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One of the things I can find no reference too was the disarming of over 200 Australian soldiers in Saigon/Cholon/Ton San Nuit area in the week sprior to TET! The senior officers of HQ AFV decided that having a number of armed soldiers around didn’t give the “right look” so in their eternal widom came up with a scheme……!
On the pretext of a weapons inspection they removed, after inspection, every issued firearm from every soldier and officer! This, if I may remind you was in Saigon, 1968 with a country wide war going on?
What was unknown to them at the time was the proliferation of private weapons within the Signal Squadron. The drivers and linemen who spent the majority of their time on the road and in the case of shift changes/duty drivers, at night after curfew, were only issued with SLR’s which as any soldier will tell you were impossible to use from the front seat of a Landrover or Mk3! So after requests for either SMGs or pistols was laughted at we went out and bought our own!
After we were disarmed every time we left the compound with a junior officer we were asked if we had out 37 Pack with us (an unofficial gun case)! We even had officers hitching a lift into town offering to be a “door gunner” on our Linies Pantech, with a borrowed firearm, of course!
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