Educational purpose only. This article examines an unverified story about Australian special operations during the Vietnam War. It does not celebrate violence, endorse the taking of human remains, or present disputed allegations as established fact. Where the narrative makes extraordinary claims, they are clearly identified as claims. The purpose is to preserve the full shape of the account while adding the historical caution, ethical reflection and human perspective that responsible reporting requires.
THE PHANTOM PATROL: WHAT AN UNVERIFIED VIETNAM WAR STORY REVEALS ABOUT COMBAT, MEMORY AND MYTH
The story begins with a scene designed to be unforgettable. Five Australian soldiers enter dense jungle and then disappear from radio contact. Seven days pass without a transmission, a flare or any visible sign that the patrol is still operating. Nearby American personnel reportedly assume the men have been lost. According to the tale, however, silence is not evidence of disaster. It is part of the patrol’s method.
Fourteen days after leaving, the five men are said to return to the Australian base at Nui Dat at about 3 a.m. They approach so quietly that sentries nearly mistake them for enemy infiltrators. Their patrol commander carries captured documents and a canvas bag. The most disturbing version of the account says the bag contains 40 human ears threaded onto parachute cord. An intelligence officer who opens it is said to become physically ill.
That image supplies the story’s dramatic hook, but it also creates its greatest historical problem. No publicly available official record has been produced to verify a patrol called “Ghost 32”, a “Phantom Patrol” operation matching this description, the collection of 40 ears, or the destruction of an enemy company by five Australians without gunfire. The tale circulates in highly polished online scripts, yet it commonly appears without named participants, archival references, patrol reports, file numbers, contemporary photographs or testimony that can be independently checked. Those omissions matter.
The absence of proof does not mean that every element is impossible. Australian Special Air Service Regiment patrols did operate from Nui Dat, usually in very small teams. They were respected for patient reconnaissance, careful fieldcraft and an ability to move slowly through difficult terrain. They also conducted offensive operations, and New Zealand SAS personnel served alongside Australians. The Long Hai Hills were a genuine and dangerous area of operations. These authentic details give the story a believable frame. They do not, by themselves, prove the extraordinary episode placed inside it.
Responsible historical writing must therefore hold two ideas at once. The narrative can be retold and analysed because it reflects real fears, genuine military methods and enduring questions about war. At the same time, its central claims must remain attributed and qualified. Turning an unsupported allegation into confident fact would be unfair to veterans, to Vietnamese victims, to researchers and to readers trying to understand a complicated conflict.
THE HISTORICAL SETTING
Australia’s involvement in Vietnam expanded during the 1960s. The 1st Australian Task Force established its main base at Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy Province in 1966. Australian SAS squadrons served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1971, acting as the task force’s distant eyes and ears. Their work included reconnaissance, observation of movement, intelligence gathering and, when authorised, offensive action.
Official histories describe patrols operating across Phuoc Tuy and into neighbouring areas. The teams were small because a few trained people could leave fewer traces, create less noise and conceal themselves more easily than a conventional formation. Their primary advantage was not superhuman strength. It was discipline: controlled movement, observation, navigation, camouflage, communication and the willingness to spend long periods gathering information before deciding whether contact was necessary.
This is already remarkable without exaggeration. A patrol several kilometres from support lived with constant uncertainty. A minor illness, navigation error, accidental sound or missed sign on a trail could expose the entire group. Extraction might be delayed. Radio use could disclose a position. Tropical weather and difficult ground increased fatigue while reducing visibility. The soldiers’ work depended upon trust so complete that a gesture, glance or touch could replace speech.
The supplied story intensifies these real conditions into a secret mission supposedly launched on 15 March 1969. It calls the five-man team “Patrol 32” or “Ghost 32” and places it in the Long Hai Hills, south-east of Nui Dat. It says the written task was reconnaissance with permission to engage “targets of opportunity”. That phrase is then used to suggest that the patrol commander possessed broad freedom to interpret the mission. No document is cited to support the wording, and readers should not mistake a narrator’s reconstruction for a reproduced operational order.
THE FIVE MEN AS THE LEGEND DESCRIBES THEM
The patrol leader is presented as a 31-year-old sergeant and former sheep shearer from western Queensland. His real name is withheld, supposedly because of secrecy restrictions, and even his nickname is missing from the garbled versions of the script. He is characterised not as impulsive but as exceptionally patient, a man capable of remaining still until another person makes a mistake. This portrait establishes the predator metaphor that dominates the rest of the tale.
The second-in-command is described as a corporal from Perth who surfed before joining the Army. He serves as the principal tracker. The narrative credits his skill to training with Aboriginal instructors and links it to traditions developed over thousands of years on the Australian continent. There is a legitimate history of Indigenous tracking knowledge contributing to Australian fieldcraft, but romantic claims should be handled carefully. Aboriginal knowledge is not a mystical device, and unnamed Indigenous teachers should not be reduced to convenient supporting characters in someone else’s legend.
The third member is the signaller, reportedly only 22 and from a South Australian mining community. His father is said to have died after years of underground work. He carries the radio but, within the story, does not use it during the entire 14-day operation. This detail transforms radio silence from a practical security choice into a test of endurance and loyalty. It also raises a question: if the team was officially presumed lost after seven days, what were its reporting schedule and emergency procedures? The narrative never supplies them.
The fourth man is called a machine-gunner from New Zealand, attached through the close military relationship between the two countries. The script claims his participation technically violated New Zealand’s rules, again without identifying a rule, order or service record. New Zealand SAS soldiers did serve with Australian squadrons, so the nationality is plausible. The allegation of an unauthorised attachment is not established.
The fifth member is the medic, portrayed as a former Melbourne ambulance driver. He carries morphine and surgical equipment and understands how limited medical options can become far from evacuation. The original account uses this role to foreshadow suffering. A more humane reading recognises a different burden: the medic is expected to preserve life while knowing that some injuries may exceed what a small patrol can treat. That tension, rather than lurid suggestion, conveys the emotional cost of the job.
Together, the five are written as ordinary men reshaped by training. Their civilian origins are repeatedly contrasted with what they supposedly become in the jungle. It is a familiar storytelling device because it asks a painful question: how far can duty alter a person before that person no longer recognises himself? The question is valid even when the specific mission remains unverified.
ENTERING THE HILLS
In the tale, the patrol leaves before dawn without artillery preparation, helicopters or ceremony. The men pass through the defensive wire, enter the vegetation and vanish from view. The Long Hai Hills are described as a long-established base area used first against French forces and later during the conflict involving South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, the United States, Australia and their allies. Steep slopes, thick cover, caves and broken limestone terrain made observation and conventional movement difficult.
Large operations in such country required substantial support and could still struggle to locate dispersed forces. The narrative contrasts that approach with five men who do not seek to occupy the hills. They intend to observe them. Its most memorable phrase says they do not want to conquer the place; they want to “haunt” it. The expression is atmospheric, though it encourages the later conversion of soldiers into supernatural hunters.
The first three days are devoted to movement. The patrol allegedly takes three days to cover ground that a larger formation might attempt in hours. One step is followed by a pause to listen and examine the surroundings. When the men stop, they remain still and avoid leaving obvious impressions. They do not lean against trees if doing so could disturb bark or vegetation. They eat cold rations to avoid smoke and cooking smells. They monitor water points before approaching them.
The script also says they carry all human waste away in plastic bags so that insects or disturbed ground cannot betray them. Whether every detail applies to this alleged patrol is impossible to confirm, but the larger principle is credible: reconnaissance teams manage scent, noise, refuse, tracks and routines because apparently trivial signs can reveal their presence. The men communicate with practised hand signals and avoid unnecessary conversation.
Silence in this context is not glamorous. It is physically and mentally exhausting. Each patrol member must remain attentive while tired, wet, hungry and uncomfortable. There is little room for private frustration because one careless reaction can endanger everyone. The romantic language of “ghosts” can hide this human reality. Quiet movement is a trained behaviour maintained by vulnerable people, not magic.
THE TRAIL AND THE DECISION TO FOLLOW
On the fourth day, the tracker notices a faint route where repeated foot traffic has compressed vegetation. He studies the ground and signals that four people used it within roughly six hours, travelling north and carrying weight. The story suggests an American unit would have crossed the trail without seeing it. That national comparison is unnecessary and unfair. Skilled tracking existed in several allied units, and no evidence is offered for the imagined failure.
The patrol commander chooses to follow without transmitting a report. The five move beside rather than on the track to avoid leaving clear signs. Six hours produce only about two kilometres of progress. At nightfall they stop, and faint voices are heard farther up a ridge. The sound indicates a camp that may contain a platoon or a larger force.
At this point, a reconnaissance patrol might observe, report, withdraw or prepare another action depending on orders, risk and opportunity. The legend says the Australians ignore the cautious course and remain. It presents the choice as proof that they reject conventional thinking. A responsible analysis sees a more serious issue: operating beyond orders would not simply be daring. It could jeopardise the patrol, compromise intelligence and trigger consequences for other units and civilians.
The next 48 hours are reconstructed by the narrator despite the absence of a released debrief, a named witness or a cited report. The team supposedly maps the position through sound. Its members identify sentry points, eating and sleeping areas, latrines, routes through the perimeter and the timing of guard changes. They count voices and develop a detailed mental model of the camp. These observation methods resemble genuine reconnaissance practice, but resemblance is not verification.
THE STORY’S TURN TOWARDS VIOLENCE
During the second night, the account changes from reconnaissance to a prolonged campaign of silent killing. A sentry is said to disappear shortly after midnight without a shot or warning. His body is allegedly found days later, missing equipment and bearing evidence that remains had been taken as a trophy. Two more guards supposedly disappear before dawn.
The source text describes these moments with graphic excitement. That tone is neither necessary nor respectful. If such acts occurred, they were not entertainment. They involved the deaths of human beings, the grief of families and conduct that would require legal scrutiny. Removing sensational language does not weaken the history; it restores moral proportion.
The camp’s commander, depicted as a North Vietnamese captain with 12 years of experience, orders a search. He sends groups of four to find the intruders. The narrator announces that this is exactly what the Australians expected and that the decision effectively condemns the searchers. Over the next three days, according to the story, concealed patrol members isolate individuals from each team and kill them quietly, avoiding a general exchange of fire.
By the fifth day of this hunting phase, 17 soldiers are said to be missing or dead. The camp cannot identify the location of the attackers. Its personnel become frightened of leaving prepared positions, interpreting ordinary sounds and shadows as signs of danger. The story claims this psychological collapse occurs even though the Australians have not fired a shot.
Several practical questions go unanswered. Silently overpowering alert soldiers, repeatedly and at close range, carries immense risk. Doing so dozens of times without an alarm, injury, escape, shot or trace would be an extraordinary feat requiring exceptional evidence. The story offers none. It also shifts between “eliminating an entire company” and leaving survivors, while reporting 40 trophies from a force described as only a little larger than 40. Such arithmetic and narrative inconsistencies are warning signs.
Nor should the opposing soldiers be represented as faceless pieces in a tactical puzzle. They were people operating under their own chain of command, fears, loyalties and pressures. Humanising them does not endorse their government or erase the causes of the conflict. It acknowledges that historical understanding becomes distorted when one side is granted biographies and emotions while the other is described only as prey.
THE ALLEGED FINAL SIX DAYS
The legend says the patrol commander makes another decision on the eighth day. Instead of withdrawing with intelligence, he continues because the camp appears demoralised and because documents and supplies may be stored in caves above it. The source calls the next six days the systematic dismantling of the remaining position.
Men allegedly desert in pairs or small groups. The patrol has already mapped the routes and intercepts them. Each disappearance increases the fear among those still in the camp. By the twelfth day, the original force of more than 40 has supposedly been reduced to eight survivors sheltering in a cave. They no longer patrol or maintain ordinary security. They wait, too frightened to leave and unwilling to surrender.
The Australians, the story says, deliberately spare these eight because living witnesses will spread the account. This is framed as psychological warfare: frightened survivors carry a warning to other units, making the five-man patrol seem present even when it is not. The team begins moving back on the thirteenth day with captured papers and the alleged trophies. It takes special care to erase signs of its route.
On day fourteen, the five reach Nui Dat. In the story’s repeated opening scene, sentries nearly fire on them before recognising friendly soldiers. The commander places the canvas bag on an intelligence officer’s desk. Its alleged contents produce shock and illness. An American liaison officer requests an immediate briefing, and what he hears supposedly changes his view of unconventional warfare.
This completes the dramatic arc: disappearance, transformation, return and forbidden evidence. It is structured almost like folklore. The men enter a threatening wilderness, cross accepted boundaries, acquire secret knowledge and come back carrying an object that proves the cost of their transformation. That literary shape helps explain why the account is memorable. It does not make it a documented event.
THE CLAIMED COVER-UP
The narrative then alleges an efficient official suppression. The patrol leader is said to receive a classified commendation that cannot be displayed or discussed. Intelligence staff supposedly retain the captured documents because they are useful while overlooking how they were obtained. The alleged human remains are photographed, catalogued and destroyed, although a further rumour says they survive as training material.
An unnamed major associated with MACV-SOG is said to write a memorandum expressing profound unease. According to the tale, he believes the Australian method is something American forces can neither reproduce nor control and recommends limiting the sharing of information about SAS techniques. The memo was supposedly preserved by accident even though it should have been destroyed. No archive, date, author, recipient, quotation, file reference or image of this document is provided.
That last point is crucial. A claim that a secret paper exists cannot verify itself. If the only explanation for missing evidence is that authorities erased the evidence, the story becomes impossible to test: every absence is treated as further proof. Genuine secrecy and incomplete wartime archives certainly exist, but historians still need provenance, corroboration and a clear chain connecting testimony to records.
The script says the Australian military’s official position is that no matching mission occurred and that Patrol 32 conducted routine reconnaissance without significant contact. Yet it does not identify the source of that supposed official response. It also refers repeatedly to the “Australian Defense Force” suppressing events in 1969. The modern Australian Defence Force was established later, in 1976; forces in Vietnam operated within the structures of the period. A present-day institution can hold old files, of course, but imprecise terminology is another reason to examine the account carefully.
OFFICIAL HISTORY AND WHAT IT DOES SUPPORT
Public Australian War Memorial material provides a solid outline of SASR service. It records that the regiment was based at Nui Dat, conducted reconnaissance and offensive work, operated in very small patrols and worked closely with New Zealand personnel. It also notes a high ratio of enemy casualties to Australian losses. During 3 Squadron’s second tour, beginning in February 1969, its commander placed strong emphasis on gathering information rather than maintaining “kills boards”. His reported view was that the squadron’s purpose was intelligence, not killing for its own sake.
That documented emphasis sits uneasily beside a story in which an entire company is methodically destroyed and trophies are carried home. It does not prove that misconduct never occurred. It does show why a claim of this scale requires stronger evidence than an anonymous internet narration. Official sources can be incomplete and institutions can protect reputations, but scepticism must be applied consistently to governments, memoirs, rumours and dramatic videos alike.
The original script says Pentagon analysts could not explain an Australian success rate many times greater than that of American special units and that the factor remains classified. It gives no report for this claim. It alternates between a “ten to one” estimate and hints of something higher, confusing ratios of enemy to friendly casualties with a comparison between national forces. Such numbers may sound authoritative, but without definitions and records they reveal little.
WHAT SMALL PATROLS ACTUALLY TEACH
There are legitimate lessons in the story’s description of movement. Size affects visibility. Patience can reveal information that speed misses. Local knowledge matters. A team that adapts to terrain may achieve more than one trying to force the environment to fit a preconceived plan. Restraint can protect both a mission and the people around it. Good reconnaissance often succeeds precisely because no battle occurs.
These lessons do not require cruelty. The source repeatedly suggests that absolute ruthlessness is the secret behind effectiveness. That conclusion is emotionally dramatic but strategically shallow. Indiscipline can destroy intelligence, invite retaliation, alienate communities, expose soldiers to prosecution and damage the legitimacy on which a campaign depends. Terror may change behaviour in the short term while creating resistance and trauma that last for generations.
The article also portrays knife attacks as easy, noiseless and mechanically repeatable. Real close contact is uncertain and chaotic. People resist, shout, flee and make unpredictable choices. Equipment fails. Terrain interferes. Even highly trained personnel cannot control every variable. When a story removes chance, confusion and consequence from combat, it begins to resemble action fiction more than history.
THE ETHICAL LINE
The alleged collection of ears is not a colourful detail or proof of toughness. Taking body parts as trophies is a profound violation of human dignity and may breach the law of armed conflict. The dead remain protected from mistreatment, and military necessity does not turn a human body into a souvenir. If evidence emerged that members of any force engaged in such conduct, the proper response would be investigation, accountability and respect for victims, not admiration.
The original narration asks whether destroying a hostile company, gathering documents and suffering no friendly casualties could justify the methods. The answer cannot be determined by a scorecard. Means matter as well as outcomes. Rules governing armed conflict exist partly because every side can describe its own objective as necessary. Once necessity becomes permission for anything, restraint disappears exactly when it is most needed.
The account’s strongest human question concerns what such conduct would do to the patrol itself. It says one member later experienced serious psychological difficulties, while others returned to civilian life in silence or remained in the military to train new operators. No names or records verify these outcomes. Even so, the theme reflects a documented reality across wars: service members can carry moral injury as well as fear-based trauma.
Moral injury may arise when someone commits, witnesses or cannot prevent an act that violates deeply held values. It can bring guilt, shame, anger, isolation and a damaged sense of identity. Calling every act “necessary” may protect an institution’s image while leaving individuals alone with memories they cannot reconcile. Veterans deserve accurate history, serious mental-health support and room to speak without being turned into monsters or myths.
MEMORY, RUMOUR AND THE MAKING OF A LEGEND
The story says veterans preserved the episode privately in clubs, conversations and unofficial memoirs. It claims that books published in the 1980s disguised names and details, while freedom-of-information releases in the 1990s exposed fragments that officials had hoped to keep hidden. Again, no titles, requests, file numbers or passages are identified. The account borrows the language of archival discovery without presenting the archive.
Oral history is valuable, especially where official records omit daily experience. Memory can preserve truths that bureaucracy misses. It can also change over time. Separate incidents merge; locations shift; numbers grow; an anecdote heard from a friend becomes attached to the speaker’s own unit. Repetition gives a familiar story the feeling of proof. Historians do not reject memory, but they compare it with dates, unit diaries, maps, casualty records, interviews and records from opposing sides.
The “Ghost 32” story contains features common to military legends. The soldiers are anonymous, which prevents verification but makes them universal. Their backgrounds are unusually cinematic. Every tactical choice succeeds. The enemy behaves exactly as the patrol predicts. The team experiences no casualty, mistake or internal disagreement. A secret witness is horrified, a government hides the evidence, and accidental documents supposedly confirm the truth while remaining unavailable to readers.
There are also textual signs of careless copying. Place names vary between “Long High” and “Long Hai”; Nui Dat is rendered in several forms; “sentry” becomes “century”; MACV-SOG is misspelled; missing placeholders appear where names or quotations should be; and the conclusion accidentally says the men returned with “40 years” rather than 40 ears. These errors do not merely reflect imperfect spelling. They suggest a script assembled or transcribed without the documentary care expected of a major historical revelation.
Why, then, does it remain compelling? Because it speaks to a modern appetite for hidden history. Readers are invited to believe that they are receiving a truth denied by powerful institutions. The five soldiers embody skill without bureaucracy, while shocked American officers validate their exceptional status. Moral discomfort becomes part of the sales pitch: the more troubling the story feels, the more “secret” and therefore authentic it appears.
That emotional mechanism deserves attention. People naturally remember vivid images more readily than cautious qualifications. A bag on a desk overwhelms a sentence saying “no corroborating record has been located”. Platforms reward certainty, novelty and outrage, while archival history advances slowly. The result is an uneven contest between a dramatic minute of narration and years of careful research.
AUSTRALIANS, AMERICANS AND SHARED METHODS
The supplied account says American special operators studied Australian techniques and introduced some of them into later training, including tracking methods associated with Aboriginal instruction. Military forces in Vietnam did exchange personnel and ideas, and Australian patrol practice attracted interest. It is reasonable to say allies learned from one another. It is not reasonable to claim, without evidence, that one secret patrol transformed the entire American approach.
The relationship was also more interdependent than the legend admits. Australian forces operated within a coalition in which American resources played a major role. Liaison, aviation, communications, intelligence and operational coordination crossed national boundaries. Differences in doctrine and area of responsibility were real, but they did not place either force outside the shared war.
The script alleges that American officers continued asking for Australian help while deliberately refusing to ask how results were obtained. That is a serious institutional accusation. It could be true in a specific case only if supported by records or testimony. As written, it functions as a convenient bridge between effectiveness and secrecy: Americans supposedly knew enough to be impressed but not enough to be accountable.
Warfare often produces such zones of deliberate ambiguity, so the ethical concern is worth examining even without accepting the anecdote. Commanders must not use partners to perform actions they could not lawfully order their own forces to undertake. Coalition arrangements do not remove obligations. Clear rules, reporting, investigation and command responsibility are necessary precisely because informal deniability can invite abuse.
THE COST OF A SANITISED HISTORY
The original story argues that modern militaries celebrate the tactical achievements of special units while editing out the compromises that made them effective. There is a useful warning here. Institutional histories can become too polished, reducing fear, failure, civilian suffering and misconduct to footnotes. Honest education should examine both courage and wrongdoing.
Yet an unsourced atrocity tale is not the cure for a sanitised official narrative. Replacing one selective account with another merely reverses the bias. A mature history asks for evidence, includes Vietnamese perspectives, distinguishes allegation from finding and refuses to use trauma as decoration. It recognises valour where the record supports it and misconduct where evidence establishes it.
The same balance should guide discussion of special operations. Secrecy may be necessary to protect current capabilities and people, but it can also restrict accountability and allow fantasy to flourish. Declassification, independent scholarship and well-supported veteran testimony help society understand what was done in its name. They also protect service members from sensational claims that cannot be tested.
Vietnam veterans have often lived with public misunderstanding. Some faced hostility or indifference after returning home; others waited years for adequate recognition of physical and psychological injuries. Turning them into flawless heroes is no more humane than turning them into villains. Both approaches flatten individual lives. The respectful alternative is evidence-based history that permits courage, uncertainty, error, suffering and moral agency to exist together.
THE LANDSCAPE AFTER WAR
The narrative closes by returning to the hills decades later. Caves once used for shelter and military activity are quiet. Vegetation has covered tracks and signs of conflict. Visitors may pass through places where people fought without knowing the details. This image is moving because landscapes recover differently from human beings. Forest growth can conceal a scar while families and veterans continue to carry it.
The source says the five patrol members never fully leave the jungle. Their mission persists in private conversations, classified rooms and nightmares. Used carefully, the metaphor expresses how traumatic memory resists a simple ending. Used sensationally, it makes suffering sound supernatural and turns unnamed people into permanent props for a legend.
We do not know whether five men matching these descriptions entered the Long Hai Hills on the stated date. We do not have reliable evidence that they killed 40 people, collected ears, left eight survivors, brought back a hidden cache of documents or triggered a secret American memorandum. We therefore should not state that they did. The responsible conclusion is not that the story has been disproved in every detail, but that its extraordinary central claims remain unverified.
What is established is substantial enough. Australian SASR teams served in Vietnam, conducted demanding small-group patrols, developed respected reconnaissance skills and operated in environments where a single mistake could have grave consequences. Vietnamese combatants and civilians endured a war of extraordinary violence. Veterans on all sides carried memories and injuries long after operations ended. Institutions have a duty to preserve records, investigate credible allegations and support those affected.
The legend asks what society requires soldiers to become in pursuit of victory and what remains of them afterwards. Those questions should not be dismissed. Nor should they be answered with admiration for cruelty. Military effectiveness without ethical restraint is not a complete success; it may produce tactical gains while inflicting strategic, legal and human damage that lasts far longer.
The deepest lesson is therefore different from the one offered by the sensational version. Patience, discipline, environmental awareness and teamwork can make a small unit remarkably capable. But capability increases responsibility. The more freedom and skill a force possesses, the more important judgement, lawful command and respect for human dignity become.
If future evidence establishes a real operation behind the Phantom Patrol story, that evidence should be examined openly and carefully. Names, dates, records and testimony should be compared, and any victims should be treated as human beings rather than trophies in a tale of national superiority. If no such evidence emerges, the story will remain valuable chiefly as a case study in how authentic military details can be assembled into persuasive folklore.
Either way, the proper response is neither blind belief nor automatic denial. It is disciplined curiosity. History deserves the same patience that good reconnaissance demands: move carefully, notice small inconsistencies, resist the pressure to rush, and report only what the evidence can carry. That approach may be less dramatic than a phantom patrol returning from the jungle, but it honours the living, the dead and the truth far more faithfully.
The Australian War Memorial confirms SASR service at Nui Dat, small patrols and work with New Zealand peers. Its public history and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Anzac Portal do not verify the specific “Ghost 32” episode described in the source text here.
