Andy Perry's story told in Too Bold to Die

JUST what makes a war hero? In an extract from Defence Writer Ian McPhedran's new book, Too Bold to Die, we get a rare insight.

Andy Perry at the control of his Iroquois "Huey" helicopter in Vietnam in 1970.

JUST what makes a war hero? In an extract from Defence Writer Ian McPhedran's new book, Too Bold to Die, we get a rare insight.

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Emus do fly

AUSTRALIAN Navy pilot Andy Perry was flying low and fast against a

hail of enemy fire as he manoeuvred his Iroquois 'Huey' helicopter

into a hot jungle landing zone in South Vietnam on May 18, 1970,

when he felt a bullet slam into his right boot.

Unsure whether he had been seriously wounded, Perry

kept flying into the maelstrom to deposit a dozen or so South

Vietnamese, or Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN),

troops onto the battlefield. The enemy fire was so intense that as

the men piled out of the machine most of them were hit.

In the darkness Perry had landed right in front of an enemy

bunker during a combat assault mission with the US Army.

'They [the enemy] were dug in, they had trenches, they had

bunkers, they had lots of automatic weapons and they had a big

force,' he recalls. 'As I'm flying in there are tracer coming up, and I

could hear [pilot] Dave Farley telling me that he was taking 50 cal

[calibre] fire, so he just kept on climbing. I think he was at 5000

feet in the end to stay away from the 50s. Usually you are already

in the flare before they open fire and sometimes they even wait

until the skids hit and you are most vulnerable, you are stopped,

but I started taking fire at like 1000 feet. I was still miles away.

'It was all coming at me ... the whole flight was yelling

about taking fire from everywhere. Anyway we went in, and we

put it down and I put the machine down, but the biggest problem

I had was that one of the pilots down the back turned his landing

light on.

'They were air cavalry and they weren't used to [combat

assault] so they pulled out. "We're not up for this, fuck off, we're

going home," and they did. That was after the first assault and,

yeah, we took a lot of fire. I landed, there was a bunker in front of

me, troops got off, most of them were hit, the machine was hit all

over the place.'

As he bent down to check the damage to his right foot, a

burst of automatic fire peppered the Plexiglas windscreen and tore

through exactly where his head had just been.

'I thought I'd taken a round through my foot, but it was just

where it struck the pedal and my foot is on the pedal. That sort

of made me bend down and when I came up there were all these

holes right across the windscreen ... so I think that was lucky.

Nothing was damaged and I was still flying, so that's all you care

about.'

A 30-calibre round had hit the rudder pedal, creased his boot

and lodged in his seat. Miraculously the bullets that penetrated the

windscreen missed any vital equipment and Perry and his crew

made two more sorties into the hot landing zone that night.

Acting Sub-Lieutenant Perry of the Royal Australian Navy

was seconded to the 135th Assault Helicopter Company of the

US Army's First Aviation Brigade, known as 'The EMUs', short

for Experimental Military Unit. Their motto was 'Get the bloody

job done'. And that usually meant flying hard and fast under

fire into hot landing zones, dumping troops and getting out as

rapidly as possible. The EMUs were the only fully integrated

multi-national helicopter company fighting in Vietnam.

Andy Perry skippers a more sedate craft these days.

More than 200 Australian navy pilots, plus observers and

maintainers, were posted to the US unit on 12-month cycles

between 1967 and 1971.

'For an adrenaline junkie it is the ultimate, because every

single time you are doing it, you are betting with the highest of

stakes -- your own life -- and when you come off, when you

come out of there and go "Phew!", and you look at your mate,

you've got this fucking shit-eating grin on your face. "Wow,

far out, we are all alive, everybody OK?" "Yeah, we took a few

rounds today, is anything dripping or anything like that?" "No,

no, we are good sir." "OK, we'll go back and do that again." '

For his efforts on the night of 18 May, Perry was

recommended for the US military's Silver Star. This is the

highest American award that can be given to non-Americans and

the third highest award for bravery in combat behind the Medal

of Honour, the American equivalent of the Victoria Cross, and

the Distinguished Service Cross. By contrast, the Australian

Government presented him with a Mentioned in Despatches --

the same award given to the postal clerk at Vung Tau for good

service.

But thanks to politics, quotas and bureaucratic incompetence

it would be a quarter of a century before the Silver Star would be

pinned to Perry's chest.

In mid-1970 a senior US officer arrived at the EMUs' base in

Vietnam for a medal presentation ceremony. 'The whole company

stood down for the day and they were going to have an American

medal ceremony,' Perry recalls. 'A bunch of guys were going to

get air medals, and purple hearts and everything. I don't know

who the general was. It might have been the boss who flew in to

shake everybody's hand.'

But during the Vietnam War, no Australian serviceman was

permitted to accept and wear an individual military decoration

from a foreign country. When the American general was told

that he wouldn't be able to pin the Silver Star on the young

Australian pilot, he called the whole thing off so there was no

medal ceremony at all.

'He said, "If we can't do the big one we are not doing any

of it," ' Perry recalls. 'He came over and we had our cucumber

sandwiches with the rinds cut off and we stood around and he

shook me by the hand and said, "Bloody good job, son," and "Piss

poor on your government's behalf, it's a bloody shame and one

day we might get over it, and get it sorted, but right now I can't

do anything. That's what the politicians have told me; it's come

down from even higher than me." '

Andy Perry was unhappy that his medal could not be

presented but the war went on and the next day it was back to

flying and 'getting the bloody job done'.

Ian McPhedran's new book.

That job included clandestine and highly illegal flights

into neighbouring Cambodia carrying a variety of American

passengers, many of them dressed in civilian clothing.

The government had ordered Australian personnel not to

enter Cambodia or Laos, or even go within a certain distance of

the border, under any circumstances. The Australian Embassy

in Saigon had reinforced the point just before the EMUs began

operations into Cambodia, but Perry says he and other RAN

pilots working with the 135th regularly flew across the frontier on

secret missions for the US 5th Special Forces or Navy SEALs who

were infiltrating the southern end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that

ran from North Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia and then back

into South Vietnam. US forces ran an undeclared secret war in

both countries in a bid to stem the flow of supplies along the trail.

'They even gave me the uniform, bits of which I've still got.

They were marines mostly, but they did all kinds of stuff. Their

callsign was Cheap Tricks. We also worked with the SEALs,

and the SEALs had the odd Australian with them as well,' he

recalls. 'They did phoenix jobs and stuff like that, all single ship

work, people dressed in civilian clothes, and they'd want to go

somewhere -- "We'll tell you when we get there." '

The special forces boys would often request pilots by name

and Perry was popular because he was willing to have a go at

most things, regardless of what the government said.

Fortunately Acting Sub-Lieutenant Perry, who celebrated

his 21st birthday in Vietnam, survived the cross-border missions

physically unscathed. So after an eventful ten-month deployment

he was back at HMAS Albatross, at Nowra on the NSW south

coast, trying his best to transfer out of the training base.

His US Silver Star citation sat in a safe at Defence Headquarters

in Canberra for years during one of the most shameful periods in

Australian political history, when Vietnam veterans were being

vilified and treated as pariahs.

In January 1985 the Defence Minister, Kim Beazley,

responded to one of Perry's many representations through his

local member of parliament, Peter White, with a flat denial that

the award had ever been given. 'Mr Perry's service records contain

no evidence of a Silver Star being awarded to him,' Beazley's

letter said. 'Enquiries have revealed that it is now difficult, and in

many cases impossible to validate claims by individual Australians

for United States awards which were made in the field. In these

circumstances I regret that it is not possible to establish whether

the Silver Star was awarded to Mr Perry.'

By mid-June the following year the American citation had

been discovered in a separate honours and awards file. But the

Minister for Sport, Recreation and Tourism, John Brown, in

another letter to Peter White, stood firm about the government's

policy.

'Given that the traditional British awards were available to

our servicemen, there is no justification for granting permission

to formally accept and wear these foreign awards,' his letter said.

Three Australians serving with the EMUs were granted

Member of the Order of the British Empire, eight received the

Distinguished Service Cross, five the Distinguished Flying

Cross, one the British Empire Medal and 25 were Mentioned in

Despatches. This was more than half the honours awarded to navy

personnel during the entire conflict.

Andy Perry left the navy in late 1971.

The mental scars from the war remained, but after two

attempts he was able to conquer the self-medicating lure of the

demon drink that had been with him right through his Vietnam

tour. 'I was drinking too much before I went, I was certainly

drinking too much when I came back,' he says.

In between there had been the company bar and an endless

supply of cheap alcohol.

'There were mornings I'd get up and I'd have that much

[several fingers] of Chivas Regal in like a Vegemite glass, before I'd

go flying. We didn't talk about it because you are not supposed to,

but fuck, there was that much stuff that went on up there. You talk

about war crimes, you talk about all of this shit that goes down, you

know, you can see it every day, your whole day is a war crime. You

know, the most amazing stuff going on right in front of your eyes

and for a young bloke, I was 20 years old, I turned 21 up there, I

couldn't even vote for Christ's sake and I'm up there killing people.'

Today, as he enjoys a very large cup of tea aboard his

16-metre converted Tasmanian timber fishing boat Bill Bailey in

the beautiful Port Huon Marina, about 60 kilometres south of

Hobart, Perry says he doesn't regard what he did in Vietnam that

night in 1970 as anything special.

'Every time we went in we'd take more rounds, have more

holes punched in your machine. The thing is, you look at your

instruments. As long as it is turning and burning it's good; that's

all you worry about.'

But he makes no secret of his pride in the professionalism of the

EMUs. 'If they wanted the best people for the job, the EMUs got

the job because we could do more with less and we could fly faster,

harder, whatever it took, because we were into it. You are there to

do the mission, to "get the bloody job done" and we were really

imbued with that philosophy.' He says that he was just a 20-year-old

kid from Tassie doing his job and having the time of his life.

In April 1995 the medal injustice was finally corrected

when Andy Perry received his Silver Star in Townsville. The

commander of the US 7th Fleet, Vice-Admiral Archie Clemins,

complete with an honour guard, pinned the medal to his chest

aboard his flagship, the USS Blue Ridge, in Townsville Harbour.

Too Bold To Die By Ian McPhedran

Published: 1 September 2013

RRP: $29.99,

HarperCollins