Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

A BLOKE CALLED “QUIG”
Anthony Quigley
24-11-46 to 05-11-68

Tony Quigley was a great mate of mine.

We met at Puckapunyal, for Army Recruit Training, in April 1967 and spent the next twelve weeks sharing the same hut.

The accommodation consisted of prefab Nissan huts, with four cubicles of four bed spaces, housing sixteen blokes. I was at one end and Quig was at the other and we quickly warmed to each other and became great mates.

Quig was an Adelaide boy from a large Catholic family and went to one of the Catholic colleges. His dad was a pastry cook who had his own catering business. I think his name was Vin, or something like that, as it would be if you were a good catholic pastry cook.

I can’t recall Quig’s exact work, but I remember it was outdoors in the building trade and didn’t require any special qualifications, other than a limited secondary school education. Not many people in those days went on to fulfil a tertiary education, as the system convinced them that they were not good enough, nor capable of doing it. You were either A grade, or incapable of study in a tertiary course. He was an outdoors bloke about six feet tall, tough and muscly, with thick wavy hair, which, if he had been allowed to grow old, would have been grey and wiry today.

Quig had big hands and a slightly flattened nose from some pub fight during his career. He had a great sense of humour, and used to chuckle and throw the usual good-humoured crap at others, as was mandatory in the Army. He would take it as well, with a laugh.

We were both superbly fit, Quig from his outdoor work activities, and I had been cane cutting for a season the previous year at Wardell, in Northern NSW. The Army press-ups and pull-ups were a piece of cake to us at recruit training. The route marches, whilst not hard physically, were difficult in that we wore old WWII hob-nailed boots. These were made of crude leather, with metal studs built into the sole to ensure long wearing and were about as comfortable as wearing Dutch clogs.

We had both done a bit of boxing before and were selected for the Battalion boxing tournament, but were smart enough to refuse, as it was a well-known blood bath.

In the early days, before blokes had bonded, some men would bully others in the shuffle for hierarchy - there was a pecking order, King Rat style, within the group. Quig and I both hated this bullying and on more than one occasion set a few wrongs right. This sort of hierarchy disappeared once we joined a unit and welded together as a team.

Bluey Newsham was also in our hut and went on to serve with me in mortars in 4RAR and has remained a life-long mate.

One time, Quig and I were on guard duty patrolling a given area of the camp at night. It was early June ’67 and Puckapunyal was freezing in winter. We had greatcoats on and SLR rifles with bayonets fixed, and our feet felt like blocks of ice through our ‘concrete’ boots. I don’t know what we were supposed to do with our bayonets, if challenged, but we always approached events as instructed. I still have the greatcoat and slouch hat today.

One night, a drunken sergeant was taking a short cut back to his lines via our area of responsibility. In the dark, we spotted this figure looming towards us and thought we would test our new- found military skills. Thrusting our rifles and bayonets forward in a ‘kill if necessary motion’, we issued the challenge ‘Halt who goes there?’ in an abrasive rasping NCO type voice. To our surprise, an anxious, ‘don’t kill me’ stutter, answered our probe, with, “Me, Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant!” To our delight, he seemed genuinely shocked by the event but we were only doing our job. Keeping our faces straight, we countered, “Pass” and chuckled like hell when he had gone.

Those words, ‘Halt who goes there’ were to later save my life.

The NCOs dished out juvenile disciplinary crap at us, which we took in good humour and this molded the group together. Our hair was cropped short to the skin on the sides and our ears stuck our like wing nuts. This was not only unfashionable in an era of long hair and rock bands, but wasn’t a great ‘win on’ with the girls, either.

During our training we noticed a couple of bush blokes in another platoon in our company. One was David Luelf (Lofty) and another bloke called Mitchell – they were both as wild as hell. Lofty became a great mate of mine and a good mate of Quig’s when he got to know him at Infantry Corp training at Singleton.

At the end of six weeks we received an opportunity to return home to Adelaide for three or four days, to tell our Mums and girlfriends what heroes we had become - and they believed us.

Quig had a girlfriend he was a bit serious about and he was planning to marry her when he got out of the army. I remember we went out to dinner at a pub called “The Feathers” on the Saturday night home. Quig picked me up in a first model Valiant with a molded tyre shape in the roof of the boot. It was white with two lots of twin lights at the front and was the hottest thing on four wheels. I had some temporary treasure with me for the evening and we kept them riveted to their seats with our amazing stories about how potentially brave we were.

We returned to Puckapunyal and were asked to nominate the Corp we wanted to train in after passing out. We both picked infantry.

We had to take psych tests to ensure we were suited and when they realized we had limited brain capacity they were delighted for us to join the infantry club. We had a medical check to see if everything was okay - particularly our feet - and finally a test for colour blindness.

This was an odd, but important test, as it affected your ability to see things in the jungle. Colour-blind blokes were considered a liability, as they could not, with enough accuracy, identify the enemy camouflaged through the leaves. They showed us gobbledegook camouflage-like colour charts and asked us to identify stuff in the chart. Quig failed the test and was heart-broken. He wanted to be with the boys in the grunts (infantry). As luck would have it, they gave him a second shot at it. Unlike the eye chart you could not cheat. By an enormous fluke, he somehow beat the odds and passed. Anyway, Quig got his wish and was earmarked for the grunts. The important thing was - we were going together.

We passed out of Puckapunyal with a battalion parade. My Mum and Bob Stacey’s Mum came over by bus to see their boys graduate from recruit training and at the end of the day, they caught the same bus back again, a nine-hour journey each way. Mums were made of sterner stuff in those days.

Next day we packed our gear and caught buses back to Adelaide for a few days rest, singing and drinking all the way in our greatcoats and slouch hats.

OFF TO SINGLETON June ‘67

Infantry training was to be at Singleton Army Base, near the town of the same name, north of Sydney. I owned a green ‘64 Falcon XM ute at the time, with low mileage, which I had picked up when I was cane cutting. Quig and I decided we’d drive together from Adelaide to Singleton in the Ute. We had to report in at a certain time and mapped our route to meet this deadline. If you arrived late you could be charged with a 7x7 - seven days loss of pay and seven days confined to barracks.

We didn’t wear Civvies, as we wanted to show off our uniforms. There we were, dressed to the nines in our army clobber, thinking we looked like film stars, when in fact we probably looked like social lepers or dickheads, with our wing nut ears. Can you imagine driving that distance in hobnail boots!

First we called into Geelong to see an old girlfriend of mine, Sue Cronin, who was a librarian. Sue was of Irish descent, with lovely dark hair, flashing eyes and a real good sort. At twenty-four, she was four years older than me, but she thought I was the same age.

Having impressed the Cronin’s immensely, we fearlessly moved on to Sydney and called in to see another girl in Pymble. I met her at Wardell Hotel, when I was cane cutting the previous year and she was up with her family from Sydney. Tragically, since that time, she had a car accident and lost the sight in one eye. The brave girl was recovering well and had a black patch over her missing eye, but she was still most attractive.

By this time, Quig was thinking I was some sort of Errol Flynn, what with the girl in Adelaide and good sorts all the way to Sydney.

We then called into my cousin Pat Browne’s place at Caringbah. Pat was about 16 years older than I and her husband, Tony, was older again. Tony had been a young officer in WWII, and viewed us with officer-like looks and said ‘good luck men, great job you are doing men’ and all that sort of officer stuff. Again we left feeling like war heroes even though, so far, we had only fired shots on the firing range.

By this time we were getting tired of all the driving as we headed for Newcastle. On one part of the journey, the sides of the road were separated by a big V-shaped grass drain, like a storm drain. I was so fatigued, that in my imagination, I was watching logs and people running across the road. Fascinated by this, I drove into the centre of the road, down the drain and nearly had a nasty accident. We got out of it okay, headed for Singleton and reported back to camp on time.

We were allocated sixteen man huts again and Quig and I got in the same cubicle this time with Lofty in the next cubicle.

Singleton was warmer than Puckapunyal and there was less juvenile treatment of blokes by NCOs. Bluey Newham, Carl Schofield and Bull Richardson, were also in our hut along with Sixty Mitchell, Nigger Koch, Jarman and Eric Millard.

Training was tough but enjoyable and we lapped it up. We spent a lot of time in the bush, weapons training, and on assault courses where we crawled under barb wire with machine guns firing over our heads, climbing up and crossing creeks on ropes, cargo nets and so on.

We also learnt tactics - patrol formation - in the jungle and elsewhere, and stripping and reassembling weapons blindfolded, amongst others.

One day we were in the bush digging our shell scrape for the night in a night harbour position. Quig dug up a witchetty grub and said, “These are tasty boys, like peanut paste” and popped it in his mouth and ate it. No one followed suit.

It wasn’t long before we realized we were heading for the pointy edge of things and that Vietnam was beckoning us on the horizon.

About ¾ ‘s of the way through our Corp training, we all sat in a room and our sergeant asked us one at a time, whether we would like to go to Vietnam. Except for two blokes in the platoon who were mates, Brendan Mead and Bevan Trimble, everyone said yes. Not withstanding, both were sent to 1st Battalion and went to Vietnam in March ’68. Bevan was killed two months later, in May, in the battle of Coral. It was a bitter irony that he was nervous about going and was killed.

We had said yes to the adventure, to test our courage - and also because we got certain benefits on our return – such as free education, housing and farm or business loans, which were really bugger-all on closer examination.

By August, we had nearly finished our training and were asked where we wanted to be posted. Quig nominated 3RAR as they were based at Woodside, in Adelaide. As 3RAR wasn’t due to depart for Vietnam until December that year, this meant that Quig could spend time with his girlfriend before he left. His aim was to get his tour of duty over quickly and get on with his life.

As I recall, there were eighty positions for Malaysia, which was like winning the lottery, as it was considered a paid safe holiday. We were standing in a huge group getting our postings and Lofty said he had got Malaysia. He asked me where I was going. I said, “4RAR in Brisbane, mate.” He turned to the rest of the blokes and shouted, “Who wants Malaysia? I’m going with Bill Piercy to 4 RAR!” He exchanged his ticket with a very happy, married bloke with glasses, who had scored Vietnam.

It was a ticket for life or death.

We marched out of Singleton. On the parade ground, our Commanding Officer, Colonel Oxley, stood on the dais and gave us his shuddering No.1 salutes. I remember clearly the exact words he screamed out repeatedly; ‘I salute you infantry foot soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Corp Training Battalion.’ Every time a platoon passed him, he nearly knocked himself off the dais with his frenzied salute.

Quig went on to 3 RAR in Woodside and I went on to Enoggera in Brisbane to 4 RAR which was returning from Malaysia and due to go to Vietnam in 1968. We kept in touch by letter as frequently as you’d expect twenty-year-old drongos to do.

3 RAR went to Vietnam in Dec ‘67. I got one or two letters from Quig, but didn’t catch up with him again until after we arrived in Vietnam, June 1968 - when I visited 3 RAR lines in Nui Dat to see him.

At this time, I was a new chum and he was a seasoned veteran of seven months. He told me quietly, about his experiences during the Tet offensive in Feb ‘68, the battle of Baria and the battle of Coral and Balmoral, which sounded horrific.

I didn’t catch up with him again until late in Sep’ 68 when we had a couple of days leave in Vung Tau, after a tough time in the jungle on operation Hawkesbury. On this op - out of a hundred and ten blokes - we had three killed and about nineteen wounded - a high casualty rate in addition to those out of action from malaria and other complaints.

We decided to visit the 1st Field hospital in Vung Tau, to see our wounded mates, some of whom were covered in bandages.

I glanced down the row of beds and there was Quig, sitting up in bed! I walked up to him and grabbed his hand with excitement, not having seen him since June.

It was difficult to catch up in Vietnam, as our respective battalions were out on ops at different times. Quig was recovering rapidly from Malaria and was hyperactive like a Rugby League player who had just been tackled and wanted to get up.

We talked like mad for ages and Quig said he would be back on ops in a few days. Prior to going to hospital, they had not had contact with the enemy for a month, which bothered him. He reckoned Murphy’s Law said - next time you meet the enemy it would be a big one - which was often the case. We were all superstitious like that. At this point Quig only had 1 1/2 months to go and he was mentally in survival mode waiting to get home.

I never saw Quig again.

It was early December ’68, we had returned from Ops and were in base camp at Nui Dat, having a big nosh up as usual, after an operation. I had just met two new NASHO’S from 3 RAR - Maxy Johns and Dave Currie. As they hadn’t done a full tour with 3RAR, they had been transferred to 4 RAR and were to spend the next three - four months with us. We thought they were crazy.

We were eating and having a drink and during the banter that usually went on with these blokes, I mentioned I had a good mate in 3RAR called Tony Quigley. Maxy Johns looked up and said quietly, ‘Didn’t you hear, mate, he was killed nearly a month ago on the 5th November.’ The place went suddenly quiet. We didn’t know.

I could feel my eyes glassing over and I looked at Lofty who was standing there talking to us at the same time - a big tear rolled down his face and onto his greens. We cursed our luck at losing another close mate.

Chris Roost, who was also there, knew Quig from Infantry Corp training. He would have been filled with grief from the news.

MAXY JOHNS TELLS THE STORY

(From what Maxy Johns said), Quig had two days to go before he was due to leave Vietnam and everyone was packing their gear with some excitement. At this point, Quig was promoted to Lance Corporal and a mate of his poked his head in the tent flap and said “Hey Quig can you do my overnight TAOR patrol for me mate, I’ve got to say goodbye to another mate of mine in another battalion?”

Quig agreed. Tactical Area of Responsibility patrols were a piece of cake, with never any activity. They were usually mounted by cooks and pogo’s, as there was little danger.

Small, five man patrols, were fanning out on a daily basis for three or four kilometres from Nui Dat, ensuring that the enemy were not up to anything within this distance from the DAT.

The idea was to select a zigzag route to cover a bit of ground on the way, pull up for the night, call in an artillery DF and camp for the night, posting sentries for protection.

Whilst they were not dangerous, complacency made them dangerous. The enemy was a great observer of our activities and habits. It was important not to repeat the same activity or form a pattern that could be read by the enemy.

In this case, the patrol had repeated the activities of other patrols by camping in the same spot as several other recent patrols had done, on previous occasions.

The enemy were able to read the evidence from excessively bent grass and perceived the weakness, that Aussie patrols were foolishly returning to the same spot and getting slack.

When Quig’s patrol pulled up that night, there was no sign that the enemy was nearby, watching and waiting to attack. There was a feeling of safety amongst the Diggers. At 2.00 am, Quig apparently woke, stood up, stretched himself and decided to have a leak. In the process, the enemy, who could clearly see his outline, spotted what they had been waiting for - a sleepy dozy Digger having a leak.

A Vietcong sniper took aim and shots rang out in the still night air. Quig, who was hit in the chest three times, fell dead on the ground. He was only hours from safety.

It was a deeply sad occasion. Quig had survived a full tour of tough duty in Vietnam, including several major battles. To be killed doing a mate a favour, on the last night of what was usually a very safe patrol - a week before his twenty second birthday - was devastating.

The four surviving men called in artillery, but the Viet Cong escaped, unscathed.

It must have been even sadder the next day. Quig’s parents received a posthumous letter from him in the morning, saying he would be home soon. In the afternoon, the Catholic priest came around to break the news…

This is your story Quig - you’re never gone when your mates remember you.

Bill Piercy 4RAR
25/08/2005