Bomb attempt on Australian troops DPR/TV/961

A Viet Cong terrorist attempt to explode a satchel charge against a bus-full of Australian troops in Saigon at the end of last week was foiled. Army Warrant Officer Don Andrews of Point Lonsdale, Vic, reacted quickly by pushing the satchel off the side of the bus. The charge of about six pounds of plastic explosive with a burning 20-second fuse was hooked onto the wire mesh window screen alongside Warrant Officer Andrews' seat. The bus, with about fifty soldiers in it was returning with them to their billets in the sprawling suburb of Cholon. It had left the Australian Force Headquarters at the Free World Building on the edge of Cholon a few minutes before. Warrant Officer Andrews watched two teenagers on a motor-cycle riding close to the bus and suddenly saw a piece of wire hooked on to the protective mesh window screen. He managed to release the hook and the satchel fell to the roadway where it was later picked up by Vietnamese police. They found it contained two 2 1/2 kilogramme blocks of explosive, each with a detonator and a short length of burnt fuse. It was believed that either a defect in the fuses or the sudden jolt of the satchel hitting the road prevented the explosives from detonating. (Also identified: WO2 Don Andrews; Driver, Pte Tom Mulley of Raymond Terrace, NSW).