Long Tan on Vietnam Veterans Day

There is something curious about old battlefields. They become fixed in imaginations as places swarming with soldiers and artillery, with landscapes destroyed and bodies lying randomly where they fell. Places of pointless carnage and bloodshed and grief. But when you visit them, they are often tranquil, green, lush and peaceful. It seems to be the same whether it is the Somme or Culloden or Gallipoli or Long Tan.

For those Australians who remember the war in Vietnam, there are names that were on the news night after night, and that live on, such as Nui Dat, Phuoc Tuy, Vung Tau, and Long Tan.

Nui Dat was the Australian base. It is about 90 kilometres by road from Saigon, although probably only about 40 kilometres in a direct easterly line. It was in what was then called Phuoc Tuy province, very near the coast. Long Tan is only a couple of kilometres away.

Long Tan is a very small village in an area of rice paddies and rubber plantations. At 3.30pm on 18^th August 1966, in the middle of a rubber plantation near Long Tan, D Company of the 6^th Battalion of the Australian army encountered a far larger and well-organised and armed force of Viet Cong. There were 108 men in D Company and it is estimated that the Viet Cong force was over 2000 strong. There was little protection in the rubber trees. The battle lasted about 4 hours, although it was after midnight before the Australian casualties were airlifted out. The Viet Cong suffered a major defeat. The casualties on both sides would almost certainly have been heavier but for a massive storm which poured down during the battle.

18 Australians were killed, and at least 245 VC dead were left behind. It is likely that more VC died. The US President. Lyndon Johnson awarded D Company the Presidential Unit Citation.

The battle took place only 3 months after the largest part of the Australian forces had arrived in Vietnam. The 6^th Battalion was mostly comprised of national servicemen,

Like Gallipoli, Kokoda and other battles, it is etched in Australian memories probably because it was when the realities of the particular war first really came home, on this occasion in the nightly TV news.

Subsequently there were battles where larger numbers of Australians lost their lives, such as Coral-Balmoral in 1968 which took place in Saigon and on its northern outskirts, and other major battles such as the attack on Ba Ria during the Tet offensive in 1968 and the battle at Binh Ba, only a couple of kilometres from Long Tan, in 1969. In May 1969 2 Australians – Ray Simpson and Keith Payne – were awarded Victoria Crosses within a few days of each other for their actions in Kon Tum in the Central Highlands. About 60,000 Australians served in the War, 521 were killed, and about 3000 were injured. The remains of the final five missing dead were identified and returned toAustraliain 2010.

But it is Long Tan that is remembered and the commencement of that battle is the time and date for Vietnam Vets Day on 18th August each year.

The current cross at the memorial is not the original which was erected by the 6^th Battalion in 1969. This was removed at some time following the communist victory in 1975, but has now been replaced by a larger monument of similar design. The original is on display at the Dong Nai province museum in Bien Hoa. It is not clear what happened to the cross, or where it went after it was found on a grave in the 1980s. Apparently the plaque was found in a cottage and was being used as a hot plate for cooking.

Long Tan is not an easy place to find the first time you go there. There are no publicly available directions that I am aware of. To get there you take the road from Saigon to Vung Tau, which is wide but terrible, and leave the road at the small city of Ba Ria. It takes about 2 ½ hours with good traffic to get there even though it is only about 80 kilometres. In the middle of Ba Ria you turn left from Cach Mang Thang Tam onto Nguyen Thanh Dang, and stay on that road, which becomes Hung Vuong and then TL52, for about 10 or 12 kilometres, going through the delightfully named village of Long Phuoc. You go past a Vietnamese war cemetery on your left. A couple of kilometres further on is a sign on the LH side of the road in the middle of a rubber plantation. You go down the dirt road for a hundred metres or so, turn right, and the small memorial is on the left down an even smaller dirt road.