Viet Cong rice cache DPR/TV/416

Soldiers of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, this week received a practical lesson in Viet Cong techniques used in hiding valuable caches of rice, weapons and other equipment when they moved into a Viet Cong camp during operation Enoggera, a search and destroy misson, in Vietnam. It was the Battalion's first operation against the Communist guerillas in Vietnam. With bulldozers paving the way, troops begin the search. Probing the innocent-looking earth floor on which a table once stood, Private Ron Aslan, of Fremantle, Western Australia, has his suspicions aroused when his bayonet detects a soft spot in the hard packed packed ground. With Corporal Mal Black, of West End, Brisbane, he removes a few inches of earth and finds carefully packed straw covering a cache of Viet Cong rice. The rice is of good quality, and other troops are called in to bag the grain so that it may be distributed to poor Vietnamese in other vilages. Private Bill Allender, of Manning, Perth, and Private Bill Warren, of East Oakleigh, Melbourne, fill the bags as other troops stack them ready for transport to a central storage point at the rear of the Battalion's front-line. Australian troops land another blow in the war against the Viet Cong.