John Bullen, an Australian army captain of the Survey Regiment, arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of Tet. Nearly forty years later, while researching his book Vietnam: The Australian War (2007), Paul Ham discovered Bullen’s diaries in the Australian War Memorial. Unless one is a Samuel Pepys or a ‘Chips’ Channon, diaries are rarely works of genius, or even deeply engaging. Ham recognised that Bullen’s diaries (written in standard issue army notebooks) were witty and precious works, brimming with brilliant observations of army life and a powerful evocation of the war as it was fought by the Australian Task Force during 1968. Ham is to be congratulated for bringing this work to the attention of his publisher and for editing the diaries with such a light touch. The result is John Bullen’s voice, speaking to us from 1968. The effect is so vibrant that the reader can almost smell and hear the war.

Unlike memoirs, most diaries lack the benefit of considered analysis. Bullen wrote down everything he found interesting and which he thought unlikely to be recorded elsewhere. The comedic instances described by Bullen give the work its immense readability. But there is a darker side, an honest record of the discomfiting aspects of the war.

Bullen and three hundred other soldiers travelled to Vietnam on HMAS Sydney. The night before they disembarked at Vung Tau, the Vietcong launched a full-scale attack on South Vietnam. Bullen and his companions were told to take cover and to prepare to defend themselves on the beach. They had one rifle between them. ‘We did our best to look as inconspicuous as a couple of hundred men ... with all their travelling clobber could look,’ Bullen says, in the wry voice that resonates throughout this book. Despite the heavy fighting, Bullen managed to get to Nui Dat and take command of 1 Topographical Survey Troop on the same day.

The Survey Troop, hidden in the Michelin rubber plantation at Nui Dat, was responsible for creating maps (often at short notice) for use by the Australian Task Force. In today’s wars, soldiers have GPS gizmos to tell them where to go. In Vietnam, maps were sometimes produced only hours before an engagement; an error of a mere centimetre could have disastrous consequences. The Survey Troop’s working conditions were challenging. They lived and worked in tents among spiders, rats and snakes (a poisonous krait lived under Bullen’s bed). The power to reproduce the maps came from generators stretched beyond their capacity. Whenever the Survey Troop were required to work in the field, they did so in the knowledge they might be attacked by the Vietcong.

At the end of his first week in Vietnam, Bullen notes that 24,000 Vietcong had been killed by allied forces. The Americans and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) were supported by South Koreans, Thais, Filipinos, Australians and New Zealanders. Soon after his arrival, Bullen journeyed to the American Base at Long Binh. This base was bigger than the entire Australian army; the topographic company had a map depot containing three million maps. Bullen relished the frequent interaction with the Americans but kept a close watch on his much-coveted Belgian handgun.

During some of the worst months of the war, Bullen had to serve on courts martials. His impatience at being distracted from his real work is palpable. The offences were either so trivial that they could have been handled at unit level, or so serious that the defendants should have been sent home. Nevertheless, Bullen was a conscientious defending officer.

In 1968, the major problems facing the task force, apart from the Vietcong, were alcohol and venereal disease. Australians in Vietnam had as much chance of dying in drink-related road accidents as they had of being killed by the Vietcong. Soldiers travelled to and from leave in Vung Tau in convoys. Unlike other convoy commanders who were reluctant to tackle drunken carousers returning to Nui Dat, whenever Bullen was in command he came down hard on any incidence of driving whilst under the influence, laying charges if necessary.

The coastal town of Vung Tau was a popular recreation spot for all sides, and there were thousands of prostitutes catering to soldiers’ needs. According to medical officers, practically all of them were infected with venereal disease. Again and again, Bullen expresses his frustration at men who refused to wear condoms and who became infected with second and third doses. In an effort to reduce the incidence of VD, the Survey Troop produced (unofficially) a Preventive Maintenance (PM) poster: ‘PM is using a rubber – The wife you save may be your own!’

‘Uc Dai Loi he Cheap Charlie’ was a phrase the prostitutes reserved for Australian soldiers, who didn’t have as much disposable income as the Americans. The Australians retaliated by creating a song to the tune of ‘This Old Man’; one version of the lyrics is recorded in full in the diaries. Bullen describes the prostitutes at Vung Tau as ‘harpies’. He doesn’t wonder how or why they came to be there. The prostitutes had other terms of abuse for Australian women who worked in Vietnam. (I remember being followed around Vung Tau by a gang of these jeering ladies and losing all sympathy, or interest, in whatever drove them to a life of prostitution.) To their credit, the prostitutes were gloriously bipartisan; they gave equally to the Vietcong. With minimal access to antibiotics, many of the Vietcong must have had an uncomfortable war.

Another danger faced by the Task Force came from friendly fire incidents. The Americans, acting on a request from the ARVN, bombed an area, not know-ing that there were Australians on the ground; platoons from the Task Force 1st and 2nd battalions fired on each other; the New Zealanders shot at everybody; and the RAAF refused to give air support when asked to do so. Bullen relates these incidents with black humour.

Bullen is an acute and compassionate observer. I doubt many officers would have gone to as much trouble to seek out Vietnamese or to learn about the culture. The local laundry proprietor, Madame Minh Ha, with whom he is able to speak French, is a particular favourite, as is Captain Trung, officer commanding 10 Military Detachment ARVN. Bullen’s contempt for the Vietcong is patent. He despairs when, for the second time in six months, the village chief and deputy of the refugee village, Ap Suoi Nghe, are murdered by the Vietcong. This incident, and the many times the Vietcong shot at unarmed helicopters carrying wounded and marked with the red cross, were not reported by the world media. Bullen writes in a dairy entry in October: ‘It is simply an accepted fact that the enemy shoots to kill on all occasions and never takes prisoners.’ He also notes that the South Koreans didn’t take prisoners and were as likely as the Vietcong to chop off heads and leave them impaled on stakes.

By the time John Bullen left Vietnam, he was considered a hero (by some) within the Task Force for his stance on drink driving and his attempts to fight the incidence of venereal disease. Bullen continued his army career and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Before publication, he added this acknowledgement to ‘... the relentless and indefatigable efforts of Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung ... because without them, this book would never have been written’.