when we were on shore leave you bought brown paper, and you used to wrap the brown paper round your body, then put your – of course, the singlets in those days, they were like a thermal type thing – then pull your singlet down over that, then your jumper over that, and then you used to cut the brown paper in strips and wrap it round your legs, and the brown paper would act as an insulation against the cold.15
The truly amazing thing here is that Murchison still reached such high operational standards. The ship overcame immense difficulties of weather, operating conditions and crew training. This success enabled the ship to operate safely and consistently in the Han River estuary, prepared to conduct not only the naval gunfire bombardment tasks, but also to respond the North Korean ground force attacks in response.
In September 1951, Murchison was involved in several closerange battles with North Korean forces that had concealed positions on the northern shore of the estuary. The ranges were very short, around 1800 metres (or one nautical mile) and on some occasions much less. This was point blank range for Murchison’s main armament of two twin 4-inch guns, and not much more than that for its secondary armament of 40-millimetre Bofors guns. The Australian ship returned fire, but the results were inconclusive and the incidents demonstrated the risks of such operations by large ships. The restricted waters meant the initiative lay with the North Koreans, who could chose if and when to engage from ashore. Murchison was hit numerous times by machine-gun fire and occasionally by some larger shells, but no serious damage was done, nor were there any deaths. The engagements did, however, reflect very well on the tactical and operational standards that the vessel had achieved, and this had a widespread positive effect on the Australian Navy’s reputation as a fighting service, particularly because on the first occasion she was so engaged Murchison had a senior US Admiral on board to observe the bombardment operations. Murchison spent more time in the Han estuary than any other ship and was light-heartedly dubbed the ‘Baron of the Han’ at the end of her deployment in February 1952, indicative of the esteem in which she was held by Allied forces.
Sadly, on 2 February 1952, while en route to the naval base at Sasebo in Japan, Murchison collided at night in rough weather with an unlit South Korean motorised fishing junk, with the loss of several of the junk’s crew. In the course of the rescue operation, the ship’s Chief Bosun’s Mate, Petty Officer Reg Farrington, jumped into the water to help save the fishermen. Farrington had also been responsible for much of the training of the Murchison’s junior seamen, and as the captain of the after 4-inch gun mount had played a crucial role first in forming them into a highly skilled gun crew and then leading them in the ship’s numerous close actions in the Han River. His courage in action and in the rescue at sea was enormous. While this was never formally recognised by any award, there is no doubt that Farrington is yet another small portion of Australia’s naval history that is worth to public knowing much, much better.
The purpose of tracing Murchison’s time in Korea is two-fold. The fact that its remarkable story, replete with drama, danger and bravery, is unknown outside specialist circles is testament to the traditional inability for naval history to find resonance with the general public, in stark contrast to the land-based military history. It is in this regard but one vignette of a vast trove of under-appreciated stories. At the same time, Murchison’s adventure in Korea is a story of a crew and its achievements under very difficult and dangerous circumstances, not an account of the type of singular spectacular and climactic engagement resulting in sunken vessels that has so often dominated what is known of naval history in this country. Murchison is an example of what can and should be done to help rectify the silence that pervades far too much of Australia’s naval history.
Further reading
The Naval Historical Society of Australia,
The Sea Power Centre – Australia,
T.R. Frame, Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy, Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1992.
T.R. Frame, J.V.P. Goldrick & P.D. Jones, Reflections on the Royal Australian Navy, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1991.
J. Grey, Up Top: The Royal Australian Navy and Southeast Asian Conflicts 1955–1972, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.
N. Lambert, Australia’s Naval Inheritance: Imperial Maritime Strategy and the Australia Station 1880–1909, Papers in Australian Maritime Affairs, Maritime Studies Program, Canberra, 1998.
I. Pfennigwerth, Tiger Territory: The Untold Story of the Royal Australian Navy in Southeast Asia from 1948 to 1971, Rosenburg Publishing, Sydney, 2008.
—— , A Man of Intelligence: The Life of Captain Theodore Eric Nave, Australian Codebreaker Extraordinary, Rosenburg Publishing, Sydney, 2006.
D. Stevens (ed.), The Royal Australian Navy, Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001.
On HMAS Murchison:
V. Fazio, River Class Frigates of the Royal Australian Navy: A Story of Ships Built in Australia, Slipway Publications, Sydney, 2003.
R. O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War: Combat Operations, vol. 2, Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1985.
W.O.C. Roberts, ‘Gun battle on the Han’, Naval Historical Review, 1(2), eptember 1976.
[9]
‘LANDMARK’ BATTLES AND THE MYTHS OF VIETNAM
Bob Hall and Andrew Ross
Like all wars, the ‘American War’ in Vietnam is shrouded in myth and fabrication. From an Australian perspective, many of these concern the diplomatic and political processes leading to our involvement in the war, or the after-effects of the conflict on those who served there. This chapter focuses more specifically on the myths arising from the combat operations of the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF). Many of these legends and folklore of combat were inherited from the ‘American War’ as a whole, and in popular and academic imagination alike have often been applied to 1ATF combat operations. The first of these myths is that the 1ATF combat experience in South Vietnam consisted of a series of major ‘landmark’ battles with the Viet Cong (VC) and the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN).1 Australian military historiography of the war tends to concentrate on these landmark battles to the exclusion of smaller, but far more numerous ‘contacts’.2 It also tends to see these battles in terms of conventional war: as simple contests of military power stripped of their political import. The focus on such landmark battles, and the failure to see them in their political and diplomatic contexts, distorts our understanding of the war.
Another common myth of combat in the Vietnam War is that the enemy controlled the jungle and dominated the night, while the forces of the United States and its allies – including 1ATF – flailed ineptly because they lacked the enemy’s superior local knowledge and were unused to operating in these conditions. These popular imaginings are also incorrect, and possibly arise from the failure of Australian military historiography to address the full spectrum of Australian operations including the minor contacts. Finally, this chapter examines the iconic weapons of the war: the AK47 favoured by the enemy forces and the M16 issued to Australian troops. The former took on an almost mythical status and rapidly developed a reputation as vastly superior to anything the United States and its allies could field. In particular it was seen as a vastly more capable and effective weapon than the M16. There is no doubt that the AK47 was robust and effective but it by no means deserves the elevated reputation it seems to have acquired in comparison with the M16.
As the Australian historian Jeff Grey has made clear, like other conflicts the war in Vietnam was not of uniform intensity throughout the country.3 The northern provinces of the Republic of Vietnam, which made up 1 Corps Tactical Zone (CTZ, or I Corps), and the western provinces of 3 CTZ near the Cambodian border, were the sites of numerous large-scale battles slightly similar to the battles of a conventional war. They sometimes involved divisional or regimental-sized forces – thousands of men – and the application of h
eavy firepower – tanks, artillery and air strikes. Enemy casualties were often very high.
However, the Australian area of operations in Vietnam was well away from these hot-spots of activity. The Australians focused their combat effort on Phuoc Tuy Province, on the east coast of Vietnam. In this province and its surrounds, the war predominantly took the form of a classic counterinsurgency, characterised by thousands of small, often inconclusive fire-fights. These were so fleeting, involved so few participants on either side, and were so open to doubt as to which side might have ‘won’ them that to describe them as ‘battles’ would be inappropriate. Instead, they were known as ‘contacts’, the term nicely conveying the implication of the fleeting, often chance encounter which, in nearly all cases, they were. The Australian Task Force experienced about 3900 such contacts.
Nor was the war uniform over time. There were, for example, peaks of VC and PAVN activity that took the form of general offensives, and from 1969 onwards what might be called ‘high points’. These were often followed by a lull in the fighting while both sides regrouped. During enemy offensives or ‘high points’, the general pattern of small contacts was interrupted by ‘landmark’ battles. These engagements had their own distinct characteristics. They involved a 1ATF force greater than a rifle company (about 120 men) engaged in combat against a larger – sometimes much larger – VC or PAVN force. They were all initiated by the enemy, often after a long period of planning. They often involved a ruse, by which the enemy drew a force out of the 1ATF base into ground that had been selected and prepared – ‘luring the tiger from the jungle’ as the enemy called it. These landmark battles were always characterised by a strong tendency on the enemy’s part to stay and fight. Unlike the fleeting contacts, which usually lasted just minutes, some of these battles lasted for several hours. They often resulted in high enemy casualties. Usually, the enemy sought a political as well as a military outcome. Consequently, these battles were few in number – only about 16 in total. Such engagements include the battles of Long Tan (18 August 1966), Operation Bribie (17 February 1967), Baria, Long Dien and Fire Support Base Anderson during the Tet Offensive of 1968 (in the period 1–19 February 1968), Fire Support Bases Coral (13 and 16 May 1968) and Balmoral (24 and 28 May 1968), Long Dien (22–23 August 1968), Binh Ba (6–7 June 1969) and Nui Le (21 September 1971). Despite their small number, these battles, and the battle of Long Tan in particular, have tended to influence the public conception of the Vietnam War.
The largest and most iconic of the landmark battles for Australia was the battle of Long Tan. It is often depicted as an heroic struggle by an under-strength D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6RAR), of just 108 men against the combined enemy forces of the 275th VC Regiment and D445 Local Force Battalion, numbering about 2500 troops. Over a period of more than three hours, D Company was subjected to wave after wave of enemy assault, taking many casualties in the process. Pinned by overwhelming enemy small arms fire, with accumulating wounded and ammunition running low, the company faced annihilation. But in a display of immense courage, determination and outstanding tactical skill, it survived the enemy onslaught.
What is often overlooked, however, is that the Australian company was supported by a regiment of 105-millimetre artillery, a battery of medium artillery, air support in the form of airstrikes, an emergency resupply of ammunition by airdrop from helicopters of the 9th Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, and in the closing stages of the battle by the timely arrival of an armoured personnel carrier squadron carrying another company of reinforcements from 6RAR.4 Elements of a third company from 6RAR also soon arrived on the battlefield. The Australians then, formed what would later be termed a ‘combined arms team’: a balanced force of infantry, armour, artillery and air power all linked together under a single command and co-ordinated using radio communications. By contrast, the enemy force at Long Tan (and the other landmark battles) consisted only of light infantry troops with no armour or air support, poor communications below battalion level, and with no capacity to resupply themselves with ammunition mid-battle. The VC and PAVN troops at Long Tan also lacked indirect fire support. The field artillery supporting the Australians at Long Tan fired over 3100 rounds, while another 242 rounds of medium artillery were fired by supporting US Army artillery units. In contrast, the enemy force managed only a few mortar rounds in support of their troops.
Without effective indirect fire support, the enemy forces at Long Tan (and other such battles) relied on other factors to achieve success. Since they held the initiative, they could determine, within certain limits, where and when the battle would take place. While we do not know the details of enemy planning for the battle of Long Tan, we do know that typically these major battles were very carefully designed, the ground carefully selected and prepared, with soldiers briefed and thoroughly rehearsed.5 Again, however, once battle began, VC/PAVN forces relied above all on massed infantry and the acceptance of high casualties in pursuit of carefully considered political and tactical objectives.
Holding the initiative gave the enemy in Phuoc Tuy considerable advantages, but once battle was joined these advantages were soon lost in the face of the flexibility, heavy firepower and armoured mobility usually found in the combined arms team. It is no surprise then, that the ‘butcher’s bill’ at Long Tan dramatically favoured the Australians: 245 enemy dead were found on the battlefield and another three were taken prisoner, with an unknown but probably large number of dead and wounded carried away by their comrades. In contrast, 17 Australians were killed in action at Long Tan, one died of wounds and 24 were wounded.
The casualties incurred in other landmark battles were similarly one-sided. At the battle in Baria, over 1–2 February 1968, an Australian rifle company mounted in armoured personnel carriers lost seven men killed, to the enemy’s 42 killed. At the battle of Long Dien, on 22 August 1968, a 1ATF force including tanks and armoured personnel carriers killed 40 enemy for the price of 12 Australians wounded. At Binh Ba, on 6–7 June 1969, an Australian rifle company in armoured personnel carriers with four Centurion tanks in support killed 99 enemy for the loss of one Australian killed and 10 wounded. Such was the power of the combined arms team.
But the 1ATF ‘victories’ in these battles were curious because they appear to have had little impact on the enemy’s ability to continue combat operations for the duration of the 1ATF tour of duty (from May 1966 to September 1971). These more usual operations were of a much lower intensity, taking the form of the thousands of fleeting contacts in which the average enemy strength was just six. Heavy firepower such as the artillery or airdelivered weapons, which had such decisive effect in the landmark battles, had little effect in these smaller contacts. Artillery and mortar ‘blocking’ or ‘channeling’ fire was sometimes applied with the aim of causing enemy casualties as they withdrew from the contact, but it is unlikely that this had any significant effect.
There were about 3900 such contacts between 1ATF and VC/PAVN troops over the period of the Australian presence in Phuoc Tuy. If we consider the sixteen landmark battles as a group, they resulted in 4075 Australian troops in combat with a total of about 8180 enemy soldiers, and they resulted in 287 Australian compared with 1010 enemy casualties. When we consider the 3900 contacts as a group, however, they collectively involved 82 700 Australians in combat against 20 980 VC/PAVN soldiers, and resulted in 1147 Australian and 4480 enemy casualties.6 In terms of both effort and losses to both sides, therefore, such contacts far surpassed the landmark battles. Collectively, the contacts had a greater destructive effect on the VC/PAVN forces operating in Phuoc Tuy than did the much more famous battles. Clearly then, the battle of the contacts was the real war that Australians fought in the province, the landmark battles were aberrations.
There is no question that VC/PAVN commanders in Phuoc Tuy were highly experienced and competent. Many had been fighting for many years before the Australians arrived. They must have known that large-scale battles would lead to military de
feat at a high cost in terms of casualties. Then why did the enemy initiate the ‘landmark’ battles?
The answer is that these battles do not represent simply a string of outstanding Australian military successes. The enemy fought them not to defeat the Australians on the battlefield, but primarily for political purposes. Speaking years later about the Tet Offensive of 1968, General Vo Nguyen Giap, North Vietnam’s chief strategist and Minister for Defence, acknowledged the importance of political and diplomatic objectives in large-scale VC/PAVN battles. He said ‘for us, you know, there is no such thing as a single strategy. Ours is always a synthesis, simultaneously military, political and diplomatic.’7 Those Australian Army officers responsible for formulating doctrine for the conduct of ‘Counter Revolutionary Warfare’ – a term then regarded as interchangeable with counterinsurgency – would have agreed. Australian doctrine stated that ‘counter insurgency operations are simultaneously political and military in their nature. There is no purely military solution.’8 Both sides then, understood that the combat had a political as well as military purpose. Yet in our subsequent thinking about the war, we have all but lost touch with the possible political and diplomatic objectives that the enemy may have had. Seeing these landmark battles only in their conventional military terms – as purely military contests – absolves us from wondering whether the enemy achieved their political and diplomatic aims. What is more, if they did achieve them, then we may be forced to reconsider whether they ‘lost’ these battles at all, at least in these wider terms.
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