A Vietnam war story .. Brian Cleaver left and David Bradbury at the premiere of The Crater at Chauvel Cinema, Paddington. Picture: Joe Murphy. Source: Supplied
BRIAN Cleaver has made six trips to Vietnam since 2002 in a bid to exorcise the demons of his war by trying to dig up 42 dead enemy soldiers.
On May 26, 1968, the 20-year-old Cleaver was at the bottom of the army’s pecking order as a national serviceman or ‘nasho’ reinforcement (reo) rifleman when he was pitted in a fight to the death with his 3 Battalion mates at a place called Bau Hang about 40km northeast of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).
Going back into his past ... young Brian Cleaver, an army recruit. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
The Battle of Coral-Balmoral between May 12 and June 6, 1968 was one of the most intense engagements involving Australian troops during the entire Vietnam War. Long Tan might be the iconic battle, but Coral-Balmoral claimed 26 Aussie lives, left 100 wounded and saw more than 300 enemy fighters killed in action.
“The old saying about being so scared that you s*** yourself rang true that day,” Cleaver says.
He describes the battle as “numbing”.
“It was kill or be killed,” he says.
He and his mate Tom Curley were sheltering behind a tank providing covering fire when an enemy rocket hit the tree above their position. Everything around them was shredded, including Cleaver’s rifle, which was rendered useless by shrapnel. He spent the rest of the battle huddled in his fox hole.
Hiding out ... David Berry (who was cast as Brian Cleaver in the film) crouches terrified in a fox hole during the Battle of Balmoral. Picture: Joe Murphy Source: Supplied
The North Vietnamese Army troops had used the cover provided by bomb craters, created by American B-52 bomber raids, to get within 50m of the Australian lines but their assaults were repelled by a wall of lead. The fighting was so intense that machine gun barrels ran red hot and the diggers were forced to piss on them to cool them enough to keep them firing.
When the smoke cleared in the dawn light over Fire Support Base Balmoral, four diggers and 42 enemy lay dead in front of Brian Cleaver’s position and he helped to bury the Vietnamese troops in a mass grave at the bottom of a large bomb crater.
The battle, the loss of his mates and the killing of 42 enemy have haunted the veteran — who suffers from chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — ever since. Despite numerous quests to find the remains all but one of the dead men are still lying in the crater.
The staggering scale of the losses from the war on the Vietnamese side hit home for Cleaver when he asked a local official how many Vietnamese troops were “missing in action” in the local area.
Chilling scenes ... NVA soldiers prepare to attack with RPG. Picture: Joe Murphy Source: Supplied
“He pulled out reams and reams of paper with hundreds and hundreds of names and my immediate thought was, ‘They, too, had mothers’ and some of them were just 16 years old’,” Cleaver said.
There is a strong tradition in Vietnam of finding remains and burying them in a martyrs’ graveyard.
Award winning documentary film maker David Bradbury has spent more than two years making a doco-drama about the battle through the eyes and voice of Brian Cleaver. Bradbury followed up a 2010 News Corp Australia story about Mr Cleaver’s mission to locate and return the remains of the enemy to their families. Cleaver had gate crashed a class that Bradbury was giving in Perth and fours later the film maker was sold on the idea.
The hour-long film, entitled The Crater, had its world premiere at The Chauvel cinema in Paddington this week and it will appear on ABC TV in April.
Mr Bradbury said he wanted the film, made with the assistance of Screen Australia and the ABC, would act as a counter point to the wall-to-wall coverage of the centenary of Gallipoli that will dominate TV screens during April.
Hopefully the national broadcaster will televise it at a time when young viewers can tune in and they can get a return on the $1 million taxpayer investment.
Target practice ... Vietnam vet and former machine guner Paul Donnelly instructs actors Jesse Taylor (playing young Paul) and Callan Black on firing a machine gun. Picture: Joe Murphy Source: Supplied
“It is definitely an anti-war film and I hope it brings home to audiences the horrors of war and the long-term cost of war,” Bradbury says.
“Hopefully Vietnam Veterans who watch it will understand that their efforts were greatly appreciated despite their shocking treatment at the time. We must prevent that from ever happening again and we must ensure a broad debate before politicians send our young people off to someone else’s war.”
The battle sequences are realistically re-enacted (in a paddock in winter near Sydney) and they are dispersed between scenes of Cleaver and his team digging and searching for the dead and actual combat footage from the war as well as interview with veterans from both sides. The horror, the suffering, the brutality and the humanity and humour of war are captured brilliantly and the words of the men who were actually there make the drama of the images even more compelling.
“I hope the film does justice to the courage and fighting fervour of not just the Australians but the NVA as well. Ultimately though, I intend it to carry a strong message about the futility of not just the Vietnam War, but wars in general,” Bradbury says.
“The psychological battle scars will reverberate beyond the individual specific story to illustrate the stories of many military personnel and how they fit into Australian military and social history.”
On approach ... NVA soldiers crouch in crater with RPG and AK47. Picture: Joe Murphy. Source: Supplied
For Brian Cleaver and his fellow veterans including former Company Commander retired Major General Peter Phillips MC, ex-Lieutenant and 11 Platoon Commander Marc John, machine gunner Paul Donnelly, Ian Robert-Shaw, John Bryant, Barry Bryan and Mal Deveson, who were all in the audience on opening night, the film represents another step on the long journey of healing, especially for the conscripts One day they were carefree young 20-year-olds chasing waves and girls and the next they were fighting for their lives in the most divisive war in the nation’s history.
“Any veteran who has visited Vietnam comes away wishing they had done it 20 years ago,” Mr Cleaver said.
“The smell of war that was stuck up my nose for 45 years is gone.
On set ... David Bradbury directing on location. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
“I hope this film will have the same effect in terms of getting the monkey off their backs.”
Mr Cleaver said he also hoped that the film would be seen by young students who would be educated about the fear and the human cost of the war.
He paid tribute to David Bradbury and his crew for the fantastic job they had done in bringing the story of Balmoral and the missing 42 to life.
“The North Vietnamese hill tribe music blends in beautifully and provides a haunting backdrop to the pictures,” he said.
Mr Cleaver will travel back to Vietnam again in a few weeks to screen the film for Australian Embassy officials and some of the Vietnamese who helped in its production.
“I hope we can show it more widely up there because it definitely tells both sides of the story.”
•The Crater screens on ABC TV during April.
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