Ivan Reginald Barnett as a Sapper Royal Australian Engineers interviewed by Greg Swanborough for 'The sharp end'

Scene 9 Take 1; Asked to recount the dog story; describes going down a tunnel 4 to 5 feet deep and crawling 70 ft then went right and then left then went up some stairs which went under a house; did another job then went to blow the tunnel up; saw a pair of eyes in the torch light looking at him; turned out to be a dog growling at him; shot the dog nine times with his pistol; asked for help lifting the dog out because it was a bit heavy with the 9 rounds in it; they had no past experience with tunnels; just got a pistol and a torch and searched the tunnels; they brought up to the surface whatever they could find and after four days they were ordered to blow up the tunnels because there “no more bodies to count”; ordered out by General William Ellis commander of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade; he never saw a Viet Cong but he still can smell the body odour from the tunnels; the tunnels were extremely small any one bigger than himself could not enter; the tunnels were elongated and it felt like getting into a coffin; a few times he thought that he would get stuck; you could not turn so you had to go to the end; describes the tunnel system with trap doors; finding sowing machines, flags, grenades; store rooms full of branded new ammunition dated 1966 which indicated that it was bought down the Ho Chi Minh Trail; Scene 9 Take 2; hardest task was six days down the Chu Chi tunnels; he never knew what exhaustion meant before; emotionally it was just part of the job and he hoped for the best; they never guessed the extent of the Chu Chi tunnel system; it was estimated that the tunnels held 5000 troops and he was thankful that they kept moving; the loss of Bob Bowtell who was stuck and overcome by smoke and gas pumped into the tunnels; gas and smoke was used to stop the Viet Cong coming out a night; feelings on coming back to Australia- he didn’t think too much about it – felt he was still there because he was flown out immediately after coming back from operations; one day in the jungle and the next in his lounge room; he didn’t know what was going on; thought he was normal but he wasn’t; the continuous patrolling and being on the edge all the time affected his nerves.
Scene9 Take 3: Describes blowing up tunnels using conventional explosives but ground too hard to be effective. Bought in a jet engine to fill tunnels with fumes and then set charges; again useless – tunnels too long. Scene 9 Take 4: ‘Creepy crawlies’ in tunnels – had to crawl low because didn’t know if spiders on roof of tunnel were poisonous or not. Private soldier didn’t know what was going on – on-the-job training, 12 months, 7 days a week, up at daybreak and even had to ‘stand too’ for an hour or 2 at end of day. It was non stop. All the blokes felt the same.