By John Skinner
Memories will come flooding back for veterans of the Vietnam War when they and their families meet to remember their service on Wednesday 18 August.
Australia was involved in the war against communist insurgents and the North Vietnam regular army from 1962 for 10 years up until withdrawal in 1972 and saw 521 military people killed and hundreds more wounded.
August 18, now Vietnam Veterans Day, marks the day in 1966 when the battle of Long Tan took place in Phuoc Tuy Province in which 18 Australians were killed and many more were wounded.
D Company of the 6th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, consisting of a little over 100 men, faced off against more than 2500 North Vietnamese regular troops and Viet Cong guerrilla fighters in a rubber plantation not far from the Australian Task Force Base at Nui Dat.
Although no accurate count of enemy dead can be established, over 300 were counted next day and dozens of graves were found in the following years, many killed by accurate artillery fire from the Task Force Base.
This battle saw more Australians killed than any other single action during the war but other significant battles were at places like Fire Support Bases Coral and Balmoral in 1968 and at the village of Binh Ba in 1969.
Apart from these four set battles, many other contacts took place in the jungles, paddy fields and mountain valleys of Phuoc Tuy Province and beyond as the Australians gradually gained control of their area of responsibility up until 1972.
Biased American media coverage of the war, community dissatisfaction and a change of government led to Australia and USA withdrawing troops, leaving the beleaguered South Vietnamese military to defend their country which eventually fell to the communist North in 1975.
Back home, Australian veterans were vilified by a community which had become hardened against the war.
The veterans internalised this vilification, formed their own groups to support each other to remember those who came home in caskets and those who suffered both physically and mentally.
It was the 1987 ‘Welcome Home Parade’ in Sydney in which thousands of veterans marched through the streets that the country began to recognise the sacrifice and service of veterans.
Vietnam Veterans Day has now become a regular and significant memorial event on the Australian calendar.
The Vietnam Veterans’ Service on 18 August at the Cenotaph starts at 10.45am.
