'lawrence Of The Highlands'

20 April 2008

Barry Petersen built a guerilla army for the CIA but went too far, so he was earmarked for death, writes Frank Walker.

Australian army captain Barry Petersen could have been the inspiration for the Marlon Brando character Colonel Kurtz in the film Apocalypse Now.

Like Kurtz, Petersen was sent into the remote mountains of Vietnam by the CIA to set up an anti-communist guerilla force of local tribespeople.

Like Kurtz, the guerilla force became more loyal to Petersen than the US and the CIA allegedly plotted to have him killed unless he left.

Petersen's CIA handler derisively dubbed him "Lawrence of the Highlands" and accused him of building a personality cult among the Montagnard.

Like Kurtz, Petersen was made a chief by tribesmen and given the name of a legendary demi-god, Dam San. But unlike Kurtz who was assassinated, Petersen remained a dutiful army officer.

In 1965, when ordered to leave the mountains, he was bewildered as he felt he had done a good job and built a formidable private army of 1200 warriors, but he obeyed orders.

Decades afterward, a friend in Australian intelligence told him his CIA handler had marked him to be "eliminated" if he had questioned his orders to leave.

"I have no idea if the people making Apocalypse Now heard of my mission," said Petersen last week from his home in Bangkok. "My mission was unique, but they based the film on Joseph Conrad's book Heart Of Darkness. That's where the 'Kurtz' name came from.

"In the film, Kurtz refused to leave so they sent someone to assassinate him.

"With me, all the CIA had to do was cut off the money - which by the end was $50,000 a month - and I could not function."

Petersen is now 73 and has lived in Thailand since 1992. "Asia gets in your blood," he said from his Bangkok home.

"Vietnam became an integral part of my life and when I retired I couldn't settle down in Australia."

His remarkable story began in 1963 when he was a 28-year-old captain sent to Vietnam as part of the 30-man Australian Army Training Team, two years before the first Australian combat troops arrived.

Seconded to the CIA, he was sent to the remote Central Highlands to build an anti-communist guerilla force among the independent-minded Montagnard people.

"The Americans thought Australians were experts in counter-insurgency operations and had a better affinity with the natives as it was our region, and I had mucked around in the jungle during the Malayan Emergency."

Petersen was dispatched to the mountains with bagfuls of cash and a vague instruction to "get to know the locals". He felt he had been left like a shag on a rock.

South Vietnamese officers who had been running a nice racket with CIA funds resented his arrival.

He realised he had to avoid CIA types and the special forces who hung around Ban Me Thuot, the biggest town in the region, or he would have no chance of winning the respect of the local tribespeople.

He took over the running of the paramilitary force, the Truong Son Force, started by the local police chief. He found an interpreter and went to the villages to recruit.

After many rejections, Petersen found the key to winning the respect of the villagers was to drink them under the table with the local rice wine.

After several big nights which left him laid out, Petersen learned a trick of pretending to drink from the jar then siphoning it into a glass.

Respect grew as his drinking prowess became legendary. Village chiefs started sending warriors to him to join his growing band.

Petersen realised the Montagnards would fight only if they believed it would lead to their own autonomy.

"They fought for me as they do not like the Vietnamese. I had to be very careful not to indicate in any way that fighting for the allies would mean they get autonomy or independence. I told them we had a big problem from North Vietnam so let's get that sorted out first."

With money from the CIA, he paid tribesmen to join his force which after two years reached 1200. They fought fiercely against the Vietcong using the same hit-and-run tactics.

"My aim was to keep the Truong Son Force as a group of small, mobile, hard-hitting and elusive elements which could play the Vietcong at their own game."

Paul Ham in his book Vietnam - The Australian War said Petersen was one of the stranger legends of the Vietnam War, an officer who "went native" in his efforts to win over the Montagnards to join his private army.

Petersen lived, drank and ate with the Montagnards rather than sit back in luxury villas in Saigon like his CIA bosses.

Unlike South Vietnamese commanders who treated the Montagnards like savages, Petersen learned their language, lived in the bush with them, taught them ambush skills, paid them and gave them uniforms and weapons.

Part of the battle were his own allies. At one point, a Montagnard village was attacked by the Vietcong and the local force were low on ammunition.

A US helicopter was sent to drop ammo to them, but was diverted at the last minute to pick up a US soldier who had cut his hand. By the time the chopper got to the village, everyone was dead.

"It was one of the stupidities of that war - and there were many of them - that the inhabitants of a village could be cruelly wiped out because an American had cut his hand," said Petersen.

But they fought on, chalked up some victories and earned a reputation as merciless fighters.

In one attack, Petersen wounded a Vietcong and moved on; one of his men then put a bullet through the Vietcong's head and told his captain he should have finished the job properly.

The Vietcong dubbed Petersen's force, "Tiger Men".

When Petersen heard this, he had special tiger-head badges made for their berets and supplied tiger-print uniforms.

The Montagnards loved him and flocked to join his force but the CIA suspected he identified too much with the locals and was getting out of control.

In 1964, 3000 Montagnard forces revolted against the bullying local South Vietnamese commanders and occupied the main town, executing dozens of Vietnamese troops. They demanded autonomy, the right to fly their own flag and command their own military units.

Petersen's units were not involved in the revolt and he persuaded the rebels to stand down.

But some Vietnamese and his CIA bosses believed Petersen was too close to the Montagnard and his sympathies had helped ignite the revolt. He was a marked man.

Petersen was certainly impressed with his own position. In his 1988 memoir he said: "Maybe I was only a minor monarch, but I was as close as anyone got to be the absolute ruler of his own cabbage patch."

But his success created enemies among his bosses. Petersen said that after his memoir was published, he was told that the CIA had planned to have him killed unless he could be controlled.

In 1965 the CIA, pressed by the South Vietnamese, pulled Petersen out.

Petersen was given a traditional farewell ceremony. Three buffaloes were ritually slaughtered, 400 warriors paid their respects and Petersen was made a paramount chief.

He gave the traditional costume they dressed him in to the Australian War Memorial, but he still has the dozens of bracelets and necklaces.

He was replaced by an American CIA officer who spent most of his time in a luxury villa. Tiger Force quickly fell apart.

Petersen was awarded the Military Cross, promoted to major and returned to Vietnam for a second tour, seeing combat with an Anzac unit.

He paid a visit to the mountains in 1971 and was devastated at what he found. The Montagnards had been forced out of their homes and put behind barbed wire "for their own protection". Tiger Force did not exist. Towns had been turned into Wild West-type defensive forts with brothels and bars for US forces. The Vietcong had the run of the Central Highlands.

"The people we were supposed to be protecting were leaving to support the Vietcong," he said. And he could not blame them.

Petersen was quietly against the war at the end, but he was a soldier and did his duty. But when he saw the same mistakes being repeated in 2003 when Australian troops were sent to Iraq on the coat-tails of the US, he was furious.

"I could see right from the start that we were going into another utter debacle," he said.

On Anzac Day, Petersen plans to join the dwindling number of war veterans and young pilgrims at Hellfire Pass, as he has every year since he's lived in Thailand.

His war wounds are playing up and he hopes he can make the hike. But he's glad the attitude to Vietnam veterans has changed over the years.

"Even the people who protested against the war say they were sorry they aimed their opposition at the soldiers rather than the politicians who sent them."


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