How Our Sappers in Afghanistan Took the Fight to the Insurgents Using the Lessons Learned from Vietnam. This book employs the personal recollections of serving and recently returned Sappers to show how, in this most modern of wars, the skills acquired and developed in Vietnam have stood Australian troops in good stead. Using extensive and detailed interviews with a number of Sappers who served there, we follow the progress of the engineers, from why they became Sappers in the first place to how it felt pulling out for the last time.