Townsend was given a relatively free hand by Brigadier David Jackson to conduct operations over the next three days as part of Operation Smithfield. D Company of 5 RAR, under the command of Major Paul Greenhalgh, was also placed under his command. Townsend wanted his force to move back into the battlefield area in the APCs at first light21 but, as recalled by Major Smith, Townsend was distinctly unhappy that the Task Force commander was apparently trying to get in on the act, taking kudos away from 6 RAR.22 Buick also remembered Townsend resenting the intrusion of a 5 RAR company, which would make it a Task Force operation. That said, Smith himself was unimpressed with Townsend, as he was doing exactly the same thing in relation to downplaying D Company’s role in the battle by emphasising that it was a battalion operation that had started on 17 August, with the battle for Long Tan being part of a broader 6 RAR operation. Indeed, some reports and histories have ‘deleted’ Operation Vendetta from the pages of history and replaced it with Operation Smithfield, indicating that the latter operation commenced on 17 August, as opposed to the final hour of 18 August.23 There were two distinct operations; Operation Vendetta led by Major Smith which resulted in the battle of Long Tan; and the second Operation Smithfield commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Townsend which was involved in following up the enemy after the battle.
At 3 a.m. Townsend called his orders group together in one of the carriers and issued verbal orders for operations to be conducted on 19 August:
6 RAR will be reinforced by more APCs and Delta Company 5 RAR. Provided the reinforcements arrive in time, our advance to contact will start at dawn. Delta Company 6 RAR and Delta Company 5 RAR, both mounted in APCs, will lead the advance. Alpha and Charlie Companies are to set off on foot back towards the battlefield and then mount the APCs used initially to carry the two Delta Companies. Alpha Company’s task is to then sweep the area to the east and south of the battlefield, to engage any enemy found and to protect Delta Company’s clearance of the battlefield.24
At 4 a.m. Townsend requested that all available APCs bring in his battalion headquarters, the men from C Company under the command of Major Brian McFarlane, and a section of mortars. He also obtained a US helicopter lift for D Company, 5 RAR. The first of these reinforcements left Nui Dat at 6.55 a.m.25 Townsend was making plans for the movement back into the plantation and clearance of the battlefield, including follow-up operations against the Viet Cong; however, he was not to conduct operations beyond the range of the artillery, which severely limited his ability to pursue the fleeing enemy.26
29
‘He’s still trying to dig in’
Private Alan Parr, the machine gunner in Lieutenant David Sabben’s 12 Platoon, was awake and lying beside a carrier as the sun begun to rise: ‘I honestly thought I’d never see another sunrise and to be lying there near an APC and see that sun come up was the most glorious thing in my life at that time.’1
Corporal Peter Short, the A Company medic, recalled seeing in the early-morning light some of the men from D Company: they looked like old men. He nearly walked ‘right past my friend Phil Dobson (Delta Company Medic). There was something very different about them.’2 Another from A Company, Corporal Ross Smith, awoke to the sound of the US helicopters bringing the men of D Company, 5 RAR in to the makeshift helipad just beyond the plantation. He recalled a friend of his from this company, Bob Simpski, on seeing him saying, ‘God, mate, you look as if you’ve been through bloody hell. How are you?’3 An exhausted Corporal Rod Armstrong of A Company awoke and recalled looking around their harbour position and noting that ‘it was nothing like a textbook, blokes were just where they’d dropped. I saw Bob Buick standing on a carrier – they must have slept around them or in them.’4 Indeed, Sergeant Buick distinctly recalled that as dawn broke the birds were singing and as he stood on the carrier he saw a circle of APCs with his men crammed into the perimeter of the small clearing created for the medevac helicopters. He recalled thinking that the day was going to be a great test for them all.5
Sabben saw the men of D Company, 5 RAR being flown in by helicopters and recalled how some put down their packs and set up for a quick brew and breakfast. He made his way over to them – he and his men had been forced to leave their own packs in the battlefield area and they asked questions about the battle but seemed more interested in their role and what they would be doing next. He couldn’t help them, but knew that Major Smith had an orders group planned for 0800hrs; he told them the orders for the day would be given then – they would know soon enough.6 With the wounding of Sergeant James Todd of Sabben’s platoon, Corporal Merv McCulloch was acting sergeant. He and Sabben went through the platoon roll and decided that, even with their casualties, 12 Platoon would maintain a three-section structure rather than merging into two sections. This meant that two of the sections would be at half-strength.7
Meanwhile, Major Brian McFarlane had been among the first to arrive in the morning to get orders for C Company. His company, under the command of Captain Peter Harris, would arrive later via APCs. He remembered meeting Major Smith for the first time after the battle. Their association in combat operations went back ‘ten years to Charlie Company 2 RAR in Malaya and now I was so proud of him and his company that for the first time in my life I was speechless. I could only stand there like a dodo and shake his hand. I hoped that no hint of a tear would well up and invade my eyes to display my emotions. Speech would not come. I let go of the poor fellow’s hand and went off without a word to seek out the colonel and receive my orders.’8
Earlier, Private Peter Doyle of 10 Platoon had woken up in the mud and all he had was the clothes he stood up in, the webbing and the ammo belt: ‘Our packs, we dropped in the initial contact. We were stuffed and far from home, rotten dirty, as usual. By then, the brass were flying in, in helicopters, there were APCs – there was more people there than you could point a stick at.’9 Indeed, Private Terry Burstall remembered the helicopters bringing in a lot of ‘bigwigs from somewhere all telling us what bloody great fellows we were, which didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to anyone very much. All we knew was we’d been caught in something pretty rugged and were lucky to have got out at all.’10
Private John Heslewood recalled something similar, with daylight seeing the arrival of all the ‘experts and the heroes from the Task Force and Vung Tau . . . all the people who wanted to be involved once it was all over. All I wanted to do was get out of the bloody joint. I didn’t want to be there at all.’11 Signaller Graham Smith recalled how it was a bit of a bad ‘joke because time had pushed on and nothing was happening, and we still hadn’t begun to go back into the battlefield and the Task Force commander had come out [along with] the press and just arseholes all coming out to have a look, and they really gave all of us the shits. We just wanted to get back in and retrieve our mates, and it just wasn’t happening.’12
Buick later described with some understandable bitterness how the ‘wonder workers’ arrived by helicopter from numerous headquarters. These were the ‘blokes who slept in beds with sheets, had three cooked meals served to them and always had a cold beer on call. They flew in from Nui Dat, Saigon and other places. They were all officers – there were no gunners invited to witness what they had done for us.’13 Those ‘baggy-arse diggers,’ recalled Buick, ‘who had worked through appalling conditions to get rounds on the ground because we needed them . . . could not be spared from their duties, so just the shiny-bums from various headquarters came out to the bush. Perhaps it was their very first and only “trip to the bush” during their tour of duty.’14
The gunners were indeed busy, but most of all they were completely exhausted. Sergeant Jim King recalled that most had not slept much since the night of 16–17 August and by 7 a.m. of 19 August were suffering from extreme fatigue. The ammunition expended during the battle phase of the operation was 3198 rounds of 105mm and 242 rounds of 155mm. The men of the batteries were now tasked with bringing the guns back to full ammunition entitlement, tidying up the gun positions, and removing
spent cartridges and cordite bags. These jobs left King and his men ‘quite bluntly, buggered’.15
Earlier, at first light, Lieutenant General Jonathan Seaman, commanding 1st US Infantry Division, sent Australian major Alex Piper, the assistant planning officer with headquarters II FFV, and a number of US staff officers to Task Force headquarters at Nui Dat to get a briefing on the battle. Brigadier Jackson, ashen-faced and almost speechless, told Piper that the companies had yet to move back into the plantation battle area and that one platoon had been lost and they had nothing to show for it. Indeed, Piper recalled that ‘far from feeling that we’d had a major victory, we believed that we’d had a significant defeat’.16
Four kilometres away, just outside the plantation, this certainly was not Lieutenant Colonel Townsend’s understanding. He assessed that D Company had taken on and beaten a major enemy force, probably regimental in size, with at least one enemy company dug in before the battle; he estimated that around 150 Viet Cong had been killed. However, 15 Australians remained unaccounted for. Piper was soon on a helicopter to discuss the situation with Townsend and Major Smith and brief Seaman at Long Binh. Sometime after that he would be in Saigon to brief General William Westmoreland, the commander of all forces in Vietnam, after Westmoreland had returned from his own first-hand inspection of the battlefield.17
At around 7.30 a.m., Brigadier Jackson made his way to Townsend’s forward position just as he was giving his final orders for the day to 6 RAR. Jackson would remain there for another two hours; in the distance the Anzac shells were still exploding in the heart of the plantation and airstrikes could be heard further east against suspected enemy retreat routes, including a number of air strafes using 20mm Gatling guns. US Lieutenant Gordon Steinbrook had arrived by now in one of the APCs and remembered seeing US jet aircraft roaring overhead and hearing machine guns being fired, which sounded like ‘cloth tearing, not at all like rapid machine-gun firing. The Gatlings fired so fast that the sounds ran together. The aircraft were strafing possible enemy escape routes.’18 At around 8.45 a.m., the Australians began their move back into the battle area, including the survivors of Major Smith’s D Company. Smith was distinctly unhappy about the delay in moving back into the plantation: as far as he was concerned, they should have moved out hours ago.19
Meanwhile, Corporal Ross Smith of A Company and his American friend Sergeant Frank Beltier had parted company as the Australians were to head back into the bush. Smith recalled that as he was waiting for the order to move back to the battlefield, his platoon commander told him he was needed nearby and pointed him in the general direction. On arrival he was greeted by his Yank ‘prisoner’ and Steinbrook.20 Steinbrook thanked Smith for looking after his sergeant on the battlefield. Beltier had decided to get a close-up look at the Viet Cong and had taken the opportunity of jumping onboard an APC as the Australians passed through the gun area on their way to Long Tan. Steinbrook recalled wanting to ‘chew [Beltier] out, but the sight of him, so pleased with himself, and the relief that thank God he was all right mellowed my anger. I don’t remember saying a cross word to him then, nor did I ever mention the court-martial I had threatened the afternoon before.’21
Earlier the men from D Company, 6 RAR, had learnt that they were to lead the advance back into the battle area that morning. No. 2 signaller Private Bill Akell recalled that ‘the word came down that the battalion was assaulting back into the battlefield. We didn’t know . . . if the VC had come back into the rubber plantation and re-established themselves and we were surprised to learn it was Delta Company [6 RAR] that would lead the battalion back in to the assault. Bear in mind we had lost a third of our company either killed or wounded and we were pretty well . . . exhausted after the battle and also after a sleepless night, but still it was us to go back, that was the commanding officer’s call . . . and we did.’22
Most of Major Smith’s officers and men, when informed they were tasked with going back into the plantation, were distinctly unhappy. At the time, Lieutenant Geoff Kendall remembered thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, haven’t they [the enemy] given us enough of a hiding? Why don’t they pick one of the fresh companies to go back in first?’23 Private Noel Grimes of 12 Platoon felt something similar, recalling that the general reaction was ‘Why us?’: ‘That wasn’t just me, that was everybody. “Why us?”’24 Buick, now 11 Platoon’s acting commander, was also unhappy about going back into the plantation as he believed the Viet Cong were likely still out there and he was not keen for a repeat performance; he believed that 11 Platoon had been hurt enough and could not understand why A or B company could not conduct the operation. Let them take on the Viet Cong; 11 Platoon, and D Company more broadly, had already done enough and suffered a high price for it.25
Private Peter Doyle of 10 Platoon, on hearing Major Smith announce ‘Saddle up, D Company – we’re going back in’, reckoned his company commander had had an ‘aneurysm – he’d blown a piston in his head. In hindsight, it was a brilliant command decision. If we’d have gone back to base with our tails between our legs, it would’ve taken a bit to get back on the horse.’26 Private Stan Hodder of 12 Platoon remembered thinking that they were being ‘pushed too hard and the men really didn’t want to go back in’.27 Private Brian Reilly, also of 12 Platoon, was likewise not happy, but he, like the rest of them, would later appreciate the deliberate decision to send them back into the battlefield area, as it was crucial that they ‘finish the job’.28 It was probably at this point that the Long Tan ‘survivors’ became the Long Tan veterans.
Just before moving out, the men of 6 RAR, D Company were checking their gear, as recalled by Parr: ‘I was standing near Cpl [William] Bluey Moore – he was 5 Section commander in 11 Platoon – when he said to me, “Have a look at this.” Going through his backpack, he pulled out his Dixie and there was a bullet hole straight through it. 11 Platoon would have still had their packs on when they came under that intense fire and hit the deck, not like us where we ditched our packs. How many more incidents like that happened on the 18th?’29
The start of the advance back into the plantation closely followed the axis followed by D Company the previous day, close to where the abandoned enemy mortar base plates had been found and where B and D companies had met up during the afternoon of 18 August – a lifetime ago for many. Earlier, three carriers from 2 Troop, with call signs 8, 98 and 9 Echo Troop, had left Nui Dat to team up with their mates from 3 Troop to assist in the clean-up and follow-up operations. The battalion was organised into assault formation. D Company, 6 RAR would lead the force back into the plantation, with D Company, 5 RAR covering their left flank. Behind these two companies were the men of A, B and C companies, 6 RAR on foot. The lead companies were to sweep through the battle area in the carriers and then the men from D Company, 6 RAR would dismount on approaching the main battlefield area and commence the search for their dead, and hopefully find some survivors. The other companies on foot were to clear the surrounding areas and start the follow-up operation against the fleeing enemy. However A Company was first to go back to where, with 3 Troop, they had fought and broken through the southern force of the Vietnamese D445 VC Battalion that had been trying to cut off any line of retreat by Major Smith’s beleaguered garrison during the final 20 minutes of the battle.30
As the battalion moved into the plantation, not a shot was fired. The APCs moved slowly and purposefully through the rubber trees and low brush, heading for the tapper’s hut. Burstall, who was inside an APC, would have preferred to be moving up behind the carriers on foot, even given the possibility of a Viet Cong ambush: ‘For me, locked inside the carrier, it was a bad trip back. Travelling in a carrier is like being inside a washing machine. The roar of the motors is deafening and if the hatch is open all that can be seen above the four closed walls are the sky and trees. The movement is very rough and the passengers are constantly thrown around as the vehicles change direction.’31
Doyle had a similar feeling about going in a carrier: ‘I got back into an AP
C with other blokes . . . In an APC you sit against the wall, facing inwards with the rifle between your knees. Normally you’re talking shit, a bit of bravado.’32 That certainly was not the case this time. The men sat in the semi-darkness in quiet; even with the noisy engine, quietness seemed to prevail as each became lost in his thoughts. Doyle went on to say that there was ‘not one bit of black humour, bullshit – there was nothing. I was more terrified than I was during the actual contact, I think because we didn’t expect it. It erupted, it was on, then it finished.’ However, now he and the others knew what they were in for. He recalled how the ‘pins and needles started in my feet, went up through my legs, up through my body, up through my head, up through my ears, and I was numb. I believed 100 per cent, Okay, we got out yesterday by the skin of our teeth. We’re going back in. There’s heaps and heaps of them. We ain’t gonna see the sun go down. When the back of the carrier dropped down and we shot out, I thought, The shit is just gonna hit the fan.’33
Private Alan Parr was on the same carrier as Private Doug Langland of 12 Platoon; both were sitting on top of the APC. As it pushed on, Langland somehow got his rifle caught in the vegetation and tree branches; by the time he was able to pull free, recalled Parr, ‘the barrel was bent at right angles. Doug looked surprised.’34
The Battle of Long Tan Page 29
