Rangers in training DPR/TV/1436

Nestled between picturesque Nha Trang and steep jungle clad mountains, the Vietnamese Ranger Training Centre at Duc My exudes a holiday atmosphere betrayed only by the occasional chatter of machine guns and a variety of physically and mentally testing training facilities. Among these is an ominous rapelling tower where Vietnamese Ranger instructors aided by Warrant Officer Ron Lennon of Singleton, NSW, an advisor with the Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam, demonstrate a series of rapelling techniques to members of a Ranger battalion. Following the demonstrations the Ranger students, most of them experienced and battle tested soldiers on refresher training, literally learn the ropes. The refresher course is only one of five carried out at the Centre. Others are a 12-week recruit course, a six-week jungle, mountain and swamp operations course, a five-week long range reconnaissance patrol course, and a 22-week taekwondo course. Apart from the taekwondo course, students on all courses undergo infiltration under fire. This involves the traversing of a barbed-wire infiltration course before a final bayonet assault upon the "enemy". The assault over, 54864 Warrant Officer Ian Ronald Ramsay of Cloverdale, WA, another Australian advisor at the centre, discusses aspects of the course which could be improved with a Vietnamese officer. Most spectacular of the training aids at the Duc My Ranger Training Centre is known as the slide of death...a slide from 60 feet up along a 300-foot wire rope into a river. To reach the tree supporting the rope, Ranger students have to cross the river on a three-strand wire footbridge. Grenades thrown into the river create reality during the side which is controlled by a flag in the hands of a Vietnamese officer. One highlight of the Centre is a realistic mock Viet Cong village which is used to train and test soldiers in assault and searching techniques. Numerous booby traps make the task of the Ranger students very exacting and again Australian advisors are present to pass on their views on what actions should precede the search for any hidden Viet Cong or equipment and documents which may have intelligence value. One such advisor is Warrant Officer Wayne Shennon of Mount Gravatt, Qld, who returned to Australia earlier this month. Having found most of the hides and booby traps, the Vietnamese Rangers relax and become careless providing an opportunity for a counter-attack by the Viet Cong who escaped from the village and re-grouped. The climax of the courses is in the form of a heliborne assault exercise, which on several occasions has turned into an operation against real enemy. From the Ranger Training Centre, the Rangers are flown to forward outposts, in this case Hong Koi ten miles south of Duc My where they are briefed by Warrant Officer Shennon before reboarding the helicopters for an assault on Hong Koi Island. Strong winds and a small rough landing zone made for a difficult disembarkation for the Rangers but it took them only seconds to move from the clearing into the protection of the surrounding jungle. From the air, aboard the command and control helicopter, the insertion was controlled by the Vietnamese course operations officer with assistance from the senior American advisor at the Training Centre, Major Donald Brock, and after his extraction from the landing zone, Warrant Officer Ramsay who had taken part in the initial stages of the assault.