The Most Dangerous Game

 Watched a very interesting video about Australian military service in the Vietnam war. People may not realize that our American war was an allied effort, to a degree. It was primarily our show, led by our military industrial complex for our fun and profit, but countries like Korea and Thailand also lent personnel to the cause. This added an air of legitimacy to our being there, but those countries also lost men and limbs in the effort. 

But no country struck fear into the hearts and minds of both the communists and the US military command, more than the Australian SAS (Special Air Service). They fought their own war, their way, much to the chagrin of the American command. 

There was a mountainous area in Vietnam that was so dangerous that US Marines were forbidden to deploy there. Marines were getting slaughtered in ambushes in the jungle, but perhaps worse, they were being systematically disappeared from patrols, never to be seen again. Their bodies never found. The Vietnamese, fighting on their home turf, were skilled jungle fighters. They had decades to build a vast network of tunnels in this region, protecting themselves not only from intense US aerial bombing, but from ground troops. They would quietly snatch the last Marine in a patrol, and he would never be seen again. Psychologically, this might be a fate worse than dying in combat. Everyone fears the unknown, especially the survivors.

The Aussies, a very small army compared to ours, opted to use the jungle to their advantage as the Vietnamese were doing. They also opted to be far superior at it. They trained in the Australian outback, a region every bit as dangerous as the jungles of Southeast Asia. They used Aboriginal trackers from home who had 40,000 years to perfect their hunting, fighting and survival skills. They didn't seek to engage this enemy that rarely sought to engage their enemy head on; they hunted the hunters. They were frighteningly good at it. 

The Australian military is as secretive as our can be. Of course, some stuff has come out about their training and activities, in the decades after the war when they left with us in 1973. I'm sure we don't know the half of the half of it. Their elite forces, like ours, were specially selected and trained from volunteers. The Aussies were big on psychological evaluation. Did a man have the mindset to lay in the jungle for 24 hours- or more- without moving a muscle? Could he then get up and fight and then extract himself without leaving any trace that he was even there? Or where he had escaped to? Oh, Jesus- who could? Only a few could be so slow and methodical, and so deadly.

Their approach to combat was also big on psychology. The US loved body counts. The Aussies wanted to capture minds. They scared the shit out of their enemies' doing things like posing their kills in calm positions, with an ace of spades playing card displayed on the body, letting the Vietnamese know exactly who killed their mates. The ace of spades is a "death card" in Vietnamese culture. They were raised believing that ghosts inhabited the jungle, and they believed these ghosts were killing their comrades. The palpable fear that you might be next was very real to them. And that was the point. 

American officers in 'Nam didn't like anything about how the SAS conducted war. It scared the shit out of them too. To us, they were exceedingly slow and deliberate in their movements. The body counts weren't high enough. But like the Vietnamese, the Aussies were playing the long game. Fear of these ghosts caused a lot of attrition and untold numbers of desertions. The same area of mountainous jungle that US Marines had feared, was now feared by the enemy. US officers attached to the SAS begged for transfers. They saw the SAS as "psychos". Who could fight like that? 

From 1966 to 1971, the SAS went out on 1200 patrols. They killed 600 VC and NVA troops and lost one man in combat, one died of his wounds, three in 'accidents', one MIA and one from 'illness'. Twenty-eight were wounded. Officially their kill ration was 17-1 but it seems like 600-1 to me. I have no idea how they actually score these things.

Back home in the land down under, the rate of PTSD was higher for SAS troops than our own. Readjustment to civilian life- something that is always hard for combat veterans anywhere- was harder for these men after fighting their own war, their own way. How do you carry on as a sheep farmer after a year of hunting men? The bell toll of war on men keeps ringing, long after the last shot is fired.