New Zealand 161 Field Battery had been assigned to and affiliated with 6 RAR since arriving at Nui Dat. Major Harry Honnor of the battery and Townsend had known each since their days at Duntroon. Now the major was located with Townsend at his HQ and controlling the fire of the three Anzac batteries with coordination from Townsend. Honnor was relying on the dependable Stanley to provide him with coordinates and a brief of what was happening in the plantation. From this, Honnor selected areas and ordered the fire. The overall commander of the artillery regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Richmond Cubis, was based with Brigadier David Jackson and kept him informed of all developments well before they would reach him through infantry channels.15
Captain George Bindley of 105 Battery had earlier cut short his shower on hearing all 18 guns of the regiment, along with the six US howitzers, thundering with deadly intent to the east. He rushed to the Battery Command Post to find out what the hell was going on, but knew soon enough as he listened to the radio traffic. He headed for his battery. When he got there he found all his men had left the concert and were pouring fire into the enemy positions as defined by Stanley back in Long Tan Plantation. Bindley recalled a series of ‘missions followed with quite unprecedented calls for ten rounds fire for effect, plus repeats. It quickly became clear that if fire was to be sustained at this rate, ammunition was going to be a big problem.’16 As he later admitted, he needn’t have worried, as the sergeant major and section commanders had that in hand, making sure the rounds kept coming as needed. All Bindley had to do was monitor ammunition handling – which was no small job in itself, especially given the urgency of the situation.
Typically each gun would have 100 rounds on hand with another 300 in reserve in the battery dump. The physical ‘effort involved in moving 105mm ammunition rounds should not be underestimated,’ recalled Bindley. ‘A box containing two 105mm rounds weighs just under 100 pounds [45 kg], and unpacking poses special problems. It is crated and packed to withstand rough handling and does not fall apart when needed.’17 Ammunition boxes were braced with steel rods that had to be removed using butterfly nuts, which in the tropical climate of Vietnam could (and did) become corroded and bent. Sometimes it took brute force to get a box open. When the shells were removed and laid out they had to be inspected by the senior ammunition member of the gun crew, and then, after each shell was fused it was loaded, requiring strength, stamina and skill. Any lapse of concentration could result in injuries including broken bones and fingers cut off by the breech block – and worse.
The seven-man crews were reacting instinctively to the demands, with all their training and experience coming together. The rhythm had been set: shells were unboxed, inspected, fused, loaded, fired, firing positions adjusted as required, and the fast accumulation of empty shell casings from the batteries removed. The gunners were now firing between five and ten rounds per minute, with each shrapnel shell having a killing zone of 30–50 metres.18 Stanley kept calling in his requests, and the rain kept pouring.19
Meanwhile, Captain Barry Crompton and his men of Australian 131 Divisional Locating Battery were frustrated by the amount of ordnance flying around, which made it impossible for them to pinpoint the exact position of the enemy mortars. There were ‘so many rounds in the air that you couldn’t pick up what was incoming and what was outgoing. It just completely flooded the radar. There was no positive information, mainly because of the heat of the battle.’20
Also concerned was Lieutenant Trevor Gardiner of A Company, 1 Platoon, who had earlier returned from their three-day patrol. He had been assigned the role of battalion paying officer and after a quick shower made his way to battalion headquarters to collect the payroll. While he was there, things began to heat up, with ‘sustained artillery missions being fired. I called in to the Battalion HQ Command Post to ask what was going on and was promptly chucked out.’21
Back in the plantation, Major Smith informed his CO that the enemy force they were facing was at least a company, but more likely a Viet Cong battalion from 275 VC Regiment. Even with Anzac counter-battery fire, the enemy mortaring continued. At 4.36 p.m., Smith requested battalion headquarters to send out armed Chinook helicopters or to call in an airstrike to suppress the enemy mortar fire that was now originating from the north at 488672 – Nui Dat 2. He also stated that his wounded would need to be evacuated by helicopter and requested that the choppers stand by.22
Forward of Smith’s position, Sharp was still trying to bring the men of 6 Section back into the centre of the line. Sergeant Buick recalled that the young officer was reporting back to company headquarters by radio.23 Private Peter Ainslie was wondering how ‘any of us could have survived. Two fellows were killed . . . The platoon fell back and attempted to get into all-round defence.’24 However, they were pinned down and any movement meant almost certain death. It was now that a large enemy formation – about a company in strength – begun to advance upon 11 Platoon to their front. These troops were in an extended line, 2 metres apart, and moved forward at a steady, purposeful pace firing from the hip. Sharp’s men poured fire into the line and the Viet Cong went to ground, taking heavy casualties. There was no way that 11 Platoon, even if they left their dead behind, could extract themselves from their position.25
Sharp was attempting to push back another ferocious enemy attack along his front, with increasing pressure also being brought to bear on his right. The fire was intense and the young officer must have known that they had come up against at least a battalion of enemy troops. Buick believed that 6 Section to his left had been virtually wiped out except for one or two soldiers, leaving just 4 Section in the centre, platoon HQ section just behind it, and 5 Section covering the right – all had taken casualties.26 Private John Heslewood recalled that he and his mates could see down the lines of trees, and the enemy troops were forming up and moving forward:
They had green pith helmets on and that’s when we woke up that these weren’t ordinary bloody Viet Cong [the NVA veterans from 3rd Battalion, 275 VC Regiment]. They were probably forming up to 200 metres away, maybe a little bit longer. You could clearly see then coming together getting their orders and they started rolling forward. Then we got our artillery . . . the artillery kept coming down in front of us and it was spot on . . . it was bloody great . . . They seemed to be attacking all along the line and they weren’t running, they were walking at a fast pace with a rifle in their hand. They were sort of – we were talking about it and you’d say these blokes are likely bloody zombies the way they were moving in. They didn’t run and didn’t duck or dive, just kept walking in at a fast pace.27
The front line of the enemy had now gone to ground just 75 metres from 11 Platoon, making it difficult for the Australians to provide accurate return fire – not only because of the cover the enemy had taken, but also because the rain continued to pour down, making it difficult to see and hear clearly. Australians and Vietnamese, however, each tried to gain the upper hand, as recalled by Buick, as the Viet Cong attacked using fire and movement while they now numbered only about 20 effective rifles. Each of his men was hugging the ground and defending his position, all waiting for the remainder of D Company, somewhere behind them, to come up in support.28
It was now that the conscientious Sharp, the young National Service officer who had commanded his men from the front, was killed instantly with a bullet to the throat as he exposed himself to call in artillery fire against Nui Dat 2. He was on his knees trying to observe the position of the enemy and where the Anzac shells were falling when he was hit. Lance Corporal Robbins remembered seeing ‘Gordon Sharp, who seemed to be controlling things pretty well with the radio at that time, stand up . . . that was when he went’.29 Regimental signaller Graham Smith, part of CHQ, recalled how ‘Sharp was trying to keep things together . . . and he was to his credit kneeling up and trying to ascertain exactly where to have his artillery put and he got shot’.30 Lieutenant Gordon Sharp was the first National Service officer to be killed in Vietnam.
Not far
away, between Nui Dat and Long Tan, Lieutenant John O’Halloran of B Company recalled listening to the radio net and being stunned to hear the voice of Sharp cut short and then Buick yelling into the radio. He instantly knew that that his boyhood friend was dead.31
For the men of 6 Section, 11 Platoon, the battle was over. Almost all had been killed in the first ten minutes of combat. Clinging on desperately were the wounded Corporal Robbins and Private Richmond. The Viet Cong kept coming on and were now within metres of the two men; both believed their time was up. Robbins recalled: ‘They came right to us . . . Because at that stage I was shot, and I was playing dead, I could hear them – they were just behind some bushes and the rubber was coming down with the artillery. I could hear them and see them . . . We were spread out a fair bit. There was a gap between us probably 5 to 8 metres . . . and the noise was unbelievable.’32
Somewhere close by, Richmond saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and found himself looking straight down the barrel of a rifle – but just as the enemy soldier fired, Richmond dropped his head behind his pack and the bullet slammed into it, missing him by centimetres. He had no idea what to do, but instinctively grabbed a grenade from his pack. Just as he pulled the pin, an enemy mortar bomb exploded and he took a piece of shrapnel in the left side of his back, but the fire killed the enemy soldier outright. He lay there feeling like someone had hit him in the back with a sledgehammer. He didn’t have any pain at this point – that would come later – but was extremely worried as he had no feeling from his torso down. He was too afraid to look back, fearing what he might see. However, within minutes he got feeling back in his legs, which gave him some relief. He was still holding the primed grenade in his hand, with no way of safely getting rid of it. He was worried that if he threw it, it might hit a rubber tree and bounce back on him or any of his mates who were still alive. Then he remembered having a rubber band around one of his trouser legs: he reached down and managed to remove it and wrap it around the lever of the grenade. He lay there among his dead mates and the exploding barrage, the only thing stopping the grenade from going off a flimsy rubber band. It was about then that he passed out.33
16
‘. . . tell the boss that the radio’s gone’
1640–1650 hours
Sergeant Bob Buick at this point reckoned he was about to die. More than a third of the men under his command were either dead or wounded. At 4.43 p.m., battalion headquarters radioed Major Smith: ‘Have dust-off [medical evacuation by helicopter] standing by, details later.’1 Even if word was passed back to Buick, it probably meant nothing to him as there was no way the wounded could reach the helicopters for evacuation. They were on their own. Private John Heslewood recalled:
5 Section [had] moulded in with 4 Section – I knew all the blokes and we were all settled on the ground in our position . . . There was myself and Brian Halls (he was from 5 Section), and there was Allen May, Barry Mags [Magnussen] and Doug Fabian from 5 Section, and we were firing from four rubber trees and I know our machine gunner had gone to the right – they’d gone forward on the right and Kenny Gant was the gunner . . . Ron Eglinton was the other bloke on the gun . . . how far right they went I’m not sure. When we were training the word was for the machine gun to go to the high ground or to the right, so when the firing started they’d gone to the right and how far forward they went or whether we pulled back a little bit when the firing started I’m not too sure.2
Anzac and US artillery fire continued to explode against the reported mortar position on Nui Dat 2. However, Buick and his men probably did not notice it with the intense enemy small-arms, RPG and mortar fire now targeting their position, not to mention the monsoonal downpour. The enemy began to move around 11 Platoon’s exposed southern (right) flank, past Corporal William Moore’s 5 Section. Private Ron Eglinton, with the machine gun of the section, was positioned a bit forward of the line. At this point, he couldn’t see any Viet Cong from his position as he was placed along the extreme right flank. Private Kenny Gant, who was his section’s 2IC, kept screaming out to him ‘Can you see them?’, but he couldn’t as they were coming in diagonally across on his left out of sight. It wasn’t long before the Viet Cong started moving around towards the right and Eglinton saw them. He recalled that their firepower was increasing with every minute and reckoned a number of his mates had been killed early on from the intense fire. The enemy seemed to be probing their position, unsure of the Australians’ strength and exact location.3
It was then that 21-year-old butcher and national serviceman Private Kenny Gant was killed. Eglinton needed someone to help feed the rounds into the machine gun – he was in real trouble. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong human wave pushed ever closer. Eglinton managed to keep up a stream of fire against the approaching enemy but recalled that ‘it didn’t seem to perturb the Viet Cong . . . they just kept coming and coming. Most of the other blokes around me had been killed, certainly Kenny Gant and Jim Houston.’4 Buick saw Eglinton’s initial fire cut a deadly swathe through the enemy ranks, inflicting heavy casualties. Eglinton continued to fire at the oncoming waves of enemy troops even though mud in the ammunition belt clogged the feeding mechanism of his M60 machine gun. Buick recalled how Eglinton overcame ‘stoppages, and at times only firing one round at a time, he kept the VC under fire. Ron, a national serviceman, was later awarded the Military Medal for his actions at Long Tan. It was his efforts that prevented the Viet Cong from assaulting and overrunning the platoon from the south, and although wounded he maintained his tenuous position and kept his machine gun firing.’5
With every passing minute the fire against 11 Platoon – originating from many positions, some less than 50 metres away – became more intense. It was not only small-arms fire that continued to tear into the platoon’s position. Their perimeter was defined by 70 square metres of rain-sodden mud and sentinel-like rubber trees, some of which were now just shattered trunks from the RPG and mortar fire. The noise made communications near impossible: the sound of battle was deafening in such a small, deadly space. Buick had to yell into the radio and repeat his messages numerous times before he could be understood, and the Vietnamese were trying to jam their radio frequencies. The sound of battle was a battle in itself. Men just 5 metres away had to shout at the top of their voices to be heard and understood, and hearing beyond that distance was hopeless.6
Buick ordered Corporal Jeff Duroux, commanding 4 Section, to try to make contact with 6 Section. Duroux’s section was forward of the platoon headquarters by some 15 metres. Buick recalled that only about 12 of the platoon were capable of firing and there seemed to be no one alive in 6 Section; 4 Section had by now suffered, as best as he could make out, two dead and a number of wounded, and he had no idea how 5 Section was coping on the right. The situation was extremely grim and he recalled that the Anzac artillery fire was still not close enough.7 Buick radioed Captain Morrie Stanley, who was effectively calling in the artillery. The conscientious New Zealand officer was the crucial link for all indirect fire support from the artillery of the regiment. Buick recalled that it was Stanley’s efforts in calling in the artillery and adjusting the fire of the guns, along with the skills of the 105mm gun crews back in Nui Dat, that allowed them to stay in the fight.8 Corporal John Robbins also recalled that ‘Bob Buick did a great job with calling in the artillery. He called it in more or less pretty on top of us – he had to, because that’s where they were . . . he excelled there, I thought.’9 Indeed, Smith stated that if it hadn’t been for Buick’s ability to call in and direct the artillery fire, 11 Platoon would have been overrun, followed by the rest of the company.10
At 4.46 p.m., Stanley called in another artillery strike against 487669 and ‘walked the destruction back and forth, and to the right, over a 200-metre area’.11 The avalanche of exploding shells provided air bursts forward of the Australian position, causing terrible destruction to the Viet Cong in the open, including those few who had climbed the trees to better snipe from as well as observe.1
2 John Heslewood recalled: ‘There were odd tree bursts – one might explode in the tree on the way down, but none of the blokes I was with got hurt by any of it. It just landed spot-on all the time. You’d see all these 50 or 60 blokes coming at you and all of a sudden they’re blown away. The blokes would start cheering, “Have a look at that!”. . . The artillery was just spot on, that’s all I can say.’13 Even so, it still looked hopeless as the Viet Cong were pushing their advantage in overwhelming numbers and their main attacking force was now within 50 metres of the scattered and dispersed Australian firing line, with others even closer.
The renewed Anzac barrage was now falling behind the front line of the enemy while the US howitzers conducted counter-battery fire against Nui Dat 2. While the Anzac shelling was undoubtedly causing many casualties to the Vietnamese to the rear, the immediate threat were those to their front who could be seen advancing towards them. This was a typical Viet Cong tactic when fighting an enemy with artillery support: ‘holding the belt with one hand and punching with the other’. It required close contact with the enemy to deny them artillery support from the fear of killing their own men. As stated by Nguyen Thanh Hong, ‘If we were to confront the Americans in a conventional manner over a protracted period, we would be wiped out by their firepower. To be victorious over the Americans, we would have to exploit surprise and attack aggressively. By close combat – “grabbing them by their belts” – we would be able to make their firepower ineffective.’14 Buick later recalled: ‘Looking back, this was when I really became frightened, not for myself but I could see 11 Platoon being overrun and thereby opening the gate and the possibility of the whole company being wiped out.’15
The Battle of Long Tan Page 14
