Steve Noble stood alongside the white memorial cross marking the location in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, where 53 years ago, 18 Australian soldiers died and 24 others were wounded in the battle of Long Tan.
The Kalbar truck driver closed his eyes as he tried to conjure up ghostly images of a battle fought at close quarters in pouring monsoon rain by 108 members of D Company 6RAR against an enemy said to have outnumbered them by at least 10 to one.
“It’s incredible that any of them could have survived let alone have won a battle like that,” he said on his return from a 53rd anniversary tour of South Vietnam battlegrounds.
The tour was led by Gary McKay, an infantry rifle platoon commander in South Vietnam who was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and was severely wounded in the last major Australian battle of the Vietnam War.
Steve said in 1987 Gary had written a best-selling autobiography, In Good Company, and had followed this with a total of 12 books on Vietnam by the same publisher.
“We couldn’t have had a better guide. He had us imagining the battle as we stood around the Long Tan cross. It was bright sunlight and he sent one of our group wearing a floral shirt to stand among trees on the edge of the plantation, about 30 metres away. Then he asked, ‘Can you see him?’.
“It wasn’t easy, but we could. Then he asked: ‘Imagine he was wearing jungle greens, it’s growing dark and pouring with rain, d’you reckon you could see him then?’
“It helped to bring home to us the impossible conditions our Diggers had faced. Firing at an overwhelming enemy force you could only locate from the glare of his own gun-flashes and your ears deafened by the combined noise of gun fire and supporting artillery fire from the Australian base four kilometres away at Nui Dat.
“It must have been hell on earth.”
Steve said all of this was a matter of war history, together with the daring ammunition resupply drop by two helicopters, a series of human wave attacks by the Vietnamese, and the end of the battle at night, four hours later, with a blistering counter attack by a relief force of 10 Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) and an infantry company.
The memorial cross at Long Tan is a replica of the 100kg, 2m tall concrete original that was raised on the site by men of the 6RAR three years after the battle. It was removed by the Vietnamese at war’s end.
In November 2017 the Vietnamese Government gifted it to the Australian Government and the following month it was put on permanent display at the Canberra War Museum.
One war history records that the replica was erected on the site by the Long Dat District People’s Committee in either 1986 or 1989.
Yet local sensitivities about the battle still required Steve’s tourist group to hold a quiet memorial around the cross on August 19, the day after the Long Tan anniversary.
Otherwise, Steve said they had encountered only friendliness during their tour.
This was also illustrated in a story Gary McKay told of a conversation with local workers while he was leading a group tour on a walk through the Long Hai hills.
Recalled Steve: “Gary said it turned out some of the workers were former Viet Cong and they spoke about wounds they had suffered in the war.
So Gary whipped off his shirt to show them a huge scar on his shoulder.
“And they laughed, ‘Ha-ha, we got you’. And another said: ‘We’re glad you’re shooting us with your camera now and not bullets’.”
The encounter ended with more laughter and handshakes and ended with the acknowledgment: “It was good to meet you. We really respect you Aussies.”
Steve said that friendliness was reflected throughout the 12-day tour which, as well as battlefields, took in major cities and tourist centres, and war-related locations like: the notorious ‘Hanoi Hilton’, the POW prison where the late American war hero and politician, John McCain, was held for five-and-a-half years; the tunnels of Chu Chi where they walked unknowing over their entrances before they were revealed; and the Saigon Palace, immortalised by the picture of a Russian-built tank crashing through its gates to signify the end of the war.
Steve’s father, Robert Noble, was 20 when he was one of 63,735 Australians whose numbers came up in the ballot used as the conscript system for national service.
Of these, just 19,450 went to Vietnam. Robert was lucky enough to be one of the 44,285 who remained.
“I might not have had a dad if he had gone,” says Steve, who is 52. “Instead I’ve been left with a fascination of that war and its legacy of injustice that lingered so long for so many of its veterans.”
It was that fascination that led to Steve booking his trip to Vietnam.
“A new movie about Long Tan called Danger Close has got some good reviews.
But apparently it uses dramatic licence in showing a scene of bloody carnage the morning after, when Australians went to remove their dead. It shows bodies lying in all kinds of positions, upside down, arms flung out and so on.
“The reality was the recovery party found the rain had washed away all traces of blood and the dead were lying facing the enemy with their weapons in the firing position. They said they looked as if they were sleeping. But the bullet wounds in their heads and shoulders told another story.
“It’s a story I’ll never forget.”