The story of the locating battery surveyors in Vietnam is best addressed by discussing the experiences and work of the first section, which was nominally formed in early 1966 and served together in Vietnam from about June I966 to April 1967. The story will then continue by discussing those activities and experiences of subsequent sections where they illustrate later problems and the development of survey techniques.
An account of the first survey section's training and preparation for Vietnam is a sad one: no doubt most of those involved in, or responsible for, those events would be happy to forget all about them. The story is, though, the stuff of which the lessons of history are made and for this reason it demands telling, analyzing and marking well. The survey element of the divisional locating battery is a survey troop, commanded by a captain and consisting of two survey sections. The sections are commanded by a lieutenant, and have a sergeant, three bombardiers and about twelve gunners or lance bombardiers, together with two or three administration staff. The establishment of 131 Div Loc Sty was restricted before 1965 and only one survey section existed then. At the end of 1965 that section had no officer commanding it, though it did have a sergeant, one bombardier and two lance-bombardiers, all regular army and two or three regular army gunners. At the start of 1966 its ranks were fleshed out with gunners from the first two national service intakes, all chosen for this posting because of their education and aptitude for technical work.
The officer appointed as section commander in late 1965 was a former member of the Royal Australian Survey Corps, trained to corporal level as a topographical surveyor, and experienced on long mapping expeditions to Cape York and New Guinea. He had graduated from the Officer Cadet School, Portsea in December 1964 and during 1965 had been on gunnery courses at the School of Artillery and regimental duties with 4th Field Regiment RAA at Wacol in Queensland. He attended an advanced artillery surveyors course with some of his soldiers at the School of Artillery in March and April 1966, but had no formal training and experience in the duties and responsibilities of an artillery survey section commander.
The national servicemen were in two groups, from the first and second national service intakes. Members of the first intake attended a basic artillery surveyors course at the school of Artillery, followed immediately by an advanced artillery surveyors course, (which should normally follow a period of experience and on-the-job consolidation after the basic course). Members of the second national service intake were not able to attend this formal training. Consequently the men from the first intake gained trade pay for the remainder of their time in the army, while those from the second intake did not. They were good, loyal men and none of them made a song and dance about it, but it obviously rankled.
The soldiers of the first national service intake did have some formal training in their trade, (even though they lacked practical experience as individuals, and experience as a group in working as a team in some sort of operational environment, such a on an exercise servicing other artillery units). The bulk of the individual training for the men of the second national service intake was conducted at Tianjara Range during February and March 1966. At the time 1 Field Regiment was conducting its workup exercise before departing for Vietnam and the counter mortar radars were also exercising in the area. The survey section commander was nominally responsible for the training course of the new gunners, but he had to act as safety officer for the mortar detachment that was firing for the radars. The training of these gunner surveyors was left, then, almost entirely in the hands of a junior bombardier, with the section commander being restricted to just checking on what was being done when his travels between mortar base plate portions took him near to the survey training area. There was virtually no time for any training, either individual or sub-unit, after that exercise and "housekeeping" tasks, packing and preparation for the move took up all the time until the Detachment left for Vietnam. Very few, if any, members of the section attended a battle efficiency course at the (then) Jungle Training Centre, Canungra before departure for Vietnam; they were probably amongst very few troops who got away with not going there first.
PS Sadler Doc 5 Ch 4 The Survey Section