Mrs Oberkamp said that in his letter John had been concerned about his possessions and that if anything happened to him she was to contact me. Would I be so good as to gather up his bits and pieces and post them on to her? She would be eternally grateful and would reimburse me for all expenses incurred.
And just at that moment the first copy of my book arrived. Vietnam, Mon Amour (Frankel & Silverman, 1968). I knew the title wasn’t original but it served my non-combat photos admirably. Moreover, its appearance caused something of a stir in the press corps. A good number of the photographers working in Vietnam had books planned, I knew — we often discussed them — but I was one of the first to be published, beaten only by Jerry Strickland of UPI and Yolande Joubert of Paris Match. Even Renata Alabama looked at me with new respectful eyes, asking if I could put a word in for her with Frankel & Silverman. I should have savoured the acclaim — and the overt envy — but I was suddenly aware that whatever ‘amour’ there had been between me and Vietnam was swiftly diminishing.
I kept thinking — and, what was worse, dreaming — about that moment when I’d stood alone in the middle of Highway 22, south of Vinh Hoa, in the eerie stillness, apart from the distant drone of the Spooky gunship doing its pylon turn. It stayed in my head like a film loop, a scene from an unfinished movie. I had my three-inch bullet graze, nicely scabbed, now, and I had my shiny new book with its glossy photos. I was aware of my good luck, the good fortune, that had led me to this position. But I knew I wanted to go home — to Scotland, to Barrandale.
However, there was a last task to be done, a final deliverance of duty to John Oberkamp. I managed to hitch a ride on a Royal Australian Air Force Hercules that was making the short hop from Saigon to Nui Dat where I showed Mrs Oberkamp’s letter to the base’s senior PEO.
‘Oh, yeah, Oberkamp,’ he said. ‘Any news?’
There was no news, I said.
He drove me out to John’s sandbagged hooch near the perimeter by the main runway and showed me in. He said he’d be back in thirty minutes to pick me up. Inside there was a metal bed with a Dunlopillo mattress, some half-drunk bottles of rum and bourbon, about a thousand cigarettes, an electric fan and a gunny sack filled with dirty clothes. Under the bed was a cardboard box that contained a dozen paperbacks, two cameras and John’s trademark bush hat with its cryptic slogan — ‘BORN TO BE BORN’ — painted on the front in coral-pink nail varnish. Pinned to the wall above the bed, I was pleased to see, was one of my ‘Never Too Young To. .’ T-shirts. That was it — he travelled light, did John; this was small cargo for a man who’d been in Vietnam since 1965. I dumped the dirty clothes on the bed and filled the gunny sack with the books and cameras and anything else personal that I could find (two Zippo lighters, an ashtray from the Hilton Hotel in Tokyo, a few rolls of undeveloped film). I kept the bush hat for myself and pulled it on my head, tucking my hair in under it.
I decided not to wait for the PEO and so set off, strolling back towards the control tower and the administrative buildings, John’s gunny bag over my shoulder. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was burning through the milky sky, a blurry, brassy disk. I smelt rain coming.
I heard the chugging clatter of helicopter engines and paused to see a couple of RAAF Hueys coming in low over the perimeter fence to dust down next to a waiting ambulance with medics standing ready by a gurney with a drip rigged, waiting for some casualties. I wandered over.
The Hueys landed, the rotors stopped and the men inside began wearily to disembark. The medics ran forward and carried two body bags into the ambulance before returning with the gurney for another soldier, seemingly unconscious, both legs bandaged from ankle to thigh. A jeep pulled up by the ambulance and a senior officer stepped out. He talked to the medics as they carefully loaded their grim freight of suffering humanity on board the ambulance. I saw him touch the shoulder of the wounded man.
I was close to the disembarked soldiers now — some standing, some sitting on the ground, all of them smoking — and I recognised that air of filthy, blank exhaustion about them that comes upon soldiers after hours of combat, of being under fire. I’d seen it before — most notably at Wesel in 1945 — and once seen, never forgotten. Their clothes were damp and dirt-ingrained, the green cotton drill dark and blackened from the grime and sweat. They carried an assortment of weapons — FN rifles, M16s — I even saw one man with an AK-47 — enough to tell me that these men were not regular Australian Army; this must be the Australian SAS — the SAS Regiment, as it was known. John had told me that units were based here at Nui Dat from time to time. I edged closer — mechanics were checking the Hueys, and a petrol tender had rolled up so there was a fair bit of distracting activity going on — and I could see a couple of two-ton trucks heading out to pick the unit up.
I wondered if I could sneak a photo, then I thought, no, better to ask. I went towards one man, an officer, but stopped as soon as I heard the voices around me as they spoke to each other. These men weren’t Australian — they were British. I heard cockney accents, Lowland Scots; one man was a Geordie. I crouched down and pretended to fiddle with my knapsack straps. Yet they were all wearing SASR unit patches, yellow and beige, and a couple of them even sported the regiment’s caramel berets. As the men turned and made ready to climb into the approaching lorries I could see the shoulder flashes saying ‘Australia’. These manifestly non-Australians were clearly making every attempt to be Australians.
The senior officer who’d been in the jeep, who was wearing neatly pressed olive-green fatigues, approached and the men climbed to their feet and straightened up in a notional stand-to-attention as he had a few words with them. I backed off, carefully. What was going on here? The two-ton trucks stopped, the men were dismissed and they hauled themselves on board. As the senior officer headed back to his jeep he passed close to me.
‘Hello, Frank,’ I said. ‘Small world.’
Frank Dunn froze, then turned. I could practically hear his astonished brain working. He managed a thin smile.
‘Amory,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell.’
He came over to me and kissed me on the cheek, to his credit.
‘May I ask what you’re doing here?’ he said, stepping back and looking me up and down. ‘Love the headgear.’ I now rather wished I wasn’t wearing John’s bush hat.
I explained. ‘Picking up a colleague’s stuff.’ I held up the gunny bag. ‘He’s MIA.’ I paused. ‘More to the point: when did you join the Australian Army?’
‘I’ve left the army,’ he said, bluntly. ‘I’ve retired.’
I looked at him — he had no badges of rank, no identifying name above his breast pocket; he was dressed as a soldier, but that was all. Yet those men had stood to attention as he came up to them.
‘Some retirement,’ I said. ‘Why are all those British soldiers pretending to be Australians?’
‘They’re on secondment to the Australian Army — as observers.’
‘Come on, Frank. I’ve been out here for well over a year. I was married to a soldier. I’m not a fool — they’re straight out of combat.’
Frank Dunn linked arms with me and walked me towards his jeep.
‘I’m only going to say this once, Amory. Let me be clear. You came to Nui Dat, you picked up your friend’s bits and pieces, and then you went back to Saigon. You didn’t see them. You didn’t see me. You certainly didn’t talk to me. Understood?’
‘Understood.’