© Graham Sherrington
6 Platoon, B Company,
1st Tour. |
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I was on my way to Vietnam with 5RAR after a period at
Kapooka in the rifle team and when I saw
it ... I had to have it. It was a
beautiful piece, a
Parker Hale .308, 7.62mm NATO sporting
rifle with a high quality Pecar
telescopic sight professionally mounted
on it.
The rifle had started life as a 7.92mm
K98 military weapon made for the
Wermacht, it had been swept up in World
War 11, then bought at scrap metal
prices by Parker Hale and converted to a
fine sporting rifle. Nowadays Parker
Hale use lesser quality Spanish actions
for their rifles. I'd bought the rifle
from Jack Hochstadt's Sport store in
George St Sydney. for about $150.00.
Military Calibres were not permitted in
NSW in those days, but Jack got around
this by calling it a ".308 Winchester
calibre" sporter, bless his departed
soul.
Now the Australian army have a
ambivalent attitude towards 'personal
weapons, in theory an officer can carry
his personal weapon into battle, but I
was a private soldier. How was I going
to get this thing to Vietnam? There was
only one way and that was to confess and
show them I knew how to use it
effectively. Luckily I had an
enlightened OC in the shape of
Major Bruce McQualter, (tragically
died of wounds 5th March 1967) who
suggested I take it out to the
train-fire range and they'd put me
through the wringer. I'd had another
enlightened OC,
Major Colin Kahn who'd put me
through a small in-company Sniper Course
at Tin Can Bay.
Major Kahn was to lead the Battalion
on its second tour.
After the day's normal range practice
was complete I was given five rounds to
shoot at a 25 metre target stuck onto a
train-fire target at 100 metres. A five
shot half inch group at 100 metres
clinched the deal and the good
Major McQualter
decided it could be useful to have
along.
Well I lugged that thing all the way
over to Vietnam, through Vung Tau, all
of the way through
Operation Hardihood and finally it
reposed in the Q Store at B Company at
Nui Dat and it never saw a serious
shot fired in anger. Then I was sent to
Intelligence Section.
My Corporal, Bob Harbourd reminded me a
short while ago that I'd wanted to drop
off from the tail of the section with it
out in the bush and remove the VC 'trail
followers' who tagged us sometimes. It
was a good thing that I wasn't given
permission to do so, or I probably
wouldn't be writing this story now.
Still the rifle had not been used as a
sniping weapon, and it was only taken
out once on a helicopter reconnaissance
ride to Xuan Moc with
Captain Robert O'Neill (the
battalion's intelligence officer) when I
was escorting him, riding shotgun. Well,
at Xuan Moc the rifle was a hit even if
we weren't! The ARVN (Army of the
Republic of Vietnam) soldiers thought
the whole concept of zapping someone at
600- 800 metres through the head was a
wonderful idea, but sadly the chance
never came. There was much admiring and
fondling of the piece and I had to keep
a serious eye on it before it 'grew
legs' and disappeared.
The Vietnamese at that stage were being
supplied by air, and it was not until
much later that the Battalion opened up
the road out to them. They had a serious
problem with mortaring and VC snipers,
and their commander proudly showed us a
fresh mortar hit on his front porch from
the night before. The rifle, with me
attached to it could have been very
useful to them.
Back into the Q Store went the
Parker Hale and I went back to B
Company as a forward scout, rifleman and
machine gunner. An accidental death in
another platoon involving a sawn off
double barrelled shotgun caused the
rounding up of all unauthorised weapons,
(they even found a 'sanitised'
GPMG
M60 ... with no serial number on the
receiver amongst other 'toys').
As I'd had permission to bring the rifle
over, I was also granted permission to
return it to Australia, so it was
carefully packaged and sent back to my
brother in Townsville, Queensland. He
was later rather curtly summoned by the
Customs Department into their office and
told: " Your brother has sent you a
rifle from Vietnam, and you're to open
the package in front of us." (With a
couple of policemen present).
Now the customs people were expecting an
M16, an
SKS
or a
Kalashnikov, and they were
completely nonplussed when a very nicely
greased and rather expensive sporting
rifle emerged smelling of jungle rot.
After looking up all of their
regulations they could find no barrier
to the
Parker Hale coming home and it
stayed in my possession for some years
until I traded it in.
In later tours in Vietnam, in a more
enlightened military climate, some
soldiers received sniper training from
the American Army, and snipers are now
once more part of Infantry units. We
have to re-learn the same lessons over
and over in every war.
I was probably the only soldier in the
Australian Army to take my own scoped
rifle to Vietnam, and I'd dearly love to
find it again and send it to the
Infantry Centre Museum, so if you bought
Parker Hale serial number D808 from
Mick Smith's Gun Store in the 1970's
I'll buy it back at a very good price.
Mind you, after the 'Gun Buyback' by now
it's probably scrap steel.
TALES FROM THE TIGER
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