in 1973 was only $4000 in the United States, but up to $14,000 in Sydney. And a good 1964 Mustang is now a collectable worth up to $75,000. In 2015 I see new Mustangs are soon to arrive from the USA, priced at only $45,000 for the four cylinder (turbo), but more for the eight cylinder.
The US Army Special Forces men were a very friendly gang and I enjoyed jumping with them, even though I was not that happy they packed their own parachutes and had me do the same. I was used to having trained professional parachute packers. On my first free-fall jump the jumpmaster gave me a tomahawk and told me to strap it on my leg. Innocently I asked why, to be told, ‘Man, you could have to cut yourself down from the tall pine trees around the drop zone.’
But I survived the trees and landed the steerable Para-Commander chutes onto the drop zone each jump. I did over 10 free-fall jumps and was presented with a US Master Parachutists’ Badge and a small silver free-fall trophy which now resides in the Maryborough Military Museum on the Fraser Coast.
One of the benefits of being attached to US Forces was that accommodation was always available on base in Bachelor Officer Quarters even with wives and at just $2 a day for the lady. Army staff in Washington, more cooperative than their London counterparts, authorised air travel for me, and agreed that I could trade the fares into cash for petrol costs for the car between cities. That might sound profitable, but air fares were only something like $15 between cities. Petrol was just 25 cents a US gallon.
We drove on to Florida and I joined the USAF Joint Warfare School at Eglington for a course. I also jumped free-fall with the USAF Parachute Trials Team at Fort Walton Beach. Then we drove east towards Daytona. The only problem with the Mustang was that west of Daytona when we stopped for ‘gas’, the water pump was leaking badly, spilling water onto the ground. Being Sunday, the man said we should fill the radiator up and keep driving as it would not leak while the engine was running and the pump was working. We got to Daytona Beach, booked into a motel opposite a service station and on Monday morning got a new water pump fitted while we waited – parts and labour $17. They were the days! We then drove along the beach, complete with traffic signs, then to Disney World on the way back to Washington, from where I had to fly to Edmonton in Canada for an attachment to the Canadian Parachute School.
In Washington I left Anne with friends Peter and Anne Smeaton. Peter was our Alpha Company commander, then operations officer, in Vietnam between 1966 and 1967. I went on to Canada for three weeks in the snow. We returned the accommodation favour for several months in 1982 when Peter’s Adams 45 yacht Gemini nearly sunk en route in the race to Japan and then came to Mooloolaba for repairs. Peter was to prematurely die from prostate cancer a few years later. I went to his funeral at Buderim and my wife and I helped Peter’s widow Anne move into a house they had recently bought near Eumundi.
The Canucks were also very friendly and I jumped several free-falls into snow – lovely soft landings. In the heavy cold air, their small plane could only get up to about 8000 ft. But what a lovely view it was of snow-covered country with the chimney smoke from Edmonton factories spiralling up in the still air in the distance. Social life was very good and I was taken to dinner several times and one night to a dance, where one of the ‘spare’ wives whose husband was away came on strong until I told her my lovely wife was just over the border. I had obviously learned to behave myself in the presence of attractive women. I flew back to Washington via a day in Montreal to re-join Anne and then we flew back across the Atlantic to London after selling the Mustang to an incoming Army officer for what we paid.
After more jumping with the RAF Parachute Trials Team and visits to the Special Air Services Regiment the next trip on the Army schedule was to the Continent to UK and US Army bases in our old Jag, one at Bielefeld on the Russian border and then down to the underground nuclear NATO HQ at Vicenza in Italy just inland from Venice, which we visited often with our US Army hosts whom we were staying with and we shared many meals in canal cafes. Leaving Anne with the US friends, I flew from Venice to Athens for a NATO amphibious exercise. At Athens I boarded the UK Commando Carrier HMS Bulwark and sailed in a NATO fleet to a beach assault landing in Sardinia. One of my pleasantest memories was watching thousands of dolphins having ‘fun in the sun’ as they daily swam and jumped between the ships. I then flew back to Venice.
In Athens a memory that I would rather forget is having drinks in a bar in company with two British Commando officers and being conned into buying drinks for the usual lovely local bar ladies, shades of Vung Tau bars. There were no ulterior motives other than drinks, and while we wanted to pay as we went, the clever barman insisted we pay when we left to rejoin our ship. Well, did we get ripped off! When we argued about the enormous bill he threatened to call the police so we just paid and left rather than get involved in an international legal incident. Very expensive drinks!
Anne and I had driven down through France and Switzerland into Italy and, loaded with souvenirs, we later drove back from Vicenza into Germany to the USAF Base at Heidelberg, a lovely castle city, then into Rheindahlen Military Complex, a British forces base in Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia. At the German border the corrupt guards wanted to confiscate our souvenirs, but suggested we could pay to keep them. I pushed my Official Passport under their noses, said my piece and they reluctantly let us through. After visiting various bases in Germany we drove on through Holland to Calais and jumped the ferry back to England, sold the old Jag for what we paid, and packed our bags for home. Many Jag owners tell me you need two cars, one for spare parts, but apart from body rust we had no problems with our old girl. Some years back one of my former 1 Commando officers Peter Collins AM QC had sent me a 1:18 scale model of a similar 1959 Mark II Jaguar which has found a home on my desk. In 2014 he picked me up from my daughter’s Sydney home in a brand-new Jaguar S – very nice.
What a great overseas trip we had, with thanks to Gough Whitlam! We flew back to Sydney via a rest day in Singapore and moved up to RAAF Williamtown on 15 August 1973 to settle into married quarters on the base after visiting Anne’s family at Kin Kin in Queensland. Back to reality. We looked at a used Jag in the Sydney dealership, but all too dear, so we spent all our savings on a new $4000 Datsun 240 coupe and borrowed money from the Army Canteens Trust Fund to get furniture for our married quarters.
Getting the Parachute School organised the way I wanted it was not easy and the RAAF base commander the (late) Air Commodore Jim Fleming was perhaps understandably reluctant to see it go to the Army after all the years with the RAAF. I eventually got it sorted with Army Headquarters and moved in as Chief Instructor and CO, having had Army Instructor Major Ian Gollings promoted to take over my desk at Joint Warfare. (Ian and his wife Shirley retired to Canberra and we have seen them during various visits.) We organised the school with a Training Wing, a Trials Wing, a Parachute Packing Wing and the Airborne Platoon. We were approved to train some 650 students a year, including free-fall for Special Forces.
Working direct with Army Headquarters for policy, we were able to order RAAF support aircraft when we wanted it, direct with RAAF Operations Command Penrith, much to the disgust of Army brass who could not get the same support. The generals did not like me when I wore a Commando Green Beret, and they had no better respect for me with an Airborne Forces Red Beret. What is this thing in the Army with old soldiers who come down on anyone having earned a Special Forces beret? But I am content that I always got the job done, and done well, and I am pleased to see our Special Forces have earned more respect in recent years. Indeed, most Army Generals of 2015 have seen service in Special Forces. The SASR and Commando’s have provided many of the fighting units in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While at RAAF Williamtown I looked at sailing opportunities. First I bought an A-Class 16-ft fast racing catamaran which frightened Anne and was all too much trouble to launch and recover from the trailer. We checked out other options with our limited resources and located a nice timber Nordic Folkboat at Lake Macquarie for $7000. She was named Svenska and we sailed her up to Port Stephens and started racing her with the local club. An Army mate and still a close friend, Brian Hayden, the Army Ground Liaison Officer (GLO) on the RAAF base, bought a Colleen-Class sloop Amber K and we enjoyed friendly contests in Port Stephens Sailing Club races. Brian still sails and has a Beneteau 50 which he bought in Hong Kong and had reconditioned in Phuket. Brian sailed in Great Britain 2 from England to Sydney in 1976 with an all-Army crew paid for by the Army, a change from the 1972 attitude. Indeed, when at 2 Commando I had suggested a yacht be chartered for the 1964 Sydney–Hobart with a Commando crew but that got nowhere, as did my suggestion of entering Army Land Rovers in the 1965 Redex Trial. Things have changed for the better over the years and the Services are now involved in these sorts of activities, and why not?
At Williamtown on one holiday break we cruised Svenska from her Port Stephens Lemon Tree Passage mooring 100 nautical miles (160 km) to Sydney but found the lack of headroom was a problem. So we sold her for a slight profit and bought the hull and deck of a Swanson 32, a much better proposition, although she had to be fitted out and rigged. We had the yacht trucked up from Newcastle and placed in our married quarters backyard which could be seen from the Officers’ Mess. We were a source of curiosity to others on the RAAF Base – an Army officer married to an ex-Navy officer, living on an RAAF base, with a yacht in their backyard?
RAAF people could not resist offering services to an Army man whom they thought obviously knew little about fitting out boats. I was quite happy with the challenge and with my teenage carpentry skills did a good job on the timberwork fitting out but I was very happy to accept RAAF advice and help with mechanical items, like keying the prop shaft and Radio Officer Kevin Maddox doing the wiring with tinned wire from old ‘mothballed’ aircraft. An old surplus Sabre Jet compass came my way. I was up and jumping most days at dawn and was able to stop work at lunchtime, hand over to my staff and then work another eight hours on the yacht at home.
Anne and I saved enough money to cover the outlays over the year it took before she could be launched. We were able to get bare extrusions for the mast and boom and fit the rigging, but we could not afford the sails. I prevailed on my father for a loan of about $6000, with agreed monthly repayments including interest. After I paid back the capital a few years on, Dad generously dropped the interest payments. A couple of years later my retired father, who had never been that generous with money, called all us three Smith children and spouses to Coffs Harbour for a gathering on a wedding anniversary and presented us each with a cheque for $10,000. That unexpected gift sure helped our budget.
When the yacht sails arrived we had to hire a large truck, trailer and crane as we had done when we bought her, to get her launched in Newcastle Harbour. The RAAF transport officer suggested it would be good training for his crane and truck drivers, so we were happy to agree, and they dropped her into the harbour at zero cost other than a few slabs of stubbies. We christened her with the traditional bottle of champagne, naming her Soolaimon after the Neil Diamond song with the words ‘Lord of my night, God of my day, taking me home, safely’.
We were invited to moor at the Water Police dock. Next day, with several RAAF colleagues as crew, we sailed her north to her Lemon Tree Passage mooring. Two of that crew, Ken Johnson and Dave Bowden, are still sailing today in their own yachts and I saw Ken on his Swanson 36 in the Whitsundays a few years back. Dave sails a 14-m catamaran named This Way Up and recently returned from a cruise to Phuket, Thailand. Dave used to fly me up to Coffs Harbour in a RAAF Winjeel when I needed to visit my parents.
Swanson 32 Soolaimon being lifted into back yard.
We had a C130 Hercules to take the 12-man Red Berets Free-fall team, which I had formed, to the Perth Air Show when all Army support was on hold due to finance. That did not endear me to Sydney staff officers but too bad. When we ran a free-fall course at Dubbo I had a Hercules attached, and it so happened that I organised it to fly me and my attached RAAF LO ‘Bomber’ Brown back to Williamtown for two days when we sailed my sold Folkboat yacht Svenska on delivery to the new owner in Sydney. The official reason was to get more parachutes. ‘Bomber’ and I sailed the 26-ft Folkboat south to Neutral Bay, Sydney, overnight, where Anne met us and drove us back to Williamtown. We flew back to Dubbo the same day. Some said the C130 was my very expensive taxi, but we really did need more parachutes as the forecast weather suited more jumps, so that coincidentally worked in well with the yacht delivery.
When the Australian Army decided to teach its own soldiers to jump out of aeroplanes, I was honoured to be the first Army chief instructor. My new posting was wonderful. For nearly three years I was almost autonomous, responsible with my instructors to decide on how to train people to parachute and being able to order aeroplanes with direct access to the HQ RAAF Operation Command. The ability to be free to call up and get hold of a Hercules, Caribou, Chinook or Iroquois for whenever I wanted one for courses was awesome, but you had to have aeroplanes to jump out of!
We trained over 600 students each year, initially males; then I introduced the training of females, particularly those packing our parachutes. My philosophy was that if you packed a parachute you should jump with one and so they did the eight jumps to qualify for wings and we fitted most females into spare slots in future jump sorties. They were very happy to be part of the team, and students were also happy and more confident to see packers jump the chutes they packed.
We also trained the Army’s first Infantry battalion to be a parachute battalion, 3RAR. That idea was conceived with Army HQ where a couple of fellow officers, Colonels Tony Hammett and Owen O’Brien and I all agreed that the Army should have its own parachute battalion. After training several companies we did a parachute drop at Shoalwater Bay, the first ever up there. I recall I flew in with a few of my staff in an Iroquois chopper and we jumped freefall to set up the DZ. When the Hercules C130s arrived the mass drop from 1000 ft (300 m) was excellent but I remember one tall soldier was badly injured in his landing, unable to hold his long legs together as is required.
I also formed the Parachute Display Team ‘The Red Berets’ and we once jumped at Tocumwal, a town in the southern Riverina region of New South Wales, near the Victorian border where the original Parachute School was set up in World War II. In New Guinea in World War II the Army made some soldiers into parachutists the same day; they were given a parachute and had to jump into a drop zone close to Japanese forces, and from only 200 ft (60 m), just time for the chute to deploy. I think the record low was US Army paratroopers in the Philippines from just 90 ft, (30 m). All those men had more than the accepted dose of guts.
The first intake of women into the Parachute School.
Most Army parachutists were Commando and SAS recruits and did a basic course with our school for normally four weeks before moving on to serve with their units. While my basic course in 1954 used old Dakotas, in 1973 the basic jumps were made out of Caribous and Hercules with the chute pulled out by a static line attached to a steel cable in the plane. It was known as ‘dope-roping’. Like the Dakota, it was out the side doors of the Hercules, but out over the ramp in Caribous. With free-falling we used the Hercules door or preferably the ramp, particularly with team drops where it was best to have many jumpers go out close together so as to link up quickly. Special Forces jumped with packed-up canoes and outboard motors strapped to a leg, as well as stores valises which were all lowered on a rope after the chute deployed. Many, like me, who attended free-fall and instructor courses had done basic training earlier in their Army career, a pre-requisite, before we added Chinook and Iroquois helicopter jumps.
The Red Berets 1975.
Original Red Berets badge.
On every basic course I usually went out the door first as the ‘drifter’ so that I got to the ground first and could watch and coach those to follow with a loud hailer. The aeroplane would come over and let the drift streamer go over the target and it would be told by the DZ officer what offset for wind was needed. We had no GPSs in those days and had to drop the streamer from 1000 ft (300 m) for basic jumps or 3000 ft (900 m) for free-fall which was the height we pulled the ripcord. For free-fall the pilot would then climb to 10,000 or 12,000 ft (3 to 3.5 km) and adjust his run to the streamer site and we would hopefully land on the target, but we sometimes went into trees and scrub round the drop zone. The wind would often change and upset the streamer calculation but modern free-fall chutes had some steering capability so mostly we were able to land on target.
The common catchcry was ‘If in doubt throw the CO out’, referring to me going out first to confirm the drift, but I always maintained I wanted to do things before I asked others to do it, which was to be my literal downfall later.
