The survivors of 11 Platoon recalled how some rubber trees were continually hit with a thud while others exploded from RPG fire. Red mud was splashing around as bullets tore into the ground around the men, some finding their mark. Buick described how the fire from the men of 11 Platoon was stopping the enemy in their tracks, but mates on either side were being killed or wounded. Even so, everyone was sticking by their ‘mates and defending their patch of dirt to the death’.16
Buick again contacted Stanley asking him for more artillery support, yelling into the radio above the sound of battle and pouring rain that they were almost surrounded, were suffering heavy casualties and could not extract themselves, and were just about out of ammunition.17 Then the radio went dead, its antenna shot away. Smith feared the worst, having lost contact – that the platoon had been overrun.18 While the radio operator of 11 Platoon, Private Vic Grice, was replacing the antenna with a spare, he saw a large group of Viet Cong moving around their left flank about 100 metres north of their position. With the radio again operating, an artillery-fire mission was called on to this enemy force. A few minutes later, to the relief of the survivors of 11 Platoon, the artillery shattered the Viet Cong’s attempted flanking movement.19
Meanwhile, back at Nui Dat, the final concert was being called off – not just because of the noise of the guns, but also because of the torrential downpour. However, Little Pattie recalled that ‘the Joy Boys were playing, and the officer in charge of us said “You’ve got to finish – cut the show short, cut the show short. We’re getting out earlier!” And it was a troubled voice that told me that. And I thought, “No, this isn’t right. Something’s going on that’s bigger than we know”. . . Once again people were whisked away from the audience, and once again, even more noise now, from the artillery.’ While the show went on for a little while longer, it was finally shut down unceremoniously by an officer who yelled at the entertainers still on stage to ‘Get off, get off, get off!’
Not long after, Little Pattie was being driven around the base by Lieutenant Ian Savage, who was using his OC’s APC. He got an urgent message to bring the APC back to the unit, so he unceremoniously dropped the Australian entertainer off at the helicopter pad and bolted back to his unit. It had been decided to fly the entertainers back to Vung Tau and out of harm’s way. Earlier, before the battle had commenced, Col Joye had been ‘kidnapped’ by a sergeant who had driven him away to drink with the men – by all accounts, Joye happily obliged. The helicopter with Little Pattie on board took off, minus Joye, and she looked back as it thrashed its way south to see the continuing flash of the Anzac and US artillery. ‘I looked down and I could see lots of orange and red fire, and lots and lots of it. I knew [there] was a big battle happening. And for the very first time then the penny dropped to me that, you know, Australians are in the middle of a war. This is fair dinkum; this isn’t just doing concerts and having a good time. This is really war.’20
Back in the heart of the plantation, Lieutenant David Sabben’s 12 Platoon had made their way to CHQ. He recalled that while they were moving up, the torrential downpour ‘pelted through the rubber-tree canopy and beat into the bare red earth below. Within minutes, the earth had become sticky red mud, staining the greens we wore. As the rain formed puddles on the ground, the force of the heaviest squalls raised a mist of muddy spray almost up to our knees. It was like walking through a thin red mist. When we went to ground, we were lying in it, with only our heads raised above it.’21
Meanwhile, 10 Platoon, north of 11 Platoon, was still moving through the mist, mud and rain in a south-east direction towards their stranded mates, who were desperately fighting for their lives against an overwhelming enemy force. Lieutenant Geoff Kendall recalled advancing with his men about 150 metres; they had yet to receive any fire directed against them, although the sound of firing in front was enormous.22 Private Len Vine of Kendall’s 2 Section recalled: ‘We moved up to support 11 Platoon and the firing . . . it was unbelievable . . . and it was raining. It was very difficult to see, and it was starting to get misty as well.’23 As they pushed towards 11 Platoon, Private Kevin Branch recalled going ‘down and up a bit of a dip, and onto level ground, and came across all these VC . . . with their backs to us! There was a bit of a hump on the ground, and there were thirty to fifty VC, I think.’24 Vine recalled: ‘At first we were very cautious because we were concerned about firing on our own men of 11 Platoon . . . there was so much confusion because of the rain, it just kept pouring down, pouring down.’25 However, it soon became clear from the weapons that the men in front were carrying, and some of the hats they wore, that these were enemy troops.
Kendall estimated that the enemy force just to his left represented a large platoon of about 30–40 Viet Cong. They were assaulting using the same tactics used by the Australians, walking forward, well spaced. They hadn’t seen his platoon as they had gone slightly past them.26 Branch now heard his platoon commander telling them, ‘This is it. Keep going, keep going.’ Branch was thinking, ‘Christ, he’s mad! We’ll be able to shake hands with ’em soon!’ He recalled: ‘We kept going, and with all the commotion going on they didn’t know we were there.’27 The closest Viet Cong to Kendall was just ‘20 yards [18 metres] away and the ones on my left were even closer, and it was bucketing down rain, very hard to see, and it wasn’t until I saw one guy wearing one of those bamboo-type hats that I was sure it was the enemy. We didn’t want to start firing on one of Gordon’s sections. They were wearing similar things to what we were wearing – some had raggy hats, some had bamboo ones, pith helmet type things.’28
Lieutenant Colonel Tran Minh Tam and his staff still believed they were fighting a lone Australian platoon that had strolled into their ambush preparations. He had earlier made the fateful decision to withdraw his forward observation posts, which enabled D Company to arrive unnoticed in the heart of the plantation.29 Some Vietnamese commanders were sending out runners to help with communications, while others were using bugles to provide orders. Soon an order arrived, likely from Tran, at the headquarters of 275 VC Regiment just north of the battle, close to Nui Dat 2. Senior Captain Nguyen Thoi Bung was to advance with a force behind the enemy platoon, to ensure all lines of retreat were cut off. The senior captain immediately sent out a force to come up behind the left flank (north) of the enemy.30 However, this force was taken by surprise by Kendall and his men of 10 Platoon, along with the artillery strike called in moments earlier by Stanley against the enemy force, radioed in by Buick as moving around his northern flank.
Kendall ordered his men to fire. Private Kevin Branch blasted away from the hip with his Armalite, but after ten rounds or so he said to himself, ‘This is no good, I’m wasting them.’ He knelt down and took aim and managed to hit a couple of Viet Cong. ‘They were really surprised,’ he recalled. ‘I think we cleared up about 20 in a few minutes.’ Private Harry Esler was surprised to find he was ‘calm, no fear, because I could see a target’.31 The surviving Viet Cong to the left of 10 Platoon veered away; their cadre could be heard above the sound of battle and the Viet Cong broke contact. As recalled by Kendall, ‘We probably knocked over 15 or so of them, on their right element. The other guys just turned left as on an order. There were bugles blowing all over. I don’t distinctly remember hearing a bugle but they just turned sharp left and trotted away and we were still knocking them over as they went away. They then got out of sight and out of range.’32
That’s when they got hit with concentrated enemy fire – from the front and left. Kendall remembered: ‘We were still on the ground, and we copped it then with a hail of fire . . . and a couple of the guys were wounded, some badly.’33 Like 11 Platoon, they were now fighting defiantly to hold back a strong and determined enemy force. With the first burst of enemy enfilade, Kendall’s radio operator, who was standing beside him, was hit. ‘My signaller, Brian Hornung, was hit with a round through the top of his shoulder. The bullet spun him round and I saw the red patch of blood near his left collarbone. My pla
toon sergeant, Neil Rankin, and the stretcher-bearer treated his wound while Brian, to his great credit, tried to help me get the radio set working. But it was no use – the radio was wrecked.’34 Kendall now had no communications; he and his men were on their own. He looked over at Corporal Ross ‘Black Mac’ McDonald’s section and saw that a number of McDonald’s men had also been hit. They were still under heavy suppressive fire and it was difficult to get orders to his section commanders. The noise was absolutely deafening.35
The young lieutenant recalled that they had been forced to ground and were in a prone position, fighting off the attempts by the Viet Cong to surround them. The 2IC of his forward section on the extreme left, Private John Cash, the machine gunner for 1 Section, was badly wounded in the right leg. Cash recalled that it ‘all went pear-shaped pretty quickly’.36 Kendall reckoned that anyone about a metre above the ground was certain to get hit – the fire was truly horrendous. Kendall and Rankin crawled around as best they could to organise the wounded, telling them to crawl back out of the area and try to get to CHQ, which should be about 300 metres back. Kendall told Cash to ‘tell the boss that the radio’s gone and what does he want me to do’.37 With the help of the wounded 2 Section commander, Corporal Thomas ‘Buddy’ Lea, Cash made his way back to CHQ.38 Not far away, one of Kendall’s men, Private Peter Doyle, was trying to find the ‘biggest puddle of water, or the biggest puddle of mud? And I actually got into the biggest puddle I could find, simply because where the water was lying, that meant there was a depression in the ground. It would have been a depression maybe only 2 or 3 inches [5–8 cm] deep, but it made you a lower target.’39
Back at the Task Force base and still in the TOC, US Lieutenant Gordon Steinbrook vividly remembered hearing that D Company CHQ had lost contact with 11 and 12 platoons:
As I remember, the company commander lost radio contact with his lead platoon, the one that first ran into the VC; and then lost contact with the platoon that had gone up to support the first. The radio blared with the pleading of operators attempting to raise the two platoons. Meanwhile, on the artillery radio net the D Company FOO [Captain Stanley] was calling in fire – first 161 Battery, then the Australian artillery, and then finally the big guns of my own battery. Even though the afternoon monsoon rains were coming down in sheets, we could hear the rumble and roar of Aussie and Kiwi 105s and of A Battery’s six 155mm howitzers as their shells screamed over our heads from the other side of the base camp to fall around the cut-off and surrounded D Company. The orders, appeals, and pleading over the radio continued as D Company tried to re-establish radio communications among themselves as well as calling for assistance from the battalion. The situation got so bad that at one point I heard a terror-stricken radio operator say, ‘They’re gone!’40
The dispersed position of D Company made it difficult to wage a defensive battle. The two forward platoons were out of visual contact; neither could provide supporting fire to the other. The men of 11 Platoon had gone to ground in extended line, which left each flank exposed to enfilade and attack even though they had managed to form some type of defensive position. Artillery support also had to be switched from one platoon to the other, given the overwhelming enemy attack against the dispersed company formation. Both 10 and 11 platoons were fighting individual battles at this point, and even with the available artillery support, things were becoming increasingly desperate. Even so, the dispersed nature of D Company helped them in that the Vietnamese troops found it difficult to find their flanks, and the sudden unexpected appearance of another enemy force in the shape of 10 Platoon convinced the Vietnamese that they had collided with a large enemy force. First they had unexpectedly collided with 11 Platoon, 30 minutes later they were hit by 10 Platoon north of 11 Platoon, and soon they would collide with 12 Platoon, which would move up to try to extract 11 Platoon. Indecision was creeping into the minds of the senior Viet Cong commanders.
Major Smith radioed Lieutenant Colonel Townsend and explained the gravity of his situation, saying that with each minute the situation was deteriorating. He recalled personally asking his CO for urgent reinforcements to be flown into the area by chopper near where he had met B Company. However, Townsend believed a landing zone within the area would not be safe and even so there was no ready reaction force available. Smith understood from his CO that they would be sending out a company to support them in APCs as soon as possible. For the next two hours, Smith would desperately try to bring his dispersed force together in order to define a defensive perimeter – but the odds did not look good.41
At this point, it was only the training and guts of the men from 11 Platoon and the artillery fire being brought to bear against the enemy troops surrounding them that kept the men in the fight. Private Brian Halls recalled that at the time ‘everybody knew what the bloke next to him was doing, and how he was reacting. It was like a very tight family. We all worked very well together. That control came from Sharp, down through the section commanders, and after he was killed the control was still there in Bob Buick, who took over the platoon.’42 It was now that Private Peter Ainslie saw the Viet Cong advancing straight towards their scattered firing line ‘in extended line: it seemed they would attempt to attack very strongly one part of the platoon; that would wither a bit; then they would attack another part very strongly’.43
Halls had a near miss when a sniper targeted his position; he called out to Magnussen, who quickly spotted the enemy sniper and killed him. The sniper was about ‘five rubber-trees out from us, up in the branches. He had killed the person [Australian] on my other side with a bullet in the head. Presumably he got him initially and was coming across the section for the rest of us.’44 The headquarters of 11 Platoon, consisting of Buick and privates Vic Grice and Barry Meller, were being specifically targeted. Maybe the Viet Cong had spotted the radio – regardless, this small party seemed to be taking the brunt of the renewed enemy fire.
Meller would be wounded twice during the battle but somehow survived. Buick realised that leading parties of Viet Cong were less than 30 metres away. He and Meller took turns at spotting and shooting the enemy as fast as they could while trying to remain in as much cover as possible, but just as Meller began to direct fire for Buick, the private was shot in the mouth. Buick later remarked that Meller was lucky it happened when it did, because if he’d had his mouth closed at the time the bullet would have shot away his lower jaw. Instead, it tore out of his right cheek. Buick also recalled that he did not remember Meller flinching – he just kept on talking.45 Buick still had no idea where the rest of the company was, but he yelled to those within hearing distance that the rest of the company was on the way, and the remainder of the battalion was now in APCs racing to the rescue – just hang on a little longer.
17
‘. . . you better put the stuff on top of us’
1650–1700 hours
Back at Nui Dat, at 4.50 p.m., Brigadier Jackson and Lieutenant Colonel Townsend were deciding their next course of action. Townsend wanted to send out A Company to reinforce D Company, but he could not do so until he had cleared it through the Task Force commander. Jackson, however, was concerned for the safety of 1 ATF base. He was still unsure of the whereabouts of the Viet Cong 274 and 275 regiments, although he suspected from Major Smith’s description that at least a battalion from 275 VC Regiment along with D445 VC Battalion was attacking D Company. That left two battalions from that regiment and the whole of 274 VC Regiment unaccounted for.1
If Townsend got his way, the whole of 6 RAR along with 1 ATF base’s artillery would be committed to the battle raging in the rubber plantation. This would leave the base exposed to an enemy attack, even though by now 5 RAR had returned, minus one company. While the artillery could be switched back to support any attack against the base, this would leave 6 RAR with minimal or no artillery support. However, the base was considerably well placed to withstand any serious attack against it, even without 6 RAR – it could call in strategic reserves from II FFV (the US Fi
eld Force) if required, and air support was close by.2
Jackson eventually agreed that A Company could go out to support D Company, but he was not going to let them go until he thought it absolutely necessary. He also agreed that Townsend would accompany A Company to take command of his battalion in the field when it moved out, and it was arranged for US ground-attack aircraft at Bien Hoa air base to be placed on air alert to deliver a napalm strike against the enemy massing in the eastern half of the plantation.3
The official history of the Vietnamese 5th Infantry Division confirms that Smith and his company were facing the three battalions of the Viet Cong 275 Regiment along with D445 Battalion. However, the Vietnamese were suffering heavy casualties from the Anzac artillery:
The enemy began to fire artillery and their rear elements split into two wings along the axis of Route 52 to concentrate on striking and rolling up the 2nd Battalion . . . The 3rd Battalion and an element of the 1st Battalion attacked the enemy in the decisive area of the battlefield. The Australian troops regrouped and resisted while calling intense artillery fire into our vanguard elements and the blocking elements of the 1st Battalion and D445 Battalion . . . the situation of our leading elements was difficult due to the enemy’s artillery and firepower that blocked us, and we were unable to achieve encirclement of the enemy battalion. The 1st Battalion and the 3rd Battalion suffered high casualties. At 5 p.m., the battlefield headquarters ordered our units to withdraw to the regrouping position.4
The Battle of Long Tan Page 15