While another sapper looks on, an unidentified member of 1 Field Squadron, Royal Australian ...

While another sapper looks on, an unidentified member of 1 Field Squadron, Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), dons a gas mask for use as breathing apparatus in a search he is about to make of a Viet Cong bunker during Operation Atherton. The men are standing beside rough tables and chairs that the Viet Cong have fashioned out of lengths of timber cut from jungle trees and saplings. Known colloquially as tunnel rats, the two engineers are attached to A Company, 8RAR, for the operation, which comprises a reconnaissance and ambush operation in the northwest of the province and is the battalion's first in Vietnam.