By Derrill de Heer From March 1970 until November 1970 I was in charge of one air and two ground teams at 1st Psychological Operations Unit in Nui Dat. One night there was an urgent request for a ground team with their loudspeaker capabilities, to report to 1st Australian Reinforcement Unit (1 ARU) within Nui Dat. On arrival at … Read More
Australian Psyops in Vietnam 1970
By Derrill De Heer[1] One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skilful Subduing the other’s military without battle is the most skilful. Sun Tzu. 500 B.C. From Chapter 3 strategy of Attack[2] When the 1st Australian Task Force deployed to Vietnam in May-June 1966 the Australian Army had already developed doctrine for the conduct of … Read More
Nui Le: The last battle, 21 Sep 1971
By Gary McKay In late September 1971 I was a 23 year-old rifle platoon commander in Delta Company of the 4th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment. We were on operations in the north of Phuoc Tuy Province searching for and hoping to destroy our enemy; the highly trained, strictly disciplined and deeply motivated soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army’s 33rd … Read More
Operation Tong: 7-8 June 1969
By Claude Ducker[1] The men of C Company 5 RAR may not have been aware of it at the time, but President Nixon was meeting with the South Vietnamese President Thieu on Midway Island on 7/8th June 1969. The main purpose of this meeting was to make the South Vietnamese take greater responsibility for the war; and Richard Nixon announced … Read More
Strategic context: The battle of Binh Ba
By Bob Hall What we call ‘the battle of Binh Ba’ was fought 50 years ago. Elements of 33 PAVN Regiment occupied the hamlet of Binh Ba on the night of 5/6 June 1969.[1] At 0810 hours on the morning of 6 June, two 1ATF armoured vehicles of 4 Troop, B Squadron, 1 Armoured Regiment – a Centurion tank and … Read More
May 1969: The switch to pacification
By Bob Hall In July 1968 the Psyops advisor in Phuoc Tuy Province, Major Desmal C. Smith Jr. was nearing the end of his tenure in the job. He was writing his end-of-tour report giving an overall assessment of progress and recommendations for change and improvement. He argued that the achievement of physical security was the key to improving pacification … Read More
An Australian at Hamburger Hill
By Bob Hall The Background In mid-1968 General Westmoreland was replaced as Commander US Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV), by General Creighton Abrams. Following the heavy losses suffered by the Viet Cong and People’s Army of Vietnam during the Tet Offensive of 1968, Abrams attempted to introduce a new ‘pacification’ strategy. This reversed the previous US strategy in which top … Read More
33 PAVN Regiment morale and the ‘red rats of Phuoc Tuy’
By Ernie Chamberlain (This article was first published as Ernie Chamberlain Research Note 25/2018) On 10 September 1969, the 199th US Light Infantry Brigade killed a number of VC in an engagement at YT557333 in southern Long Khánh Province – including the second-in-command of the 1st Battalion 33rd PAVN Regiment named Bùi Đức Nhật. They recovered a 33rd Regiment ‘News … Read More
The Battle of Coral (Sở Hội) 13 May 1968 – the 141st NVA Regiment Account
By Ernie Chamberlain The 141st North Vietnamese Regiment History (1997) [1] relates that: On 12 May, we discovered a battalion of Royal Australian troops had deployed to South Sở Hội (six kilometres north of Tân Uyên), and the Regiment was ordered to launch a night attack. The night was dark, and the regimental commander – Doãn Khiết, together with the … Read More
The Battle of Long Tân: Việt Cộng ‘numbers’ – 275 Regiment ‘s ‘QM notebook’
By Ernie Chamberlain The 50th anniversary of the 1966 Battle of Long Tân is now past. However, with the the Red Dune movie “Danger Close” – “based on” the Battle, to begin filming in southern Queensland shortly, interest in the detail of the Battle is expected to increase. Estimates published in a 2016 “fact sheet” by the Red Dune … Read More