"We were heading down south from Nui Dat into an area known as the Long Hai hills, which was noted as being a bad area for mines. We departed camp on or about the 14th of July and had been out seven days when we started to head towards Long Hai hills. We were mainly searching for caches of rice, any tracks to see if there was any movement in the night time to try and cut off the Viet Cong from coming into the villages at night and replenishing their supplies. There'd been several small skirmishes up into the 21st. On the 21st of July, which was the day that the man was going to walk on the moon, the B52s from Guam were also set to bomb the Long Hai hills. And we were to cease walking at about 11 o'clock.

"The lieutenant in charge of the platoon asked us to do some searching up a track with the mine detectors, to see if we could locate any mines or see if there'd been any movement up the track, whether was any footprints etceteras.

"He'd come over to tell us that the men had landed on the moon, was on his way back when someone had stepped onto a - as it turned out - a jump, what they call a jumping jack mine, which explodes in the ground to come out of the ground, and then explodes a second time to throw the shrapnel in a 360 degree radius."

CORPORAL PHIL BAXTER