SUPPORT FOR THE AUSSIES: 161 Battery's 105mm pack howitzer in action at Nui Dat.

Long Tan

Ian McGibbon recalls a notable ANZAC effort forty years ago.

For the gunners of 161 Battery, 18 August 1966 was a day to remember. For nearly four frenetic hours, as rain poured down and lightning flashed, they toiled over their guns.

While the battery, with relentless efficiency, sent salvo after salvo arcing away to the east, every spare member found himself roped in to the team effort needed to sustain the battery’s heavy rate of fire. Even the commander of V Force, himself a gunner, was among those frantically preparing shells.

This sudden action, the most significant since the New Zealanders had arrived in South Vietnam thirteen months earlier, would become known as the Battle of Long Tan. In inflicting a costly defeat on a superior Viet Cong force, Australian and New Zealand troops continued the ANZAC tradition begun a half century earlier on the rough slopes of the Gallipoli peninsula.

At Long Tan New Zealand artillerymen of 161 Battery RNZA supported Australian infantry of the Royal Australian Regiment, just as their Kayforce predecessors had done at Kap’yong fifteen years before. Both units were part of the 1st Australian Task Force, which had established itself in Phuoc Tuy province, southeast of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in June 1966. As one of the three batteries controlled by 1st Field Regiment, RAA, it was based at Nui Dat, the task force stronghold 8 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital, Ba Ria.

The Viet Cong wasted little time in responding to the task force’s advent. The armed wing of the Hanoi-directed National Liberation Front, it had for the previous five years been mounting an increasingly successful – at least until the intervention of the United States and its allies – campaign to destroy the government of South Vietnam and unify the country under communist rule. In Phuoc Tuy, it had long been virtually unchallenged. With the task force threatening to end this dominance if it was allowed to firmly establish itself in a central position in the province, an attack on Nui Dat seemed imperative. A force later determined to comprise the Main Force 275th Regiment supported by a North Vietnamese Army battalion and the D445 provincial battalion began moving towards the base.

For the men at Nui Dat, the first hint of trouble came during the night of 16-17 August. Viet Cong rockets fell on the base, causing much commotion and some casualties. It was as part of an attempt to find the Viet Cong unit that had made the attack that 6RAR’s D Company was despatched to the vicinity of Long Tan, 8 kilometres east of Nui Dat, during the afternoon of the 18th. With the sweating Australian infantrymen was a forward observer party from 161 Battery, comprising Captain Morrie Stanley and his signallers Willie Walker and Murray Broomhall.

The action began when the company’s 11 Platoon was hit by heavy enemy fire and pinned down while pursuing some Viet Cong eastwards. Several men were killed and wounded. An attempt by 10 Platoon to reach the beleaguered platoon failed as enemy pressure mounted and it became obvious that the company had encountered a greatly superior force.

	AFTER THE ACTION: Artillery fire controller with D Company, 6RAR at Long Tan, Captain Morrie Stanley RNZA surveys the battlefield the next morning. Captain Stanley received the MBE for his part in the Battle of Long Tan. Signaller Corporal Willie Walker was Mentioned in Despatches.

Shortly after 4.26pm, at the company commander’s request, Stanley called in defensive fire to protect 11 Platoon. Skilfully he worked the fire in close to the Australian infantrymen, helped by the fact that the shells were passing overhead and falling away from him. Time and again he was able to drive back advancing Viet Cong with well placed salvoes. As the action developed, torrential rain began to fall, adding to the problems of maintaining contact with the guns. Willie Walker’s efforts to keep open the link with the guns were vital to the outcome.

Back at the 6 Battalion command post battery commander Major Harry Honnor controlled the fire support, continuing to do so even after the rest of the regiment was also engaged. With all three batteries firing, he had available eighteen 105mm howitzers, each of which could have up to six shells in the air in a minute. Honnor also made use of the medium guns of A Battery, 2/35 Artillery, hitting targets on the approaches to the D Company position.

At the gun positions, the gunners worked with a will amid surreal conditions. ‘The position looked like hell on earth’, Patrick Duggan later recalled, ‘with clouds of cordite smoke gusting across as the rain hammered down. The noise was unbelievable. There was no let-up…’ Their efforts were crucial to the survival of the company.

At one stage it appeared that the enemy was about to outflank the company, but quick action averted the danger. Murray Broomhall helped set up a machine gun to cover the threatened front. When Stanley switched some of the gunfire to the area, the danger was snuffed out. But with the enemy showing no sign of backing off, despite heavy losses, the company’s prospects looked grim as the light faded.

Almost immediately, however, the outlook brightened. Just before 7pm, the relieved infantrymen saw Australian APCs appear out of the murk. A 6RAR relief force had arrived just in time. As the APCs made their presence felt with their heavy machine guns, the Viet Cong slipped away. The battle was over.

In 161 Battery’s gun position the exhausted gunners could relax at last. For two and a half hours they had fired non-stop, their only brief respite coming around 6pm when RAAF helicopters dropped ammunition to the company. During the action each gun had fired 180 rounds. These shells, with those of the Australian and American batteries, accounted for most of the 245 Viet Cong whose bodies were found strewn around the D Company position next morning.

Although D Company lost seventeen men in the action, the three New Zealanders with it came through unscathed. Back at the gun lines, the greatest danger came from the elements: Gunner Ken Deacon and Sergeant Steve Day, working on the battery switchboard, had a close call when a lightning strike knocked them over, leaving them dazed though not seriously injured.

The Battle of Long Tan forestalled the enemy plan to launch a major attack on Nui Dat. With surprise lost, the Viet Cong force pulled back, leaving the Task Force to continue consolidating its position in the province – a process in which the New Zealand gunners participated with new confidence. Their performance at Long Tan had forged a new link in the ANZAC chain.

Ian McGibbon, General Editor (War History) at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, is preparing the official history of New Zealand’s military and medical relief operations in South Vietnam from 1962 to 1975.