RS2 History :The Battle of Long Tan

One of the most well-known Australian engagements of the Vietnam War was the Battle of Long Tan, 18 August 1966.

The battle saw the action of 108 Anzacs against a Viet Cong (North Vietnamese) force estimated between 1,500 and 2,500. The Battle was one of the heaviest conflicts of the Vietnam War as well as one the few battles in the recorded history of the world to be won against such odds.

Vietnam Veterans’ Day, celebrated in Australia on 18 August each year, commemorates the Battle of Long Tan and those Australians who served during the Vietnam War and is an opportunity to remember those who did not come home.

The Vietnam War was the longest war Australia was ever involved in. Australian involvement in the Vietnam War was marked by controversy and significant levels of public opposition to conscription and concern about casualties. The Vietnam War was also the first war witnessed ‘live’ on television.

In the late 1960s, the escalation of the Vietnam War coincided with the hippy movement with music as the chosen vehicle for an alternative lifestyle. It also was a period when Australians reflected on their relationships with the United States of America (USA) and with Asia.

Australia’s support for the Vietnam War in the early 1960s was in keeping with the policies of other nations, particularly the USA, to stop the spread of communism in Europe and Asia. Upon request from Ngo Dinh Diem, leader of the government in South Vietnam, a team of 30 Australian military advisers arrived during July and August 1962 and in August 1964, the Royal Australian Air Force sent a flight of Caribou aircraft.

By early 1965, the USA requested Australia, as an ally, to also commit further support. Australia sent the 1st Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment (1 RAR) in June 1965.

As hostilities escalated, the Australian government increased Australia’s involvement by calling up conscripts under the National Service Scheme, as well as all nine RAR battalions over the period of the War.

Commencing in 1968, public opinion in both Australia and the United States began to turn against the War.

By 1969 anti-war protests were gathering momentum in Australia. Opposition to conscription mounted, as more people came to believe the war could not be won. A ‘Don’t register’ campaign to dissuade young men from registering for conscription gained increasing support and some of the protests grew violent.
Australian War Memorial – external site

In April 1970, the decision to order troops to cross the border into Cambodia, a formally neutral sovereign state inflamed the protests. While large quantities of North Vietnamese arms were captured, the action ultimately proved disastrous. The Cambodian government was weakened until the Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 and killed several millions of Cambodians. In the well-known Moratoriums of 1970, more than 200,000 people gathered in cities and towns throughout Australia to protest against the War (Australian War Memorial).

The combination of the 1968 ‘Tet’ Offensive, the 1970 decision to go into Cambodia, the unpopularity of conscription, rising casualty rates, public concern about the effects of chemical warfare, especially ‘Agent Orange’, and public opposition to the war forced the allied political leaderships to announce the gradual withdrawal of allied forces from 1971. The Australian commitment ended in June 1973.

Long Tan (1966)

The Australian operations base at Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy province was fired upon by the Viet Cong with mortar and shell at about 2 am on 17 August 1966. On 18 August, D Company, 6 RAR Battalion, numbering 105 Australians and a three-man New Zealand artillery team, was sent into the Long Tan rubber plantation, all coming under heavy machine-gun fire and mortar attacks from Viet Cong – estimated to be at least 1,500 and possibly 2,500 troops. D Company commander, Major Harry Smith, requested resupply of ammunition and troop reinforcements by helicopter, which was supplied.

After almost three hours of intense fighting by D Company, reinforcements from A Company arrived in armoured personnel carriers (APCs). Ammunition was distributed and the wounded were tended. Early in the evening, B Company also arrived and engaged the Viet Cong. Soon after that, seven APCs arrived, having risked skirmishes with the Viet Cong along the way. The extra fire-power finally stopped the Viet Cong, and all firing ceased.

There were 18 Australians killed – 17 from D Company and one from the 1st Armoured Personnel Carrier Squadron – and 21 wounded. The Viet Cong insurgents left 245 dead and many more wounded. In later years, it was found out that D Company had run into a reinforced regimental force waiting to attack Nui Dat.

Reflections in Australia on the Vietnam War

For the 10 years of the War and the 20 years that followed, the Vietnam War was the focus of much reflection, debate, expression and representation. Works were produced and presented in wide-ranging media and form.

One of the most enduring songs written about the Vietnam War is the song, I was only 19 (A walk in the light green) written by John Schumann and released in 1983. It is about events that happened during the Vietnam War in the 60’s. John Schumann felt the song demonstrated to Australians that you can oppose a war vigorously but still be supportive and respectful of the men and women the government sends to fight it.

And there’s me in my slouch hat, with my SLR and greens…
God help me, I was only nineteen.From Vung Tau riding Chinooks to the dust at Nui Dat,
I’d been in and out of choppers now for months…

And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can’t get to sleep?
And night time’s just a jungle dark and a barking M16?
And what’s this rash that comes and goes, can you tell me what it means?
God help me, I was only nineteen.

Music

In the late 1960s, the hippy and peace movements known as ‘flower power’, coincided with the War and influenced the new generation, known as ‘baby boomers’ as well as a new wave of Australian folk and rock music. The Sydney Push and innovative jazz music challenged the feel of popular music performed by the likes of Little Pattie and her popularisation of Australian beach culture.

Television, film, video and installation

More than thirty Australian Broadcasting Commission correspondents and camera crew were accredited to cover the Vietnam War from 1965 onwards. As a consequence, people could sit at home eating their dinner, watching television and witness the destruction of the War.

Television brought a great change to war coverage. The immediacy with which people in Australia and the United States could watch film of events in Vietnam, forced greater scrutiny of the military and of the role of government.
Australian Broadcasting Authority

News agency cameramen Neil Davis of Visnews became famous for his film of the frontline fighting. A documentary, Frontline (1980), was made of Neil Davis’s work by David Bradbury. Vietnam (1987), a television series, looked at ‘Australia’s difficult place… in a new international order in which the USA influence was considerably diminished and the need to ‘deal’ with Asia was pronounced’ (Tom O’Regan with Albert Moran, Australian Screen, 1989).

Dinh Q L documents the process of how ordinary Vietnamese people dealt with the mass of abandoned US helicopters in the video installation, The farmers and the helicopters. An accompanying sculpture, Lotusland, dealt with questions of accountability from the conflict, by deifying the great numbers of Siamese twins that were born as a result of the effects of ‘Agent Orange’ (The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, March to May 2007).