US tropical combat trousers : Captain SN Gower, 1 Field Regiment

Pair of olive green US tropical combat trousers featuring a five-button fly, pair of hip pockets, pair of front pockets and pair of expanding cargo pockets over the thighs with concealed buttons. The left cargo pocket includes a small inner pocket designed to hold a survival kit, and both cargo pockets are fitted with a cotton tape tie which can be tied through a crotch loop and around the leg to prevent excessive movement of the pocket contents. The waist is fitted with belt loops and a pair of adjusting buckles while the legs are finished with a tunnelled draw-cord. A label sewn to inner proper right pocket describes the trousers as 'Poplin OG 107 DSA 100-2649' and includes instructions on cleaning and use. The user has appended name in texta to inside waist band.

Equipment typically used and worn by 47030 Captain Stephen Newman (Steve) Gower, 1 Field Regiment, a forward artillery observer attached to ‘A’ Company, 5th Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment, (5RAR) during Operation Hayman (6 – 12 November 1966) and ‘D’ Company, 6 Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment (6RAR) during Operation Bribie (17-18 February 1967). Captain Gower, born 10 June 1940, served in Vietnam from 19 September 1966 until 11 June 1967, and as a forward observation officer (FOO) on patrol led a small party of 4 to 5 men (which always included a signaller) attached to a company of infantry. The FOO always had to be ready to call in and coordinate artillery support at a moment’s notice and thus had to be absolutely precise with navigation and map reading. Indeed, he recalls that ‘you’d know when you’d got the range for the artillery just right when you’d get a shower of leaves dropping on you…but if you got showered with twigs and branches, it was too close!’ Each night the small FOO group would call in its Locstat (location status) to base. Being in a forward area with enemy close by, Gower states he always slept with his rifle pointing north as it was easy to be disoriented at night when woken suddenly. Once, when a North Vietnamese soldier infiltrated almost over the top of him one night, his rifle proved too far from reach and after that he always slept with a pistol under his pillow. Gower’s uniform consists of mainly non-Australian issue items, using US tropical combat jacket, trousers and boots, a lightweight South Vietnamese Army issue rucksack that he swapped at Phuoc Hua for 200 menthol cigarettes and the M1956 pattern pistol belt and canteens (he carried four canteens on operations). In his left thigh pocket he kept his maps, codes and fire orders and marked up his maps using Chinagraph pencils kept safe and watertight in a metal flare case. An image of Gower at Long Son Island during Operation Haymen can be seen at P02401.001.