![]() ![]() The Australians had recently established a stronghold at Nui Dat, in the middle of Viet Cong supply routes in Phuoc Tuy province. Almost surrounded, outnumbered 10 to one, they withstood Viet Cong attacks in cyclonic rain. On the afternoon of 18 August 1966, a single infantry company of 108 mostly inexperienced Australian and New Zealand soldiers engaged with a regiment of 2,500 battle-hardened Viet Cong and North Vietnam army troops. A ferocious battle, a defining action of the Vietnam war. Long Tan had been a battle fought against almost impossible odds. “That worries me more than a dead body.” In the eerie silence, in the pervasive gloom, among the smell of the dead in the Long Tan rubber plantation, latex ran down trees punctured by bullets and mingled with the blood. But it was that blood, “the blood of all the others that were dragged away, wounded, suffering”, that affects him the most. In the days after the three savage hours that was the battle of Long Tan, his soldiers were finding body parts, carnage and corpses spread across the battlefield. If he dwells on it, Lt Col Harry Smith can still see, vividly, the blood on the trees on the enemy’s escape path.
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