ANZACS AT LONG TAN AN INTERVIEW WITH LIEUTENANT COLONEL HARRY SMITH SG, MC (RETD.)
“THE VIETNAM VETERANS ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA LATER SELECTED THIS ENGAGEMENT AS THE MOST ICONIC MOMENT OF THEIR WAR”
The Battle of Long Tan was a brutal event that came to define Australia’s experience of the Vietnam War. Largely fought in a monsoon on 18 August 1966, 108 Anzac troops, primarily from D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6 RAR), fought off thousands of determined Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers and inflicted hundreds of casualties.
The Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia later selected this engagement as the most iconic moment of their war. Nevertheless the battle was a torrential nightmare for D Company’s commander, Major Harry Smith. This retired lieutenant colonel fought two battles as a result of Long Tan. The first saw him lead drenched and inexperienced soldiers to victory against overwhelming odds in terrible conditions. The second was his decades-long fight to persuade the Australian military establishment to properly recognise his men’s courage. Smith now reveals how he won them both.
An officer in Malaya
Born in 1933 in Hobart, Tasmania, Smith was a metallurgist apprentice before he was called up for national service in January 1952, “By the time I got back to my old job they said ‘Mate, sorry about this but your job’s gone. We couldn’t afford to keep it vacant’. I said to my father ‘I’ve been in the cadets and done national service I’d like to join the regular army. He wasn’t terribly pleased but I said ‘That’s what I want to do’ and he said ‘OK’.”
“THE COMMUNISTS HAD TRIED TO TAKE OVER SOUTH KOREA AND WE THOUGHT THEY WERE TRYING TO DO THE SAME IN SOUTH VIETNAM. HOWEVER, WE WERE BASICALLY GOING ON A SUICIDE MISSION”
Smith enlisted as a private in the Australian Army but his father encouraged him to widen his ambitions, “He said ‘Son, if you’re going to stay in the army why don’t you try and get yourself a commission?’. I said ‘OK’, got selected, went to Portsea Officer Cadet School in Victoria and graduated as an ungodly second lieutenant in December 1952.” After a few years, Smith gained his first combat experience when he participated in the Malayan Emergency between October 1955 and July 1957. The ‘Emergency’ was actually a bloody guerrilla war where Malayan communists fought against British rule. Commonwealth troops were deployed alongside British forces and Smith was posted as a platoon commander with 9 Platoon, C Company, 2 RAR.
Fighting primarily in the jungle, Smith’s experiences in Malaya were valuable for
