Ghost Platoon: 39 Australian Soldiers, Vietnam, 1969 The Army Denied They Existed What Were They Trying to Hide?

Thirty-nine years ago an Australian Army Platoon saw action in Vietnam. Years later, the army said they didn't exist. What secrets were they trying to hide? For 39 years the Australian Defense Force strenuously denied a unit called the 2nd Defense and Employment Platoon existed during the Vietnam War. The platoon was a makeshift rapid deployment force of 38 men, all regular troops, based at the Australian Task Force Headquarters at Nui Dat in 1969 from late April to June. The ragtag unit was thrown together with diggers left behind in Vietnam when their regiment returned to Australia. It was so slapdash it didn't even have an officer or sergeant in charge. But a rugged ex-Royal Marine, Jim Riddle, stepped forward to take the lead. When the platoon was thrown into one of the biggest firefights of the Vietnam War against hundreds of enemy, Riddle proved his leadership, bringing all his men through unscathed and leaving the battlefield littered with enemy bodies. It was a highly successful operation, but immediately afterwards Riddle's platoon was mysteriously disbanded, the team broken up and scattered throughout the army. There were no official records. It was as though the platoon never existed. It was a Ghost Platoon. Something happened at that ambush that compelled the army to bury the platoon's existence, and the secrets that went with it. Three decades later the men of the platoon set out to prove their unit had existed. They ran into bureaucratic brick walls and official denials from the top brass and official historians. What's more, the army strongly denied darker deeds done after the fighting, deeds which some of the men allege were war crime atrocities. This is the story of the men of the Ghost Platoon. Frank Conroy first visited Nantucket with a gang of college friends in 1955. They came on a whim, and for Conroy it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with this "small, relaxed oasis in the ocean." This book, part travel diary, part memoir, is a hauntingly evocative and personal journey through Nantucket: its sweeping dunes, rugged moors, remote beaches, secret fishing spots, and hidden forests and cranberry bogs. Admirers of Conroy's classic and acclaimed memoir Stop-Time will again delight in what James Atlas, writing in the New York Times, called his "genius for close observation." In Time and Tide, Conroy recounts the island's history from the glory days of the whaling boom to the present, when tourism dominates. He vividly evokes the clash of cultures between the working class and the super-rich, with the fragile ecology of the island always in the balance. But most fascinating of all, he tells his own story--of playing jazz piano in the island's bars; of raising a barn in the early '60s with the help of a bunch of hippie carpenters; of leasing an old, failed bar with two island pals and turning it into the Roadhouse, a club "that was to be ours, the year-rounders, and to hell with the summer people." There's a marvelous story of his first golf game, played on an ancient nine-hole course with two friends, a part-time sommelier and a builder from the South who invented the one-handed pepper mill. This is a book that revels in friendship, music, history, and the gorgeous landscape of a unique American place, and is a wonderful work by one of our greatest contemporary writers. From the Hardcover edition For 39 years the Australian Defence Force strenuously denied a unit called the 2nd Defence and Employment Platoon existed during the Vietnam War. The platoon was a makeshift rapid deployment force of 38 men, all regular troops, based at the Australian Task Force Headquarters at Nui Dat in 1969 from late April to June. But a rugged ex-Royal Marine stepped forward to take the lead. Jim Riddle was ten years older than most of the young diggers and only an acting corporal as he'd been in too many bar fights and insulted too many officers to keep his stripes. But he knew enough of war to keep these young diggers alive