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medical evacuation of the wounded, they were killed, too. In one action alone, four Aussies died. MacGregor and his engineer troop were called in when it became obvious that although the hot area had been surrounded, no Viet Cong had been sighted or killed. There was only one conclusion. They had, in the captain’s words, “gone down.” As the Australian ring of steel closed on the area, they found the tunnels.
    Over the next four days, working with the Americans, the Australians slowly uncovered at least three-quarters of a mile of communication tunnels, bunkers, and underground chambers. MacGregor’s men had been in the country for four months. This was already their fifth operation, and they were neitherbaffled by nor unduly apprehensive about the tunnels. They went down and explored. But there were mistakes.
    They used a specially adapted commercial air blower called the “mighty mite” to blow smoke down the tunnels, and then watched carefully to see where the smoke came out of the ground so that they could begin a rough plot of where the tunnels spread. But the smoke stayed underground, and when the first Australian tunnel ferrets (as they were called) went below, they quickly became unconscious through lack of oxygen. This is how Corporal Bowtell died, in a tunnel war that was about to break out in earnest.
    While exploring underground, Bowtell, a typically tall, lean Australian, unwisely tried to wriggle through a tiny trapdoor connecting one tunnel level with another. It measured sixteen inches by eleven inches, dimensions that would hardly have allowed a lithe Viet Cong guerrilla through, let alone a larger-framed Westerner. Bowtell got stuck and within seconds realized that lingering smoke from the “mighty mite” had expelled most of the oxygen in the tunnel. He shouted for help. Sapper Jim Daly volunteered to rescue his comrade, but by the time he got to the trapdoor, Bowtell was already unconscious. Futile attempts began above ground to sink an airshaft to the sapper. Daly was himself almost asphyxiated by the lingering fumes, but he had to try to cut Bowtell free with his knife by enlarging the tiny trapdoor frame in which the corporal’s limp body was jammed. Four times he tried, but he failed to drag the corporal out, and finally, on the verge of collapse himself, he was ordered to stop. After Bowtell’s death, MacGregor made sure no similar accidental deaths were ever to afflict the Australians. Jim Daly received a “mention in despatches” for “his sense of purpose, coolness in action and disregard for his own safety, which was an inspiration to all who fought with him.”
    Meanwhile, searching and destroying these incredible underground tunnels had to continue. Les Colmer and Barry Harford, the men from Broken Hill, volunteered to work with demolition explosives in the tunnels. Using his communications skills, Denis Ayoub rigged up a proficient underground telephone system. He found ammunition caches stored in small chambers, small booby-trapped Parker 57 pens, and even underground flag-making workshops, complete with sewing machines. Large rice caches were also found, every one ofthem booby-trapped—not just
around
the cache, but even
inside
the rice bags themselves. MacGregor made copious notes of what his men found. Only his bulk prevented him from leading the troop through the never-ending network of tunnels. It was MacGregor who realized the value to the Viet Cong of American combat detritus, after Denis Ayoub found a small tunnel workshop in which hand grenades had been made. The inner casing was made from a small discarded tomato juice tin, and the outer casing from an old beer can. The fragmentation pieces were blue metal road gravel, and the firing mechanism was from old French or American grenades. “Because of what we found in the tunnels,” recalled MacGregor, “we ordered this policy of burn-bash-bury. We had