Through Enemy Eyes: After Months of Planning, the Viet Cong Were Near Long Tan and Ready to Attack . . .

400 Pages·2006·4.08 MB·English

by  David Sabben

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Dave Sabben
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First published in 2005
Copyright © Dave Sabben 2005
Maps © Dave Sabben except pages xviii, xix top (produced by Ian Faulkner)
and 208 (courtesy Australian War Memorial)
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Sabben, David, 1945– .
Through enemy eyes
ISBN 1 74114 561 9.
Vietnamese Conflict,
1961–1975–Fiction. I. Title
A823.4
Set in 11.5/14 pt Dante by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria
Printed by Griffin Press, Netley, SA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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FOREWORD
On 19 August 1966, the war in Viet Nam became a reality to the
Australian people. It was announced in the press, and later in the
parliament, that a battle had occurred near the Task Force Base at
Nui Dat. Eighteen Australian soldiers had been killed and many
more wounded. This became known as The Battle of Long Tan and
it is now embodied in Australian history and folklore.
Many books have been written about this action, and many
myths created, with most dispelled. What could have occurred had
D Company of 6 RAR not engaged the very determined enemy in
a rubber plantation on that fateful afternoon of 18 August 1966 will
always be open to speculation. It was indeed fortunate that the
Company was commanded by a tough, wily, professional officer:
Major Harry Smith.
David Sabben, a National Serviceman, was a young platoon
commander in D Company on that fateful day. He has now written
this book, Through Enemy Eyes. In it, Dave has drawn on his own
personal experiences as well as research to examine the battle from
the perspective of the enemy: The North Vietnamese Army and the
Viet Cong. As the reader will see, it is quite frightening as to what
therepercussions could have been.
It is conceivable that what happened in the rubber plantation,
during the fierce monsoonal storm late in that day, may have had a
huge impact on Australian history. The enemy had planned to over-
run the Australian Task Force Base and would probably havedone so
if contact with D Company had not been made. The consequences
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would have been quite horrific in Viet Nam, Australia and possibly
the USA. To quote a single paragraph from the book, the situation is
put far better than I could ever put it:
Quang felt a slight guilt at the ease with which he had finally made his
destiny become a reality. ‘The whole Australian base will be a ruin on
the morning of the 15th. Allowing for some soldiers to not be in base
and for others to survive the debacle, there will still be more than 1000
Australians killed, maybe 1500. Their country couldn’t support such a
loss—it would have to withdraw all its remaining troops. Probably the
Australian government would fall. The American aggressors will be
shown to be powerless to prevent the slaughter of its only independent
ally. The puppet regime will see the weakness of the Americans and not
trust them to protect their own forces. This will change the whole course
of the war.’
Because of the circumstances surrounding all of the events
leading up to the battle, as well as its aftermath and the absence of
reliable records, a book such as this could never be written in the
sense of it being a completely accurate historical account. As many
facts as possible have been established and then this skeleton has
been clothed with fiction to present a story close to fact.
It is worth noting that this has been done many times before.
Examples can be seen in such works as Gone with the Wind(Margaret
Mitchell), Nicholas Monserat in The Cruel Sea and The Winds of War,
Frederick Forsyth in the Odessa File and Arthur Haley in Roots. The
movie Saving Private Ryan was also based on many factual situations
surrounding the Normandy Invasion and the director, Steven
Spielberg, had a team of military historians working for him. The
genre has become known as ‘faction’.
Although the central theme of faction has some degree of
credence, all of the factual situations are woven together into a very
realistic and, in a sense, credible account. This is exactly what David
has done in Through Enemy Eyes.
John Orr, Veterans Advocacy Consultant
December 2004
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CONTENTS
Foreword by John Orr iii
Preface vii
List of maps xiii
List of diagrams: Progress of battle, 18 August 1966 xiv
Characters xv
1 Prelude:La Nga Valley, November 1965 1
2 Aleader; atask:Nui May Tao, early March 1966 18
3 The regiments deploy:Late March 1966 38
4 The Australians announced:Early April 1966 54
5 The Australians assessed:5–10 April 1966 64
6 Mapping and movements:11 April–11 May 1966 77
7 Conflict and clearance:12–23 May 1966 89
8 The Australians arrive:24 May–8 June 1966 101
9 Reconnaisance:8–11 June 1966 117
10 Afirst plan—thwarted:11–14 June 1966 135
11 Re-evaluation:14–19 June 1966 151
12 Revision:20 June 1966 157
13 Asecond plan:20–21 June 1966 174
14 Preparations:21 June–23 July 1966 187
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vi Contents
15 Decision:23 July–2 August 1966 199
16 Advance:3–16 August 1966 209
17 Bombardment:16–18 August 1966 230
18 Battle 1—Obstruction:Long Tan rubber
plantation, 18 August 1966 252
19 Battle 2—Manoeuvre:5.00–6.00 p.m., 18 August 1966 271
20 Battle 3—Assaults:6.00–6.45 p.m., 18 August 1966 297
21 Battle 4—Failure:6.45–7.30 p.m., 18 August 1966 317
22 Retreat:18–19 August 1966 333
23 Reconstruction: 19–23 August 1966 342
24 Revision:24 August 1966 352
25 Responsibility:25–26 August 1966 360
26 Postscript: 27 August 1966 and beyond 368
Glossary 371
Further notes 374
Acknowledgements 378
About the author 380
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PREFACE
Through Enemy Eyes is something of a literary hybrid—it is neither
entirely a work of history nor entirely a novel.
The central events are true—in mid-1966 the Australians estab-
lished their forward military operational base around a small hill in
the centre of Phuoc Tuy Province, South Viet Nam. The base took
its name from the Vietnamese for small mountain—Nui Dat. The
First Australian Task Force (1ATF) operated out of Nui Dat from
1966 until 1971, when Australia withdrew from its combat role in the
Viet Nam War.
The historic elements of this book represent what actually
happened from March to August 1966. (For the reader with an
interest in research, ‘Further notes’ on page 374 adds detail or refer-
ence to many incidents.) All the significant events are explained
asbeing seen ‘through enemy eyes’—that is, through the eyes of the
forces opposing the Australians, although narrative voices from both
sides are included. Many events not previously understood are now
explained by the enemy activities at the time. One example is the
strange pattern of movement set by the 275 Regiment radio in the
two weeks before the Battle of Long Tan.
Unfortunately, building a wholly historically accurate picture of
the actual ‘enemy’ personalities involved in this history has been
impossible. Around 40 years have passed since these events occurred.
For them, the war continued for another ten years, withfurther con-
flicts following. Many did not survive. For those who did survive,
the regime they lived under did not permit the Party line to be
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questioned. They were, and still are, confined by the official way
of thinking. Compounding the lack of personal interviews is the
scarcity of written records.
While the communist forces kept much paperwork, little
survives in the form of personal descriptions, private thoughts
or alternative views. The enemy leaders who are the protagonists
in this narrative are therefore fictional characters with fictional
names, backgrounds, motivations and personal attributes. Although
based on exhaustive research, their appointments, postings and posi-
tions have also been created for them. While every effort has been
made to depict their spirit as realistically as possible, the fictional
characters do not in any other way represent the actual people who
were involved.
On the Allied side, many people who held positions mentioned
in this book are still alive today (2005) and could have been inter-
viewed and represented accurately. However, with fictional enemy
characters, the account could no longer be considered ‘history’.
Thus the Allied side has been fictionalised as well, with afew notable
exceptions that the reader may recognise. Again, the fictional charac-
ters do not represent any actual people in anyway.
The battle at Long Tan is a pivotal event in this book. The action
is described for the most part from the enemy perspective. A reader
familiar with the battle will find the historical aspects—the timings,
movements, actions and so on—accurate, but, of necessity, the
enemy subunits and individuals involved are fiction.
It is my hope that introducing fictional characters will not
detract from the otherwise historical authenticity of this book.
The following liberties and constraints have been used:
➢ The South Vietnamese coined the term ‘Viet Cong’ (VC),
but those it referred to considered the term an insult. They
called themselves ‘Liberation Forces’ (LF), ‘Liberation Armed
Forces’ (LAF) and the ‘National Liberation Front’ (NLF). Only
the South Vietnamese and their Allies used the term ‘VC’. All
sides referred to the North Vietnamese Army as the ‘NVA’.
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➢ LF and NVA units were not built on the same rigid rank
structure as Western armed forces. Unit leaders often took
the courtesy titles of rank, for example, the leader of 5th
Division took the title of ‘Colonel’, as did his key staff and his
regimental leaders. The terminology of this book reflects the
appointments they actually held, for example, ‘leader’ rather
than ‘commander’.
➢ When writing from the LF/NVA point of view, as far as poss-
ible, their own terms have been retained—‘helicopters’ for
choppers, ‘armoured cars’ for APCs, and so on. When the
narrative is from American, South Vietnamese and Australian
points of view, their common terms—‘choppers’, ‘APCs’
etc.—are used.
➢ The LF/NVA usually referred to the Army of the Republic of
Viet Nam (ARVN) forces and the South Vietnamese govern-
ment as ‘puppet’ forces; to the Americans as ‘imperialists’; to
the Australians and other Allied forces as ‘mercenaries’;
and to their own forces as ‘comrades’. This and similar
terminology has been retained.
➢ Measurements are standardised to metric. The Vietnam-
ese used this measurement—a legacy of the French. The
Americans used their (sometimes modified) imperial meas-
urement system, and the Australians used standard imperial
measure. However, most maps of Viet Nam were scaled to
a 1000-metre grid rather than either a 1000-yard grid or an
inch-to-a-mile scale, so metres gradually superseded yards for
all related measures.
➢ The spelling of some names of people and places has
changed over the years. Where feasible, they are spelled as
they were used at the time, for instance, Mao Tse-Tung,
rather than Mao Zedong.
➢ Vietnamese is a language more or less made up of mono-
syllabic words. In common usage, two-word place names
have often been blended into one word. These have been
returned to their original separated words, including the
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name Viet Nam, frequently, but incorrectly, rendered
‘Vietnam’. Two exceptions will be found in this book.
‘Saigon’ and ‘Hanoi’ should strictly be ‘Sai Gon’ and ‘Ha Noi’
but they have been left as single words to reduce unnecessary
distraction.
➢ The name of the Phuoc Tuy province capital was ‘Phuoc Le’.
However, as the name ‘Phuoc’ already occurs in the province
name, Phuoc Tuy, and the evacuated town Long Phuoc, and
as the town was known to both Vietnamese and Allies as
‘Baria’, the name ‘Ba Ria’ has been used.
➢ As this book is about military units, military abbreviations
are necessary. In each chapter, the abbreviation is given in
brackets after the first occurrence of the term in full, but
thereafter only the abbreviation will be used. The following
table shows ranks, the units they would command and
the approximate sizes and unit composition. It is offered as
Rank Unit Approx. Usually comprising
command size
General Division 12000–20000 HQ, three regiments and
support units
Brigadier Regiment/ 4000–5000 HQ, three battalions
Brigade and support units
(task force)
Colonel Battalion 700–900 HQ, three or four
companies and support
units
Major/Captain Company 100–120 HQ, one section and
three platoons
Lieutenant/ Platoon 30–35 HQ, three sections
Sergeant or two or three squads
Corporal Section/ 10 The corporal and up
Squad to nine soldiers
Private Individual 1 (LF/NVA grouped into
three-man cells)