Preface

Vietnam was Australia's longest war, and among its most controversial and divisive. The brunt of the ten year Australian commitment was borne by the Army, in terms of the forces committed and the casualties incurred. The Army became the focus of public opposition to government policies and of discontent among those eligible for call-up under the National Service scheme, a political price with ramifications felt for years after the war's end. On the other hand, the Army matured professionally during the Vietnam War, was stretched organisationally and institutionally and rose to the challenge successfully. As a generalisation, the United States went into the Vietnam War with a superb Army which the war very nearly destroyed; the Australian Army was enhanced by the Vietnam experience.

Much of the popular perception of the war is driven by the products of Hollywood, and to a slightly lesser extent by American historical, fictional and memoir literature. Neither Rambo nor China Beach has much, if anything, to say to the Australian experience of the war. (They may not have much to say to the reality of American experience, either). The popular notion that it is the victors who write the history is fundamentally belied by the case of the Vietnam War: the war is writ overwhelmingly in and on American terms. The United States has never been especially good at recognising the fact, much less the role, played by its allies in the conflicts of the twentieth century; in popular culture significant events acquire significance only when they are appropriated to American actors (the film U-571, in which British success in capturing Enigma codes at sea is reallocated to the US Navy, is a case in point). A collection of essays allegedly providing 'international perspectives' on the war manages, in the section devoted to the allies of the United States, to ignore entirely the contributions made by Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines while providing coverage of Japan, NATO and the Middle East.1 Of serious study of the Republic of [South] Vietnam, or of its army—ARVN—there is virtually no sign.

The Vietnam War was not a single, undifferentiated entity. Individual experience in Vietnam was a function of where you were and when you were there. The US Marines in northern I Corps fought a very different, and much more nearly conventional, war than did the largely South Vietnamese units combatting local force guerrillas in the Delta. For Americans, the 'big unit' war associated with Westmoreland between 1965-1968 differed from the emphases on pacification and Vietnamisation overseen by his successor, Abrams, in the period 1969-1973. Marines working in the Combined Action Platoon program in the earlier period and advisors working with the ARVN during the North Vietnamese offensive at Easter 1972 would both dissent from that characterisation. So too with the forces contributed to the Free World Military Assistance Forces. While all the governments concerned used the force contributions they made to create leverage with Washington, these forces themselves had very different wars. And all were different again from that experienced by the South Vietnamese, for many of whom the operational tour was not one year, but ten.

Writing on the war in Australia has gone through several manifestations and the literature remains uneven in both quality and coverage. There is no single, comprehensive history of anti- Vietnam War activism or the Moratorium movement of 1970-71; veterans' issues have been treated partially and writing in this area tends to be stronger on advocacy than analysis, there is as yet no systematic study of the soldier and his experience across the course of the war of the kind undertaken in the United States, or as exists elsewhere in Australian historiography for the two world wars.2 Two traditions within the writing of Australian military history are well represented in the literature, however: the unit history, and the official history. The latter in particular, conceptualised to deal with Australia's involvement in postwar Southeast Asian conflicts in Malaya and Borneo as well as in South Vietnam, helps to provide an important context for the study of Australia's involvement in the war, one which precisely reflects the Army's own experiences in the course of the 1950s and 1960s.

The essays in this volume were originally presented at the annual Chief of Army's military history conference in Canberra in October 2002. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the first commitment of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam and the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of the final elements of the Australian force, it concerned itself not only with the 'in-country' experience in its various forms, but with the way in which the Army was trained and prepared for operations, the higher-level policy which governed the deployment, and the interaction with and incorporation of infantry companies from the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment into the Royal Australian Regiment (ANZAC) battalions. The wider context of the war received appropriate emphasis as well, with consideration given to the interaction between the Australian government and the Johnson administration in Washington, and the experiences of the Republic of Korea (ROK) expeditionary force, and of the ARVN, on whose behalf and alongside whom Australians, Americans, Koreans, Thais and others fought and bled. Two aspects of the war and its impact on the Army are addressed here, although to date they have featured hardly at all in writing on the war: the impact on the Citizen Military Forces (CMF), denied a role and relegated to 'Third XV' status in the defence of Australia; and the institutional and policy consequences for the Army in the aftermath of withdrawal and the ultimate defeat of Western interests in 1975.

The Vietnam War remains a living force in American public life, as some of the discussion about the possible war on Iraq in recent months makes clear. In Australia the war has much more clearly been consigned to 'history' That does not, and should not, mean that it is of interest only to military history buffs and old soldiers reliving their past. The Australian Army was called on to functional a level and at a sustained intensity in a manner not seen since the Second World War. Many of the issues of training, doctrine, manpower, command and inter-allied relations are live ones still, and would be instantly recognisable to those who led the Australian contribution to INTERFET in East Timor in 1999-2000. Despite the fact of defeat in Indochina and the frustration of American power, the Australian Army rose to the challenges thrown at it by the Vietnam commitment and generally met them successfully. How it did so, and the costs incurred in doing so, are worth careful study as the Army is again faced with the defence of Australian interests in an increasingly unstable and unpredictable international order.

A volume such as this would not be possible without the willing cooperation of many individuals. As always, Roger Lee and his staff at the Army History Unit were responsible for the overall organisation of the conference, and we thank them for their sustained efforts. Our speakers responded graciously to our requests for written versions of their papers (some of which have been considerably expanded for inclusion on this volume) to be available in what might seem in academic circles to be indecent haste. Dr Peter Edwards kindly allowed us to adapt his after-dinner speech for inclusion here. In the production of the volume we have been greatly helped by the willing cooperation of Margaret McNally, Jeff Doyle, Keith Mitchell, Janeen Lisyak, and Kurt Fountain. We could not have got to the point of publication without their assistance, and we are very grateful for it. It is seven years since we first began to work with (then) Colonel Peter Leahy in helping to plan the program for and subsequent publication of the proceedings of the Chief of Army's military history conference. It gives us special pleasure to acknowledge his continuing support, as Chief of Army, for history in the Army and the wider community.

Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey

Endnotes

1. Lloyd C Gardner and Ted Gittinger (eds), International Perspectives on Vietnam (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000).
2. A comprehensive bibliography of Australian writing on the Vietnam War may be found in Jeff Doyle, Jeffrey Grey and Peter Pierce, Australia's Vietnam War (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2002), 185-210.

Contents

Contributors: Contributors

Introduction
Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy: Leahy

The Vietnam Syndrome: A Brief History
Roger Spiller: Spiller

Conversations at the Top
Edward J Drea Drea

The Higher Direction of the Army in the Vietnam War
David Horner Horner

The Training of the Australian Army Units for Active Service in Vietnam:
7th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment
Michael O'Brien O'Brien

Training for Service in South Vietnam 1966-1967: 2nd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment
Noel Charlesworth Charlesworth

Preparing Armoured Units for Overseas Service
John Coates Coates

The Development of Australian Army Tactical Doctrine During the Vietnam War
Richard Bushby Bushby

Doctrine, Training and Combat with 1st Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, 1965-1966
Clive Williams Williams

Australian Task Force Operations in South Vietnam 1966-1971
Ian Kuring Kuring

Fighting Against Time: The South Vietnamese Army on the Road to Self-Sufficiency
Dale Andradé Andrade

The Making of Tigers: South Korea's Military Experience in the Vietnam War
Kil J Yi Kil

New Zealand's Commitment of Infantry Companies in South Vietnam 1967
Ian McGibbon McGibbon

Meeting the Challenge of Training and Preparing Elements of 1st Battalion,
Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, for Service in South Vietnam
Rob Williams Rob Williams

ANZAC Battalions: Australian Experiences and Perspectives
Bob Sayce Sayce

The Role and Impact of Civil Affairs in South Vietnam 1965-1971
Barry Smith Smith

The Australian Army Training Team Vietnam
John Hartley Hartley

Advisors and Optimism: The Kennedy Administration and US Military Assistance Command Vietnam
Charles Morrisey Morrisey

Becoming the 3rd XV: The Citizen Military Forces and the Vietnam War
Dayton McCarthy McCarthy

The Australian Army and the Vietnam War in Retrospect
Alan Ryan Ryan

How History Works: Afterthoughts
Peter Edwards Edwards