Life and Times of a Young Soldier

am going to digress a little here as I feel that credit must be given to the one thing, or should I say unit, that made Fire Force so successful ... That was the development of the Selous Scouts ... In my opinion, without them the war would have been lost completely by the end of 75...

As Fire Force developed in 74 one of our biggest problems was reliable intelligence ... Often we would pull up over head a designated village or area, hit the ground running and find the Gooks had been gone hours before – We tried tracking and leapfrogging with little success as the Gooks just bombshelled as soon as they realized they had us on their tails ... Selous Scouts ended all that for us buy very sneaky means...

The area commander, through intel reports and local advice, designated various areas as Hot and Froze them ... All friendly forces, police, ground coverage and any other armed idiots withdrew out the area completely ... Once the Scouts were happy that a frozen area was clear the started very clandestine insertion of Pseudo Gooks and OP's ... These Pseudo Gooks were the scariest doods I have ever seen in my life ... They carefully went through the area and got a good feel for it then set up and called in Fire Force on to specific targets ... and then the Shit hit the fan for the Gooks – it was Fire Force kull a Gook a minute time...

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Our new OC drilled all the stick leaders on what procedures he wanted the guys to follow and were well briefed and drilled before we went out to Darwin for our first Bush trip with the new Boss Maj Pat ... We arrived at Darwin and set up that evening with the Boss and 2ic disappearing to HQ ... At about 20:oo we noticed activity around our OP's room and then all the stick leaders were called – I wasn't part of this as I was still a lowly MAG gunner recovering from sore Nuts... (don't laugh it wasn't funny) - We were told to go and Gonk as we were to be up at first light ... I had scored a brilliant bed space – the corner bunker ... Cool, comfortable and out of everyone's way ... There were some advantages of being an MAG gunner, not many but a few...