For the next two weeks we continued the push north into Long Khanh province. All units had skirmishes with small cong units. We found plenty of signs of a hasty withdrawal, blood trails, bandages, bits of bodies under leaves, graves, discarded equipment etc. 8 Platoon found a grave and were ordered to dig it up for intelligence. From the radio reports that we heard the smell was pretty ripe. We made a pact that if we found any graves we just wouldn't report them.

One day during this chase we found ourselves crossing a swamp, that wasn't marked on the map. It was hot and smelly, but at the start only ankle deep. An hour into the swamp it started getting deeper ... bloody deeper. There were times the green oozy muck was up to our chest. We were in a bit of a pickle ... we had come too far to turn back ... but if we kept going it might get even deeper. By this time we had given up worring about Nogs ... we were more interested in surviving this bloody swamp. Finally we spotted some jungle ... bugger orders, we turned a sharp right and headed straight for the jungle. Once we were all out we harboured up for a brew and a smoke and to try and clean some of the muck off. God we stank.

Somehow we had managed to end up with another lieutenant ... he checked the map and figured out where we were (or so he thought) and where we were supposed to be. So we headed off to where we were supposed to be. By this time I had taken over the machine gun with Boodgie as my number 2. Rick Markovich from Alpha Coy 2 RAR was now scouting (remember 2 RAR ... read March the 31st if you don't). We came upon a well used track and followed it. The track did a big U turn after about 50 metres and was heading back to the swamp. Just as we got near the swamp we bumped into a mob of Viet Cong. The poor bastards must have run into the same bloody swamp as us. Well we opened fire on them and they opened fire on us. Because of the U turn the platoon was now in a horseshoe shape ... so as we were firing at the Nogs our rounds were actually heading into the back half of the platoon. Luckily they had hit the dirt as soon as the firing commenced ... but the tops of the grass, just above their heads, was getting cut off by our rounds. The rest of the platoon of course returned fire. The Nogs were caught in a cross fire, but we also had one half of the platoon shooting at the other half ... it was funny later on, but it wasn't very humorous just then. Dogs decided to liven up proceedings by lobbing some high explosive shells into the Nogs ... unfortunately the first one hit the jungle canopy and bounced ... back towards us. "Oops" yelled Dogs "I'll hit the hole with the next one". Wrong the next one bounced too. Dixie yelled up the track "Dogs you bloody maniac, cut it out!".

"She'll be right mate ... I'll get it with the next one"

Bugger me if he didn't hit the hole with next one ... but when it burst on the ground the shrapnel came spraying our way too ... we were in pretty close contact with the Nogs. "Dogs if you fire another one, I'll jam it up your arse" yelled Dixie. We could almost feel Dogs sulking.

Then the Lieutenant yelled out "Bring the machine gun back here." I guess he wanted the extra fire power up with him. I looked up the track to where he was. Oh yeah, I was going to get up and run 20 metres up an open track lugging a machine gun ... don't think so. I yelled back "If you want it ... come down here and get it." The Lieutenant yelled "Put that man on a charge." We ignored him after that.

Dixie was yelling to Boodgie to get behind better cover. Boodge kept yelling back "Piss off, I'm not moving, I'm staying behind this bloody great log." After it was all over we pulled back the leaves of his bloody great log ... behind the leaves was one branch, about the thickness of a pencil ... but he felt safe ... that was all that mattered.

The Nogs withdrew back into the swamp. We looked at that swamp and thought bugger them. We got off the track and started scrub bashing away from the swamp ... we weren't going back into there for no one.