Possums and Bird Dogs

‘Shit! I've been hit!' Captain Bevan Smith's inadvertent broadcast alerted the troops on the ground that a Viet Cong ambush had been triggered. The knuckles had been shot out of his left hand. Somehow he got the Sioux chopper and battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Alec Preece down safely, but his war in Vietnam was over. The story of Australian Army Aviation in South Vietnam begs to be told. The fledgling 161 Recce Flight deployed to Bien Hoa in 1965 and its Possum callsign was heard in the