VIETNAM veteran Peter Smith knew he was an easy target when dropped into remote villages by chopper. The warrant officer was on solo missions while on tour as a 32-year-old to encourage Vietnamese villages to remain sympathetic to the anti-communist forces such as America and Australia.
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Warrant Officer Smith was among 30 Australians to serve as part of the Australian Army Training Team of Vietnam while touring in 1966-67 and was based in the Phuoc Tuy province on the southern coast.
But in the villages in which Viet Cong were hiding in plain sight, the Australian soldier was on his own with no backup if shots were fired.
“I was winning hearts and minds trying to get people on side,” Warrant Officer Smith reflected, while watching the sun falling on Lake Moondarra’s shimmering water almost 50 years after leaving Vietnam.
“When I was on location I would get dropped into a village by helicopter and meet with the village chief and the police chiefs and I would go and spend time with them and find out what they needed.”
The needs could have been a visiting dentist, or repairs to water supply and infrastructure.
“The only thing was I was on my own and was the only Australian in the community, I did not have any soldiers to fall back on and I was aware of it as I spoke to people in the community.
“I was aware if they wanted to I could have disappeared from the battlefield, I could have been killed.
“But I was not.”
But Warrant Officer Smith also had a secret agenda. Who knew how the village chiefs would have reacted if they discovered it?
He was to take photographs and spy on the villages he travelled to, returning his information to the Australian Taskforce. Warrant Officer Smith was aware of the close relationships between the Viet Cong and the villagers he met.
“In one village the police chief’s 17-year-old younger brother was Viet Cong, and the family ties are very strong and the relations in the village would have supported him.
“By day they walked and worked around us in the paddy fields and at night they would fight with the Viet Cong.”
Instead of being hostile as might have been expected, the particular police chief respected Warrant Officer Smith and what he was visibly trying to accomplish.
Six months after beginning the role Warrant Officer Smith voluntarily moved near the Cambodian border, leading a company of hill people to observe the North Vietnamese movements moving through Laos and Cambodia.
“I was not forced into the team,” Warrant Officer Smith said.
“We all knew we had a duty to do, we just did what we were required to do.”
Warrant Officer Smith will lead the oration and prayers at the Mount Isa Vietnam Veterans Service on Tuesday.
The service begins 10am at the cenotaph at the Civic Centre lawn.
