The Vietnam War

Attitudes to the Vietnam War.............................................................................3

Australia's involvement in the Vietnam conflict: 1965 – 1970....................3
The Vietnam War and Australia's security interests...................................3
Australia's security concerns......................................................................3
November 1964 Conscription.....................................................................4
April 1965: War...........................................................................................5
Editorials.....................................................................................................6
Opposition to the war.....................................................................................7
Save Our Sons...........................................................................................7
The Youth Campaign Against Conscription (YCAC)..................................7
Trade Unions..............................................................................................8
American Relations....................................................................................9
Community Opposition 1967......................................................................9
The Tet Offensive, February 1968............................................................10
Media Coverage.......................................................................................10
Draft Resisters..........................................................................................10
The Moratorium........................................................................................11
Change in Sentiment................................................................................13
Long-Term Effects....................................................................................13
Timeline........................................................................................................14
Debating Australia's Future 1960 – 2000: Vietnam.........................................14
Attitudes of Australian Society to Involvement in the Vietnam War.........14
Primary Source Documents.....................................................................17
Letters to the Editor, May 1965................................................................18
Range of Attitudes between 1965 and 1970................................................19
Table of Australian Government Withdrawal of Troops from Vietnam.....19
The Moratorium........................................................................................19
Discussion in the Australian Financial Review.........................................20
Jim Cairns Reflections on the Moratorium...................................................20
Interviews with Veterans..............................................................................21
Vietnam Fragments: An Oral History of Australians at War, G McKay...21
Prime Ministers of Australia 1962 – 1975....................................................23
Timeline of Formation of Protest Groups.........................................................23
For Australia's Sake: Vietnam..........................................................................24
The origins of the war...............................................................................24
Australian Troops join the War.................................................................25
The Viet Cong/National Liberation Front..................................................25
Attitudes towards the enemy....................................................................26
The Terrain................................................................................................26
The Australian army advisers...................................................................27
Australians in Vietnam 1965.....................................................................27
The war intensifies January – May 1966..................................................28
Phuoc Tuy Province: The First Australian Task Force..............................28
National Servicemen................................................................................28
The Ambush at Long Tan..........................................................................29
Search patrols 1966 – 67: relations with the Vietnamese........................29
The Special Air Service............................................................................30
 The Tet Offensive......................................................................................30
The RAN and RAAF.................................................................................31
The war ends............................................................................................31
Casualties.................................................................................................32
The Home Front...........................................................................................32
The anti-Vietnam war campaign...............................................................32
Civilian life resumes..................................................................................34
Changing Perceptions.....................................................................................35
The Vietnam Lesson.................................................................................37
Problems with History (American Sources).................................................38
Heroes, John Pilger (Jonathan Cape 1986, Vintage 2001).....................38
Rogue State, William Blum (Common Courage Press, 2000).................39
Show us the Truth About Vietnam, Ignacio Ramonet (Le Monde
Diplomatique, April 2000).........................................................................39
The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker
From the Crimea to Kosovo, Phillip Knightley (Prion Books, 2000),.......40
Attitudes to the Vietnam War
(Mirams et al)

Australia's involvement in the Vietnam conflict: 1965 – 1970

 Between 1965 and 1970 Australians' attitudes to their country's
involvement in the Vietnam War changed
 The opposition grew as events of the war unfolded over the following
five years
 Those opposing both conscription and Australia's involvement in
Vietnam expanded from small groups of university students and peace
activists to a broad section of the community.
 The Vietnam Moratorium of 1970 attracted thousands of people who
had never been in a demonstration before and had never protested on
any issue

The Vietnam War and Australia's security interests

 Vietnam was a French colony from the late 1800s to the Second World
War when the Japanese invaded and consequently occupied it
 After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945 there was widespread support
in Vietnam for independence and the right to govern themselves
o Groups in Vietnam had been working for independence since
the early 1920s
 Ho Chi Minh founded the Indo-Chinese Communist Party in 1931
o During the war he established the Viet Minh, or the
Revolutionary League for the Independence of Vietnam
 A nine-year war took place between the French and the forces of Ho
Chi Minh, but the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954
 A peace meeting took place in Geneva (Switzerland), where the French
agreed to withdraw from Indochina if the Vietnamese communists
ceased fire
 Consequently Vietnam was temporarily divided into two zones
separated at the 17th Parallel
 All participants at the Geneva Conference except the United States
and South Vietnam accepted the agreements
 Elections never took place as America feared "they would have
resulted in an overwhelming victory for Ho Chi Minh"
Consequently a civil war broke out between North and South Vietnam. Their
struggle was caught up in the Cold War between the United States and the
Soviet Union, so the South was supported by America and the North was
supported by both the Soviet Union and the Chinese government.

Australia's security concerns

 Australia's concern was with the possible expansion of Communist
China
 This fear was furthered by the possibility that communist movements in
South-East Asian countries might come to power and spread to other
 neighbouring countries like a 'chain reaction', all the while coming
increasingly closer to Australia
o This was known as "The Domino Theory"
 Australia was in anew region of independent Asian states and the Cold
War meant that Australia's response to particular Asian countries was
related to its fear of communism
 Australia formulated its forward defence strategy in the 1950s
o this ensured that the region remained stable and any potential
threat to Australia was defeated well before it could get to
Australia
 Australia did not have the military resources or population to fight by
itself
o It consequently encouraged Britain to remain in the region and
the United States to intervene in Indochina
 the view of the strategy was that the more Australia supported the
United States the more obligation the United States would have to
Australia, a debt that could be called upon should Australia be attacked

The problem of Vietnam is one, it seems, where we could… pick up a lot of

credit with the United States for the problem is one to which the United States
is deeply committed and in which it genuinely feels it is carrying too much of
the load, not so much the physical load which the United States is prepared to
bear, as the moral load.
Alan Renouf (Diplomat)
In Cablegram to Canberra

November 1964 Conscription

 Sir Robert Menzies announced selective compulsory service
(conscription) on 10 November
 this applied to 20-year-old males and the expansion of the defence
forces from approximately 22, 000 to 37, 500 men
 Menzies explained that this expansion could not be achieved by young
men voluntarily joining the army because the existing prosperity and
full employment made civilian life too attractive
 He argued the decision was made because of "the paramount needs of
defence and… the preservation of our security"
 The method of selection was to be by ballot based on birthdates drawn
out of a barrel
 The conscripts could not vote and they would not receive the same pay
as soldiers in the regular army, although they would face the same
dangers
 Labor party leader Arthur Calwell immediately opposed conscription for
service overseas during peacetime and objected to the method of
selection
 Calwell rejected Menzies suggestion that voluntary recruitment had
failed and pointed out that many applicants to the army had been
refused on educational grounds and that this could be overcome if the
government would give them an opportunity to gain the basic education
required
  He also predicted that the system would be abused by those in elite
and powerful positions obtaining exemptions for their sons

April 1965: War

 in April 1965, just four months after the introduction of conscription, Sir
Robert Menzies announced that Australia would be sending a troop
battalion to Vietnam
 A (small) number of Australian military advisors had been in Vietnam
since 1962 assisting with the training of South Vietnamese troops
o This number had increased to 80 personnel by June 1964

The Australian Government is now in receipt of a request from the

Government of South Vietnam for further military assistance. We have
decided – and this has been after close consultation with the Government of
the United States – to provide an infantry for service in South Vietnam. The
takeover of South Vietnam would be a direct military threat to Australia and all
the countries of South and South East Asia. It must be seen as part of a thrust
by Communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans…
Sir Robert Menzies, House of Representatives, 10 November 1964

 The Government argued that:

o the South Vietnamese government had requested assistance
o the United States government had requested Australia's
involvement in the war and they were our ally
o the war would prevent spread of communism through the
Domino Theory
o the war would stop Communist China who represented a direct
military threat to Australia and other South-East Asian Countries
o the war would fulfil Australia's obligations under the ANZUS and
SEATO treaties

 Michael Sexton argues that by far the strongest reason was the
Australian government's desire for the United States to maintain a
military presence in South-East Asia
 Menzies was also convinced that if Australia supported the United
States in a war then the United States would feel obligated to return the
debt
o Historical analysts suggest this is the wrong thinking, as
decisions in the United States were shaped by their own
interests and domestic politics
 The South Vietnamese government did not initiate the request for
assistance from Australia. It was engineered by the Australian
government and was successful only with the support of America

 Arthur Calwell opposed this commitment in Parliament:

We do not think it is a wise decision. We do not think it is a timely decision.
We do not think it is a right decision. We do not think it will help fight against
Communism. On the contrary, we believe it will harm that fight in the long
term. We do not believe it will promote the welfare of the people of Vietnam.
On the contrary, we believe it will prolong and deepen the suffering of that
unhappy people… We do not believe that it represents a… intelligent
response to the challenge of Chinese power. On the contrary, we believe it
mistakes entirely the nature of that power. We of the (Labor) party do not
believe that this decision serves or is consistent with, the immediate strategic
interests of Australia. On the contrary… the Government dangerously
denudes Australia and its immediate strategic environs of effective defence
power…
Arthur Calwell, House of Representatives, 4 May 1965

 He also stated that "The war in South Vietnam is a civil war, aided and
abetted by the North Vietnamese Government, but neither created nor
principally maintained by it" and added that "Our present course is
playing right into China's hands, and our present policy will, if not
changed, surely and inexorably lead to American humiliation in Asia"

Editorials
 All but two daily newspapers supported the sending of troops to
Vietnam
o The Australian and The Daily Mirror were critical of the decision

The Menzies Government has made a reckless decision on Vietnam which

the nation may live to regret. It has decided to send Australian soldiers into a
savage, revolutionary war in which the Americans are grievously involved…
Their decision is wrong, at this time, whichever way we look at it. It is wrong
because Australia's contingent can have only insignificant military value,
because it will be purely a political pawn in a situation for which Australia has
no responsibility whatsoever… It is wrong because it deliberately and coldly
runs counter to the mounting wave of international anxiety about the shape of
the Vietnam war and the justification and perils of America's military
escalation… Neither of the Pacific defence treaties to which Australia
subscribes can honestly be invoked to justify the Menzies Government's
decision…
It could be that our historians will recall this day with tears.
The Australian, 30 April 1965

The decision by the Australian Government to send a battalion to South

Vietnam is a grave one and commits Australia to a more direct role in this
cockpit of war where the conflict for power between Communist China and
the West in South-East Asia has been joined… These are inescapable
obligations which fall on us because of our geographical position, our treaty
commitments and our friendships… There is clearly a United States call to
share, even in a small way, more of the burdens… There was no alternative
but to respond as we have.
The Age, 30 April 1965
Opposition to the war
 Supports of the war include Liberal Party supporters, the Returned
Servicemen's League and some religious groups, who believed it was
a fight against the spread of communism and that Australia's security
was threatened
 According to the opposition (ALP), Australia's defence will be
compromised in two ways; we will make enemies out of all Asia
including China – Australia's very name may become a term of
reproach among them
 As soon as Menzies announced the introduction of conscription and
the sending of troops to Vietnam, protest groups sprang up all over the
country to work to overturn these measures
 An exemption from conscription was provided for those who were
prepared to come before the courts and prove that they were pacifists
 There was no exemption for the men who believed the Vietnam War
was unjust
 The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) changed their names
o The Victorian CND became the Vietnam Day Committee
o the NSW CND became the Vietnam Action Committee
 One of the first groups to be set up was Save Our Sons

Save Our Sons

 The SOS movement was formed in 1965 by women seeking the repeal
of the National Service Act
 SOS campaigned against conscription, supported draft resisters and
those who were charged in court with resisting conscription
 They protested against the war in Vietnam, raised money, spoke on
behalf of conscientious objectors at rallies, seminars and 'teach ins'
and handed out anti-conscription leaflets
 In their protest activities these women often met abuse and ridicule
o The accusation of being a 'communist' was one that was used
frequently against anyone opposing the war in Vietnam and
Australia's involvement in it
 They were energetic and as women attracted attention
 Although there were male members, women held all office-holder
positions

The Youth Campaign Against Conscription (YCAC)

 (unsurprisingly) many activists against conscription and the Vietnam
War were young people
 One of the first groups to form was the Youth Campaign Against
Conscription which organised on university campuses and
demonstrated outside the United States consulate
 In June 1965 it published an advertisement signed by 144 men of
conscription age which was published in The Australian (newspaper)
The undersigned young Australian male citizens being of an age making us
liable for military service, declare that WE OPPOSE OVERSEAS
CONSCRIPTION because:
We believe that we may be sent to fight in Vietnam… This would be a
moral wrong and an unjust call upon our lives by the government of our
country. We share a fundamental belief that to safeguard the future of
our nation, Australia's ole in these perilous times is to seek an end to
South East Asian disputes, through negotiations for peaceful
settlements – not to pursue the murderous path to world conflict
through prolonging the slaughter in Vietnam.
I support the campaign against overseas conscription
The Australian, 19 June 1965

Looking back, my being called up and going away for two years was never an
issue for my parents, my bosses, or the locals. The National Service debate
was never a topic of argument or discussion. It was endorsed by the Country
Party, so that was that.

For the first time some of the old diggers came over and spoke to me. I felt
privileged.
Barry Heard, conscripted in 1965

Trade Unions
 Two and a half thousand waterside workers walked off the wharves in
Melbourne in protest
 The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) declared on 4 May
1965 that it was strongly opposed to the decision of the Federal
Government to send a battalion of Australian troops which can be used
as a combat force in South Vietnamese or anywhere else except in
accordance with international obligations…
 In May tugboats boycotted an American warship affecting its docking
processes
 Five hundred seamen, waterside workers and ship painters picketed
the American embassy in Brisbane
 Although opposed to the war the executive of the ACTU in May
decided not to support industrial action against the war
 Despite the protests, 1966 had continued high support for the
government's policy on Vietnam
o In the 1966 Federal election the government increased its vote
 The Labor Party fought the election on the Vietnam War and suffered a
crushing defeat
o The electoral win for the Liberal Party was the biggest since
Federation
 Sir Robert Menzies, who had been Prime Minister for almost two
decades retired from politics and was replaced by Harold Holt
 In March 1966 Harold Holt announced that he was sending National
Servicemen to Vietnam
  Just two months later the first Australian conscript to be killed was
Private Errol Noack form South Australia, who was shot dead by a
sniper and had been in Vietnam for only ten days
 after that, and during the following three years, the anti-conscription
movement became stronger with groups urging young men not to
register and to resist the call up by going into hiding

I have refused to register for national service and shall continue to disobey
further directions from the Department of Labour and National Service
because I have a conscientious belief that the Vietnam war and conscription
are wrong. Conscription is, I feel, unjustified in every case. The necessary
measure of whether a war is worth fighting is whether people voluntarily enlist
to fight it. The Vietnam War I see as the suppression of a powerful and
enlightened force of a popular revolution. I could not escape a feeling of guilt
and cowardice, if I complied with directions to further these evils…
Stephen Townsend, a conscientious objector

 The practice of burning draft cards began at this time and continued
until conscription was abolished in 1972

American Relations
 In May 1966 PM Harold Holt visited America, as he believed like
Menzies that Australia needed a strong relationship with the United
States for security
o He invited President Lyndon B. Johnson to visit Australia and
pledged total support for the alliance between the two countries
assuring the president of Australia's commitment
 The phrase 'All the way with LBJ' attracted derision in Australia and
confirmed in the minds of some that Australia had lost its independence
to America
 The phrase would reappear in the protests when LBJ visited Australia
in October 1966
 some of these demonstrations were violent, but for the most the
president was warmly received by the Australian public

Community Opposition 1967

 Artists and writers joined the protests and used their medium to support
the anti-war movement
 In Melbourne artists, writers and players' signed a 'Statement on
Vietnam' which stated that they were appalled and angered by the
conduct of our country in Vietnam

Linger not, stranger, shed no tear;

Go back to those who sent us here.
We are the young they drafted out
To wars their folly brought about.
Go tell those old men, safe in bed,
We took their orders and are dead.
A. D. Hope (quoted in Gregory Pemberton)
The Tet Offensive, February 1968

Throughout 1966, 1967 and into 1968 opinion polls indicated that the majority
of the population continued to support involvement. It was not until October
1968 that the polls would show a change.
At this time Australia had eight thousand troops serving in South Vietnam.

 The Tet Offensive has been seen by many as the turning point
 The offensive was launched by North Vietnamese and the Vietcong on
44 South Vietnamese cities simultaneously
 This act shocked the American (and Australian) public who had been
consistently told that the Americans were winning the war
 The Americans largest base at Khe Sanh was almost overrun by the
North Vietnamese Army
 This offensive led to President Johnson's decision to withdraw
American troops the following year and not seek another term in office

Media Coverage
The reporting was largely uncensored and the public could witness the
violence and brutality of the war in a way that hadn't been possible in other
wars.

 Each night Australians could switch on their television sets and watch
the fighting of the day in Vietnam
 War correspondents and photojournalists had enormous freedom in
Vietnam
o They could hitch rides on helicopters and travel with the soldiers
into action
 The Vietnam War has often been dubbed 'the television war' because
of this public 'witnessing' through television. It made the war a daily
event to be watched and commented on
 Conscientious objectors or draft resisters used the media to publicise
their beliefs
 Objectors using the media, if arrested and sent to gaol, were in some
cases brutally treated in military prisons
o When this information became public it did not reassure parents
whose sons might choose to become conscientious objectors
 This contributed to ordinary people questioning the policy of
conscription
 Conscripts were coming home dead from 1966 onwards and the news
of their deaths led to the ballot earning the name 'the lottery of death'

Draft Resisters
 The Draft Resistance Movement was formed in February 1968 and
comprised members of the Young Labor Association, University Labor
Clubs, the Young Socialist League, and former members of the Youth
Campaign Against Conscription
  Gregory Pemberton argues this organisation was more militant than its
predecessors, not only opposing conscription but also attempting to
make the system unworkable
 The first man sent to a civilian gaol for non-compliance with the
National Service Act was John Zarb who spent over a year in Pentridge
Prison (Melbourne)
o When in August 1969 he was released, The Sydney Morning
Herald ran an editorial in which it equated the courage of draft
resisters with the action of a war hero in Vietnam
 It was called 'Two Kinds of Courage'
 For the first time in 1969 fifty five percent of people surveyed in a
gallop poll were in favour of Australian troops being withdrawn and forty
percent wanted the troops to remain
 The Labor Party now felt confident enough to state in its federal
election campaign that if elected they would bring Australian troops
home by June 1970
 The Liberal Party won the October election but with a greatly reduced
majority
 In late 1969 news broke of a massacre at My Lai where 18 months
earlier around 120 defenceless villagers, Vietnamese women and
children were killed by a United States Marine company
o This massacre had been secretly photographed by an army
photographer
 Some Australians began to question who were the 'oppressors' of the
war due not only to the massacre at May Lai but:
o The saturation of bombing in North Vietnam,
o The use of napalm on South Vietnamese villages suspected of
supporting the North
o Forced relocation of civilians and the destruction of ancestral
homes
 By 1970 the anti-war movement had grown into a mass movement
comprising a broad cross-section of the community, in particular a
section of the middle class

The Moratorium
 A day on which there was expected to be 'an end to business as usual'
and a concentration on the horrors of war
In Sydney there was a sight that many of those who were present at it
expected to remember for the rest of their lives – a peaceful crowd of 20 000
to 25 000 sitting down in front of Sydney Town Hall, calmly expressing their
opposition to the Government. In Melbourne there were scenes far beyond
any radical hopes – a crowd of somewhere between 80 000 and 100 000
sitting in the street and chanting 'We want peace'.
Donald Horne, Time of Hope – Australia 1966 - 1972
 The campaign brought together a broad group of interests including the
left-wing of the ALP, established peace and anti-corruption groups,
unions, church groups, the Save Our Sons, the New Left and some
members of the Communist Party
 o it also included veterans of previous wars and may middle class
people who were not part of any group but strongly opposed to
conscription and the war in Vietnam
 It was a cross-section of Australian society
 Chairman of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee was Dr. Jim Cairns

The minister for Labour and National Service said 'it is an invitation to
anarchy'. Later he called supporters of the Moratorium 'political pack raping
bikies'. The Prime Minister said they were 'storm troopers'. The Melbourne
Herald said 'Dr. Cairns is on a perilous path.' The Melbourne Age said it was
'a dangerous protest' and decided that 'to believe that the street
demonstrations will be non-violent seems naïve to the extreme'.
J.F. Cairns, Silence Kills, 1970

 In the editorials there was a new attitude to the war, a grudging

acknowledgement of the doubts about its legitimacy

Many Australians share the abhorrence Dr. Cairns and his group feel for the
Vietnam war and resent the conscription required to fill the Australian ranks in
a doubtful cause
The Herald, 26 May (1970?)

(Media refers to) the growing futility of the slaughter in Vietnam, and its
divisive effects on our own community
The Herald, 31 March (1970?)

The government was clearly worried by the strength of the Moratorium

campaign, having lost as never before, the moral ascendancy in the debate.
Gregory Pemberton, Vietnam Remembered

 The first and largest of the moratorium marches took place on 8 May
1970
o At 3.15pm all the demonstrators sat down in the street
o In Melbourne at least 70, 000 protestors participated filling all of
the central streets of the city
o there were 25, 000 in Sydney, 8, 000 in Brisbane, 6, 000 in
Adelaide, 3, 000 in Perth and 3, 000 in Hobart
 A second moratorium was held in September 1970 but was not as
successful
o In Sydney permission to march through the streets was refused
and there was a huge police turnout
o There were violent clashes and 200 demonstrators were
arrested
 The anti-war movement was no longer a minority group

The Vietnam Moratorium campaign was a public expression of the deepening

division in Australian society caused by Australia's participation in the Vietnam
War.
Change in Sentiment
 In October President Nixon announced the withdrawal of another forty
thousand troops
 By late 1969 public sentiment had changed as evidenced by the
strength of the moratorium campaign
 In 1965, fifty six percent of people said that they wanted the troops to
continue occupation of Vietnam, rising in 1966 to sixty one percent and
again in 1967 to sixty two percent
 Approximately two-thirds of the community approved of Australia's
involvement in Vietnam
 By 1970, those who wanted the troops to stay in Vietnam dropped
between forty two percent and forty three percent
 Those who wanted the troops to come home almost doubled, having
risen to fifty percent
 In 1965 the majority of the Australian population supported the nation's
entry into the Vietnam war, but by 1970 the majority wanted their troops
home
 It was not really until 1968 that the strength of the anti-war movement
had increased and more people were questioning Australia's role in
Vietnam
 Events in Vietnam and activities at home between these two dates
changed many Australian' attitudes to the war and to selective
compulsory conscription
 Change in position were caused by:
o publicity by anti-war activists through protests, debates, letter
writing, petitions and the moratoriums
o deaths of Australian soldiers, both regular and conscript
o the Tet Offensive and subsequent US withdrawal of troops
o stronger tactics from draft resisters
o media coverage of the violence and atrocities in Vietnam, in
particular the My Lai massacre
o broader base of the movement
 artists and writers
 the middle class
 older people
 religious groups
o international pressures
It was not until the end of the 1960s, when it became clear that the war could
not be won, that public support began to erode sharply.
Michael Sexton, War for the Asking

Long-Term Effects
The initial commitment of 4500 Australian troops had increased to a peak of 8,
000 troops. In April 1970 the Gorton government indicated that it would begin
to withdraw Australian troops from Vietnam. When the ALP won the 1972
federal election and Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister he abolished
Nation Service (conscription) and brought the remaining troops home from
Vietnam. In March 1975 the North Vietnamese attacked South Vietnam and in
April Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh), the South Vietnamese Capital, surrendered.
John Elliott (then president of the Liberal Party) expressed a view in 1988 that
the party had lost 'a whole generation of voters aged between thirty and forty
five, because their political attitudes had been formed during the Vietnam War
years'.
Michael Sexton, War for the Asking

The negative reception the soldiers received on their return has left an
enduring bitterness combined with chronic health problems both mental and
physical in nature. Many families are missing sons, brothers, uncles and
fathers that they never knew.

Timeline
1962 First advisors sent to Vietnam to train Vietnamese soldiers
1964 National Defence Act amended to introduce selective compulsory
military service
1965 April – Government announces decision to send an Australian infantry
battalion to Vietnam
Australian Labor Party criticises Menzies' decision
Save Our Sons formed
Youth Campaign Against Conscription (YCAC) formed
1966 Robert Menzies retires from politics. Harold Holt becomes PM and
sends conscripts to Vietnam
October – Visit by LBJ, who was received with 'enthusiasm'
1967 Gough Whitlam replaces Arthur Calwell as leader of ALP
1968 February – the draft resistance is formed
Gorton becomes PM after Harold Holt drowns
My Lai massacre
Tet offensive in Vietnam
1969 My Lai massacre becomes public
Committee in Defiance of National Service Act
1970 US begins to withdraw troops
May – first Vietnam moratorium rally
September – second moratorium rally
1971 Australia begins withdrawing troops, but conscription remains
1972 ALP wins election and ends al military aid to South Vietnam
The National Service Act is abolished
1973 Last US soldiers withdrawn from Vietnam
Remaining Australian troops withdrawn from Vietnam
1975 Saigon surrenders

Debating Australia's Future

1960 – 2000: Vietnam
(Jo Leech)
Attitudes of Australian Society to Involvement in the Vietnam War
 criticism was of the nature of the use of conscripted troops
 The change in attitudes was influenced by the combined efforts over
time of those anti-war groups active as early as 1965 and changes in
foreign policy directions
 As early as 5 April 1962 Eddie Ward, a left-wing Australian Labor Party
Federal Member of Parliament mooted potential conflict and greater
international concern relating to Vietnam
 The introduction of conscription by the Menzies government was widely
viewed as the consequence of three related, yet distinct concerns
o Australia's relationship with Indochina
o the expansion and improvement of Australian Defence
o Communism
 The ALP immediately opposed conscription calling it the 'lottery of
death'
o The ALP did not present a united view – this disparate stance
led to their continual lack of cohesion and subsequent support
o This lack of 'focus' would last until the 1969 general election
 Menzies consequently received no substantial parliamentary opposition
to his decision
o He was also supported by the general media
 The only alternative voice was The Nation
 Between 1966 and 1969 polls showed that conscription was popular
with almost 70 percent of respondents
 an opinion poll in August 1969 showed that 55 percent of people were
in favour of withdrawing troops

Barry York maintains that anti-war movement included many diverse

elements, form middle-class mums to trade unionists, but was given cultural
shape by the participation of the so-called 'baby-boomers', those born after
the Second World War, who were in their teens by the mid-1960s.

 The Youth Campaign Against Conscription (YCAC) was established in

1964
 Protests followed the first ballot on 10 March 1965
 The decision to send troops on 29 April 1965 led to larger, more
diverse protests
 The momentum of the peace movement slowed down following the
ALP defeat in the 1966 election
 There was a new edge of violence developing in demonstrations
 In 1966, opinion polls showed that 61 percent of Australians agreed
with being in Vietnam, an increase of 5 percent from the previous year
 In June 1966 half a million people turned out to welcome home the
First Battalion
 Elements of the ALP 'felt Tet vindicated its view that the Vietnam War
was unwinnable as well as immoral, while the right was convinced the
party's policy of withdrawal was now in the interests of the Americans
themselves'
Confidence in American power has been shaken, since [the offensive] proved
that it could not even protect its own embassy in Saigon. Confidence in
American tactics and strategy has been undermined by evidence that it is
ineffectual in practice and mistaken in theory. As for the new Thieu-Ky
Government, its administrative façade has been exposed as paper-thin.
The Age (editorial) - What Went Wrong?

 Calwell called Ky 'a little Asian Butcher' and 'a little quisling gangster'
 Max Teichmann commented that Ky's visit to Australia was '…forcing
people out onto the streets to demonstrate;… forcing our domestic
police force to take on a role of a semi-political force…
 By 1968 there had been a shift from the politics of conscience to those
of non-compliance. – John Murphy
 In April 1970 Jim Cairns spoke in Parliament defending the aims of the
first march and suggesting that the citizens of Australia had a right to
occupy the streets for political purposes:

Some… think that democracy is just Parliament… But times are changing. A
whole generation is not prepared to accept this complacent, conservative
theory. Parliament is not a democracy. It is one of the manifestations of
democracy… Democracy is government by the people, and government by
the people demands action by the people. It demands effective ways of
showing what the interests and needs of the people really are. It demands
action in public places all around the land…
Jim Cairns, April 1970

 The Moratorium established a cooperative convergence between 'the

left of the ALP, the range of established peace and anti-conscription
groups, some Old Left unions, some church groups, the New Left, a
still small women's movement and a revitalised Communist Party of
Australia'
 The (Moratorium) campaign gave the various groups a united "voice"
 In April 1970 the Gorton government had, following American leads in
1969, begun to scale back commitments.
 The next year his successor, William McMahon, had announced that all
Australian troops would be withdrawn by the end of 1971
 By September 1971 the peace movement had lost momentum
o Conscription was somewhat less contentious given that the
period of service had been reduced to 18 months and conscripts
could no longer be sent to Vietnam
 Ultimately, it was fear of the unknown in Communist China and the fall-
out from the Cold War which made the Australian government follow
America's lead by committing troops to Vietnam
 As the 1960s progressed, Australians became better informed by the
realities of war, through the testimonies of returned soldiers, media
commentary and images of carnage on television
 Although the Moratorium and other protest movements did not prompt
the change in government policy they vividly demonstrated that a
 significant proportion of Australian society did not support the war, they
way it was fought or the nature of Australia's commitment

It would not be in the Australian character or consistent with our national self-
respect to stand aside while the Americans do the fighting in what we know
and our own interests and our causes
Hasluck,
Minister for External Affairs

Primary Source Documents

Range of attitudes in 1965

Call up of 20-year olds opens January 25

Registration for Army
Canberra – The first registrations of 20-year olds under the new national
service scheme will begin on January 25.
The registration will continue for two weeks – until February 8.
Those required to register are British subjects, both natural born or
naturalised, who ordinarily reside in Australia and who turn 20 years of age
between 1 January and June 30 this year.
The Age, 14 January 1965

...Conscription has many disadvantages, among which the effects of the

national economy, individual employers and personal careers and lives are
prominent. If, in addition its conditions arouse some ill-feeling against
migrants of discourage some settlers from applying for citizenship, these are
similarly part of the price the nation has to pay for ever-riding the necessity to
defend itself and to protect its vital interests abroad.
The Age (editorial), 21 January 1965

…Already his Holiness the Pope, the Secretary – General of the United
Nations (U Thant) and the Government of Canada, India and France have
urged through both private and formal diplomatic channels their earnest
desire for the negotiations leading to peace…
Anglican Bishops' letter to Sir Robert Menzies, The Age, 15 March 1965

I subscribe to the domino theory…. because I believe it obvious… that if the

Vietnam War ends with some compromise that denies South Vietnam a real
and protected independence, Laos and Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia,
Singapore and Indonesia will be vulnerable… This domino theory… has
formidable realities to Australians who see the boundaries of aggressive
communism coming closer and closer.
Sir Robert Menzies, 21 April 1965
…the war against Communist aggression in Vietnam is in a very real and
direct sense Australia's war… It cannot be too often or too strongly
emphasized that if South Vietnam is allowed to fall to Communism, then the
extension of Communist influence down through the Malay Peninsula to the
shores of Australia is inevitable.
…the dispatch of an Australian infantry battalion has greater importance than
the numbers actually involved would suggest…
 Sydney Morning Herald (editorial), 30 April 1965
The Federal government has made a grave decision in committing 800
Australian troops to fight in South Vietnam. Yet, however much Australians
might abhor the prospect of becoming physically embroiled in the conflict in
Vietnam, the government could not shirk its responsibilities there. The
decision gives expression to the fundamentals of our policy in South East
Asia. For the United States, the task of halting Communist aggression
involves mainly the principles of freedom and peace. For Australians, in
Borneo and Vietnam, our own security is also at stake, both now and in the
future. The United States wants to negotiate settlement in Vietnam. Its
stepped-up campaign is designed only to convince the Communists that they
cannot take what they want by force. If the Americans lose militarily or
diplomatically, so do we.
The West Australian, 1 May 1965

This is a grim week-end for every Australian. We are now at war, a war which
will touch every one of us far more than most people, even today, will realize.
Australia is to fight on the Asian mainland to aid the United States in stopping
the advance of Communism, which threatens us directly. We are going with a
token, but nonetheless committed and lethal force to support the South
Vietnamese government against the aggression of North Vietnam, backed by
communist China. Our Government has made the decision in our name, and
that is its duty. The nation now has to support that… For us, the cost will not
be light. Brave men will die in jungles without even seeing the other side's
soldiers; many others will be wounded. At home we will have to commit a
great deal of our manpower and our economy to the fight. The easy days
ended with the Prime Minister's announcement on Thursday.
The Courier Mail, 1 May 1965

Letters to the Editor, May 1965

I am proud to realise the necessity for the sending of Australian troops to a
country which is urgently requesting help to continue its fight against the
imposition of government by a terrorist oligarchy.
Robert J Tyson, Burton Hall (ANU), Canberra ACT
The Australian, 6 May 1965

...The struggle in Vietnam cannot be resolved by military measures; only a

negotiated settlement can bring an end to the insensate slaughter of many
innocent people.
John J Dedman, Yarralumla ACT
The Australian, 6 May 1965

The Active intervention of the United States in South Vietnam has revealed
her courageous determination to prevent the complete domination of South-
East Asia by communist China.
John Warry, Caulfield VIC
The Australian, 25 May 1965
Range of Attitudes between 1965 and 1970

 According to Murray Goot and Rodney Tiffen, polls 'often boosted the
appearance of support for intervention, and undercut any sense of
public opinion'
 The majority continued to support the policy of conscription, but a
consistent majority opposed the deployment of conscript troops outside
Australia

Table of Australian Government Withdrawal of Troops from

Vietnam
18 August 1971 The Prime Minister announces the bulk of Australian
forces in South Vietnam are to be withdrawn, leaving
only a modified training team.
The period of national service is reduced from two
years to 18 months
5 March 1972 The last Australian logistic units leave Vung Tau and
Australia's commitment in South Vietnam returns to a
training role with the 150-man Australian Assistance
Group, Vietnam (AAAGV) and the AATTV
2 December 1972 Australian Labor Party elected to government
5 December 1972 Conscription ends, draft resisters are released from jail
and pending prosecutions for draft resistance are
dropped
8 December 1972 Australia's military commitment in South Vietnam ends,
although controversy about the precise end date of the
war continues

Today's senior school students are not little children to be protected from
public controversies. They are nearing the age when they can be conscripted,
and will soon have to vote. They are required to read widely, exercise
judgement and think clearly about foreign matters.
Vietnam Moratorium, Campaign Prospectus, May 1970

The demonstration was a forceful reply to those M.Ps who described

intending marchers as 'bikies who are pack raping democracy'. The marchers
showed their concern was human agony. Whether we believe their tactics
effective, useful or even sensible, they renewed democracy, rather than raped
it… Yesterday's march cannot be written off by the Government as the antics
of communist influenced fools. It was a legitimate expression of opinion by a
substantial section of the population.
The Age, 9 May 1970

The Moratorium
The purpose of the moratorium was rather to have gathering that go beyond
that right and infringe the rights of others, to sit down in the street, to bring to
bear a wish to break the law because they dislike something the Government
has done after being elected by a majority.
Sydney Morning Herald, 6 May 1970

The motion also said the moratorium would give moral support to the
Vietnamese to persist in their aggression and subversion in South Vietnam,
cause unwarranted inconvenience to Australian citizens by the call to strike;
and promote civil disorder and encourage breaking the law.
Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 1970

Vietnam Moratorium an overwhelming success –

Tens of thousands of demonstrators participated in the Australia-wide
Vietnam Moratorium. The number far exceeded anticipation.
For many weeks local groups, universities, offices, factories and businesses
planned this all-important event. The Save Our Sons Movement took a very
active part, including the publishing and distributing of 50, 000 leaflets,
'Mothers in Mourning'.
By the campaign's publicity every Australian in some way, was made to think.
From the parliamentarian to the man in the street, people asked, 'What is the
Moratorium?'
S.O.S. Newsletter, May 1970

Discussion in the Australian Financial Review

Conscription is an inefficient, inequitable and expensive means of fleshing out
an army… An all-volunteers army is cheaper for three reasons.
The first reason follows from the fact that conscripts stay in the army a shorter
time than volunteers…
…a smaller force is needed, and the army can use less man power. It is
cheaper…
The government argues (rather smugly) that it is impossible to get enough
volunteers because there is too much employment and too much prosperity.
John Edwards, 7 April 1970

The case for an all-volunteer army is clearly and persuasively put on these
pages by John Edwards.
However, in the context of Australia's present political and geographical
environment there is a strong case to be put forward not merely for the
retention of National Service, but even for its improvement and expansion…
Conscription involves both the consciousness and conscience of society in
matters of defence. People who wouldn't particularly care what use was made
of a highly paid all-volunteers military force become much more deeply
involved when the disposition of conscripted 18-year-olds is at stake.
A national government has to think with extra care about how it commits a
conscripted force and to what national purpose…
Editorial, 7 April 1970

Jim Cairns Reflections on the Moratorium

I'd been working on my own for several years about Vietnam… [the CICD]
were the source and foundation of the Vietnam Moratorium movement. The
Vietnam Moratorium movement was a Melbourne movement… The result
was that when we got our street marches in Melbourne they were two or three
times a big as anywhere else.

...political parties are not groups of people interested in policy. They are
groups of people interested in holding branch meetings, the form of which is
always the same: Read the minutes, move a motion for their adoption, debate
whether they should be adopted, receive the correspondence, write the
letters, and sometimes someone has a word or two to say, but not often.
These make up the branch, where the branch meeting consists very much of
the same thing. Only occasionally do they get hot under the collar over some
issue, some policy, but not very often. They're all used mainly to decide who
should be the member of parliament for the area in which they exist, and
they're made of the contest between those who are trying to be so. That's the
summary of what political parties are like. You can't really say they're
significant areas for the discussion of ideals, the discussion of principles, or
the discussion of policy.

...demonstration, what we can call demonstration: picketing, marching in the

street, confronting the police, that was part of Australia… It had been no more
or less violent than it was up 1969 or '70, when the Vietnam Moratorium
occurred… the papers were full of terrible predictions about what was going
to happen… Archbishops were weeping tears of blood about the terrible
things that were going to happen and I was identified with most of it in the
week before the 8 May 1970.

…My argument briefly was: we were a peace movement and we were going
to behave in a peaceful way. We were not a peace movement going to be
aggressive.

The point I'm making is that I didn't make that a peace day, it was a peace
day because of its nature, because of its content, because of the way people
felt. They were going to behave unaggressively because they were committed
to unaggressive behaviour. I didn't make it peaceful. It was peaceful because
it was peaceful itself. And so it was peaceful.

Bourke Street didn't have a motor care or a tram in it. The police had moved
them all out and had opened the city, and had cleaned the city out, for us to
sue, wherever we wanted to go. We couldn't break the law because they'd
taken the law away! Well that was the character of that movement.

There had been information passed on to use that someone was going to
shoot from up on the tops of the buildings and so on. They wanted me to
wear a metal waistcoat. Some people did… There were two men who never
moved away from me all that time… They were looking up all the time. Had
anyone tried to attack me they would have been in front of me. Had they
heard any shot they'd have tried to put themselves between me and where it
came from.
Interviews with Veterans
Vietnam Fragments: An Oral History of Australians at War,
G McKay
 of the 58, 000 Australian soldiers who fought, 504 were MIA, 494 died
and 2, 398 were injured
 Soldiers may have had a duty of either 1 or 2 years
 Soldiers returned to Australia often at night, and were asked to take off
their uniform and arrive in civilian clothes

It wasn't anywhere near as traumatic as people make out. Most people who
went wanted to go, they enjoyed it and I think they had a pretty good time.
That side of the equation hasn't ever really been told.
Ian Ferguson
rd
Troop Commander (3 Calvary Regiment, Phuoc Tuy Province)

…society doesn't always recongnise the sacrifices that are being made by
such a small part of the community on their behalf… it is really one of the
essences of democracy that people can get up, whether we are at are or not,
and express a view on whether we should or should not be there…
if media portrayal of the horror of war can prevent or reduce it then good – but
soldiers doing their countries' will should never be denigrated.
David Kibbey
Infantry Platoon Commander (7 RAR)

In a democracy I believe we do what we are told by the government. By that I

mean that the military do not try and influence government policy. I believe the
idea of going to Vietnam was right…
Al Pinches
Canberra Bomber Navigator, Phan Rang

I thought the anti-Vietnam protestors were a bit of a pain in the arse. While I
accepted their right to protest, and I remember this quite clearly, I objected to
them attacking soldiers as targets in their marches through cities. I detested
their inability to distinguish between governments who were involved in the
political fracas and soldiers who were just doing what they were told to do.
Quite often these soldiers were members of their own class in society; the
nashos came from all works of life.

…I think my greatest weakness before going to Vietnam was the fact that I
didn't think enough about the big picture and where I was heading, what the
Army was doing and what was morally right, what was politically right.
Dan McDaniel
Platoon Commander (4 RAR South Vietnam)

In hindsight, Australian involvement may have been a mistake, but at the time
it was a valid decision of the Australian Government.
Les Hayward
Qantas B707 Officer (Sydney – Saigon)
Australia's involvement in Vietnam was not worth it because we didn't get the
result we wanted, and we lost over 500 soldiers. Many people do not
understand how multi-faceted the US and Vietnamese programs were in
Vietnam.
Ernie Chamberlain
Intelligence Officer (South Vietnam)

Prime Ministers of Australia 1962 – 1975

Time in Office Name Political Party
1949 – 1966 Robert Gordon Menzies Liberal
1966 – 1967 Harold Edward Holt Liberal
1967 – 1968 John McEwen Country Party
1968 – 1971 John Grey Gorton Liberal
1971 – 1972 William McMahon Liberal
1972 – 1975 Gough Whitlam ALP (Labor)

Timeline of Formation of Protest Groups

Date Established Name Common Acronym
Early 1960s Peace Quest Forum
(Melbourne)
1964 Eureka Youth League –
youth movement of the
Communist Party of
Australia
November 1964 Youth Campaign Against YCAC
Conscription
May 1965 Save Our Sons SOS
1965 Campaign for Nuclear CND
Disarmament
August 1965 Vietnam Action VAC
Campaign
September 1965 Vietnam Day Committee VDC
1967 The Pacifist Society at SDA
the University of
Melbourne

The Labour Club

Students Democratic
Alliance (in Queensland)
1968 Conscientious Objectors CO
(Non-pacifist)
- Melbourne
Late 1968 Committee against the CANSA
National Service Act
July 1969 Committee in Defiance
of National Service –
hand over 8000 signed
members by November
End 1960s New Left – new radicals,
student revolutionary left

For Australia's Sake: Vietnam

 Australia's involvement in the war began accompanied by mild public
concern
o by the time the decision was made to withdraw Australian forces
from Vietnam the whole country was involved in a bitter and
angry debate about troops being there
o this created the greatest degree of soul-searching
 the nature of the war and the public's perception of its morality gave
rise to such passions
 the further the war went, the more it was seen as an unfair struggle
between a David (the North Vietnamese) and a Goliath (the Allies)
 More bombs were dropped on the North Vietnamese than were
dropped in the whole of the Second World War
 The horror of the war was shown through the media for the first time,
and the scale of this horror seemed greater than politicians could justify
 When American and Australian troops were finally withdrawn, neither
nation mourned greatly (over what seemed to be an inglorious defeat)

The origins of the war

 Vietnam was originally occupied by the Chinese for about a thousand
years until 939 AD, but the Vietnamese won their freedom
 The French began to colonise Vietnam in the 1840s and effectively
took control after an Da Nang in 1858
 The Vietnamese resisted frequently, but the resistance was always put
down un til in the 1930s a communist wing of the nationalist movement
developed and largely took control
 In 1940 Vietnam fell to the Japanese, but the communists gained
further popularity by leading the resistance
 When the Second World War was over, the French, encouraged by the
Americans, were able to return
o American aid began to flow in to help the French oppose the
Viet Minh, as the communists and their allies who were
opposing the French were called
 The Viet Minh turned revolution into a war
o In 1954, at Dien Bien Phu, the French suffered a defeat
o A subsequent conference in Geneva decided Vietnam would be
divided into two parts, at the 17th parallel
 The (victorious) Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, would govern the North
 The anti-communists, led by Ngo Dinh Diem, would govern the South
o The Viet Minh had many supporters in the South
  What was to become 'The Vietnam War' began when Diem set out to
crush opponents to his regime
 The response from the north was to send troops across the border
o Diem found it increasingly difficult to maintain control and turned
to the US for military aid
 By 1962 military "advisers" were helping the Army of the Republic of
Vietnam (ARVN)
 The Vietnam War was ultimately about communism and the fears
among the western powers that it would spread through Asia
 Australia felt if communism could be stopped in Vietnam, then the rest
of Asia would be more secure from its 'threat'
 The Diem regime proved to be extremely weak
o it was divided and tended to rest more on the whims of Diem
himself
 In 1963 Diem was assassinated by his anti-communist rivals
 As South Vietnam was plunged into turmoil American military
encouragement was increased
o Australia also decided to join the conflict

Australian Troops join the War

 The decision to send Australian combat troops to Vietnam was made
by the Australian government late in 1964, through Australian activity in
Vietnam had actually commenced two years earlier
o with the dispatch of 30 instructors to help train the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam
 The Australian Labor Party was opposed to intervention but the public
reaction at the time favoured the government
 Few Australians in fact knew precisely what the war was about, but
their deep-seated fears of the new 'Yellow Peril' and the 'Communist
Menace' had a good deal to do with their support of Australian
involvement
 To the Liberal government the decision to send troops to Vietnam was
a realistic assessment of Australia's dependence on the USA
o Australian diplomacy, recognising the weakness of the British
and French, had pressed the US for involvement
 In 1954 Australia had joined the South-East Asian Treaty Organization
(SEATO)
 Holt's declaration was an indication of his attitude to the United States
and his belief that the USA could offer Australia security from
communism

The Viet Cong/National Liberation Front

 unlike previous wars in the nature of the enemy
o after 1954 the major units of the Viet Minh army in the south of
Vietnam had been disbanded or returned to the north
 small groups of communists had been left behind
o in 1957 these groups began expanding and emerged as the Viet
Cong, or National Liberation Front (NLF)
 o by 1949 local companies were being formed, by 1961 battalions,
by 196 regiments and in 1965 divisional staffs were formed to
coordinate the regiments
 The Americans were able to hold the cities and ports, the Viet Cong
ensured they would never completely control the countryside
 Unlike previous wars Vietnam often had no fronts
o it proved to be extremely difficult to distinguish the enemy from
the civilian population
 The Viet Cong were essentially divided into three groups:
o The core were regular soldiers situated everywhere
o the provincial mobile units were usually recruited from the village
guerrilla units in which they served
 these were full time soldiers with knowledge of the area
and close contact with the locals
o The village guerrillas were part time, lightly-equipped and not
well trained
 The Communist Party organization controlled and coordinated all
activity at each level
 The struggle in Vietnam was not only for military superiority but for
people's minds
o Soldiers would increasingly find themselves carrying out 'civilian'
tasks so as to bring the Vietnamese people onto their side
 From 1964 the North Vietnamese began to introduce their own regular
armed forces (the NVA) into the conflict
o They were supplied by the Soviet Union and China

Attitudes towards the enemy

 The American forces gave the Viet Cong the nickname of 'gook'
o It was a racist commentary on an enemy for whom (on the
whole) they felt the utmost distaste
 American forces in the later years of the war faced numerous
allegations of atrocity, including the My Lai massacre in which innocent
civilians were shot dead
o Occasional allegations of atrocity were also levelled at the
Australians and one of these was confirmed
 It is clear that the Australian soldiers came to share their American
comrades' contempt for the enemy who they referred to as 'slopes'
 many soldiers shared the belief that the enemy was sub-human, with
different values from their own and that therefore he could be treated
with distain
o There was nothing unique about this: it is a common experience
of war, a way of making the enemy appear so much beneath
common humanity to justify his death
 The Viet Cong pictured the Australians similarly
o There was brutality on both sides
 It was another example of the misunderstanding which botch causes
and is caused by war
The Terrain
 The allies could generally out-gun their enemy, and had some of the
most advanced military equipment the world had seen to date
 The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had the advantage of being
used to the climate and knowledge of the local terrain
 The tropical humidity of Vietnam along with the thick jungles and
mangroves made it difficult for the Allied soldiers to adjust, while the
Viet Cong were fighting on their own ground
o ideal ground for guerrilla warfare
 The geography of the South Vietnam helped determine the nature of
the fighting

The Australian army advisers

 In 1961 the strength of the Australian armed forces had been scaled
down from a Korean War peak of 57, 243 to 46, 774
 Many of the military were still employed in Malaya and with tensions
growing between Malaya and Indonesia there were few to spare for
Vietnam
 Few soldiers had a more difficult task than the advisers who not only
had to instruct and help organize the South Vietnamese army but carry
out difficult missions
o They also had to overcome considerable social barriers

Australians in Vietnam 1965

 There was never any shortage of soldiers wanting to go to Vietnam
 The war offered excitement, interest and monetary incentives in the
form of war-service housing loans, tax free allowances and duty-free
goods
 The careful soldier could save most of his pay and prepare for the
future
 Few of the first arrivals could imagine what was to come
 The 1st Battalion sailed out to public applause on 27 May 1965 and
arrived in South Vietnam to a very cheerful reception from the
Americans on the 14-18 June
 The Bien Hoa base stood across the main route to Saigon and
contributed to the security of the capital
o it was a vital stronghold and the Viet Cong were as aware of this
as the Americans (and Allies)
 In June the Viet Cong embarked upon an all-out offensive to capture
South Vietnam
 The Australians soon realised the best means of defence was attack
(a strategy they had used in previous wars)
 On 14 June the first patrol set out from the base
 Late in June a 'search and destroy' mission was launched to "mop-up"
Viet Cong bases in the outlying districts
o The objective was to "flush-out" the enemy from their positions
in the Jungle
o The advance was preceded by a heavy American bombing raid
 o When the Australian troops arrived the Viet Cong had gone
 The Australians had learned a great deal about jungle warfare in
previous wars
 The Americans believed in massive air and artillery strikes and well-
armed attacks by close-knit groups, whereas the Australians favoured
attack by stealth
o Australians proved their theory had a considerable degree of
merit
 Whenever an Australian soldier was encountered by the enemy his
companions would close in rapidly and attack from all sides, thus
reducing the danger to themselves, whilst taking the enemy by surprise
o such tactics worked well on numerous occasions
 The Australians were once again showing themselves masters of
jungle warfare
 The Viet Cong were hard to find and moved with great speed –
Skirmishes tended to be brief
 The enemy was all around – In these circumstances it was one of the
many tragedies of the war that civilians sometimes were shot by
mistake

The war intensifies

January – May 1966
 During 1966 the war became more intense
 Both sides expanded their participation with neither seeming certain of
victory
 On 30 May 1966 the 1st Battalion held its final ceremonial parade
before returning to Australia
o 24 men had been killed

Phuoc Tuy Province:

The First Australian Task Force
 The Australians found a means of participating in the war with greater
freedom from American control and also began to introduce conscripts
into the services
 The national service scheme was seen then as the only answer to the
increasing demand for troops and met little immediate opposition
 The new Australian force was a 'miniature' army
 The new force was named the 1st Australian Task Force (1 ATF) and
became 'a short back and sides efficient fighting machine'
 The Viet Cong had been active in Phuoc Tuy since 1945 and had built
up a large network of political and military organisations
 The Task Force was given the task of seeking out and destroying the
enemy, so that the civilians could then be protected and helped
 At times the soldiers were unclear as to what was their major task
 It also turned out that the Task Force was not as large or well-armed as
was originally thought and lack of men and weapons made it hard for it
to fulfil all of its objectives
National Servicemen
 About half the casualties of the war were national servicemen
 The first NS intake was mid-1965
 nicknamed "nasho"
 It came as something of a shock to a nation which considered itself fit
and healthy that a high proportion, around 44 per cent, failed to meet
the physical, educational and psychological standards of the army
 The typical national service recruit became a private
o He spent ten weeks learning drill, basic fieldcraft and the
discipline of an army life
o He was then allocated to a corps where he received a further
two to three months specialist training before being posted to a
unit
 Those selected for officer training were sent from the recruitment
training battalions (RTBs) to do six months at Officer Training School
o Of these only 50 per cent graduated as second lieutenants
 recruits with professional, medical or dental qualifications were
commissioned to the rank of captain, following only six weeks of basic
training
o About a quarter of the recruits went into the infantry
 National Servicemen soon constituted about 40 percent of the army
 The army did not distinguish between professionals and national
servicemen though it was clear to most soldiers which were which
 In Vietnam most Australian soldiers expressed hostility towards the
Americans
 As the war dragged on their greater resentment was reserved for the
'war resisters' at home
 The more popular the anti-war movement became the more perplexed
were the national servicemen in Vietnam
o They, along with all soldiers had either seen or been apart of
some terrible events and felt they had a lot to put up with
 The national servicemen felt themselves to be the unfortunate victims
of circumstances beyond their control

As a result of the anti-war feelings at home many troops, regulars and

national servicemen, eventually returned to Australia deeply embittered. They
alone of the soldiers in Australia's nine wars came home without a heroes'
welcome.
Page 58

The Ambush at Long Tan

 On 17 August the Viet Cong laid a trap in the Phuoc Tuy area
 Two (Australian) platoons advanced slowly into the plantation, in
pouring tropical rain
 The plantation suddenly erupted with mortar bombs and bullets
o A number of soldiers were killed
 Shortly after nightfall, a relieving force was carried to the enemy rear
 The Viet Cong fled leaving behind 245 dead and numerous weapons
  The Australians had 17 dead and 21 wounded

Search patrols 1966 – 67: relations with the Vietnamese

 The success at Long Tan seemed to improve relations between the
Australians and some of the Vietnamese locals
o The town of Ba Ria erected a banner across the road which
read "The people of Phuoc Tuy applaud the victory of the Royal
Australian Forces and the destruction of the Viet Cong
Regiment on August 18th 1966"
 The Australians became masters in the use of small patrols in 'cordon
and search' operations
 Suspected Viet Cong were rounded up and interrogated
o Some villages were surprisingly cooperative (some were not)

Why, after six months of determined generosity and bloody hard work didn't
we get any vegetables form Hoa Long? And why aren't the people there
prepared to earn themselves a few piastres they could well use by doing your
laundry? So far our civil aid activities seem to have achieved bugger all of
lasting significance.

 The duality of the Australians' experience made it difficult fomr them to

be 'military' one minute and 'civilian' the next
 In addition to these difficulties were the problems of the Viet Cong's
entrenchment and the widespread corruption that existed in the
government of South Vietnam

The Special Air Service

 The SAS kept close liaison with the RAAF
o Their operations were so successful they were copied by the
Americans
 By the end of 1966 it seemed that the Australians' efforts were paying
off
o Viet Cong sampans carrying ammunition and supplies were
trapped and sunk before they could reach the troops
o Towns and villages were being 'pacified'
o The Viet Cong and NVA main units had been cleared from the
central Phuoc Tuy area and the main route between Vung Tau
and Saigon had been reopened

The Tet Offensive

 During 1967 the war continued for a time substantially in the favour of
the United States and its allies with large multi-divisional forces
pressing the North Vietnamese out of previously-held areas
 The US however was unaware that the North Vietnamese were
preparing themselves for a major offensive in the Lunar New Year (Tet)
 The communist onslaught was fierce – the attack had been well
prepared
  The Australian Task Force had to fight hard to regain control of Ba Ria,
which was temporarily overrun
o It also repelled forces which pressed in on Bien Hoa and Long
Binh and contributed towards a decisive defeat of the North
Vietnamese
 The Tet offensive though proved in the long run to be a turning point in
favour of the Vietnamese communists
 In March 1968 President Johnson announced he would not stand for
re-election
 The new President, Richard Nixon, found he could not alter public
opinion as it became clear the war was being lost

The RAN and RAAF

 RAAF units were gradually built up to a helicopter squadron (9
squadron), a Canberra bomber squadron (2 squadron) and a transport
squadron (35 Squadron)
 Helicopter pilots had to brave the enemy's fire in ferrying troops to
battle positions and returning them to the safety of base camp or
hospital
 In 1967 the Australian government sent a destroyer to take part in the
United States Seventh Fleet's coastal blockade against the North
Vietnamese seaborne reinforcements of the anti-Saigon forces
 The support of the RAAF and the RAN added to the ability of the
Australian ground forces to keep the communists on the run

The war ends

 By the early 1970s the Americans had come to accept that their military
commitment to the Vietnam conflict should end
 The pressures of the peace movement and the plain fact that the war
could not be won gave President Nixon relatively little choice
o Peace talks were opened in Paris
 During 1972 American ground forces were gradually reduced to 50 000
men and finally confined to support and advisory roles
 President Thieu was an authoritarian leader and the ruling elites of
South Vietnam lacked unity
o Thieu's regime was weak, whereas the communist's political
structure had never crumbled
 The communist take-over of South Vietnam was inevitable
 The Australian Task Force withdrew from Vietnam late in 1971 in a
"phased withdrawal"
 The Viet Cong were still operating throughout Phuoc Tuy province,
their political hold had not been broken and their deeply-entrenched
local support had made the Task Force's effort extremely difficult
 Though the Australian army had held together much better than the
American, its undoubted proficiency and experience in jungle warfare
were not sufficient to make its mission a success
 A few Australian military advisers were left behind to help the South
Vietnamese
 o They were withdrawn during 1972
 On 27 December 1972 the newly-elected Australian Labor Government
announced that all defence aid to South Vietnamese would cease
 On 28 January 1973 a cease fire was signed by the United States,
North Vietnam, South Vietnam and representatives of the Viet Cong in
South Vietnam
 The Communist forces proved too strong for the South Vietnamese
and in 1975 a communist government was established in Saigon
o The NFL flag was raised over the city

Casualties
 Of the 50, 190 Australians who served in Vietnam 424 died and almost
3000 were wounded
 Most casualties came about by small-arms fire or from mines exploding
rather than as a result of artillery bombardment
 Living conditions, by the standards of war, had also been good
o Combat was of limited duration and there was plenty of rest and
recuperation
o Minor illnesses such as gostro-intestinal infections, skin
diseases and malaria affected a large number of troops
o Overall, however, the immediate and obvious effects of war
were somewhat less than in previous conflicts
o there was little of the drug-taking that dogged the American
army

The Home Front

 In Vietnam (as in all previous wars) the Australians played a secondary
role to a major ally
o The Australian Government had pressed the Americans into the
struggle
 The Australian public had given its support initially to the use of
Australian troops
 Concern eventually turned into protest, but unlike the protest of the
First World War, the hostility towards the war in Vietnam was not
channelled into political circles but displayed in public protest in the
streets
 Conscription… created social divisions not seen since 1916-17
 The chances of being called up if you were a 20 year-old Australian
male were about one in ten
 There was a class bias in the conscription; balloted student could have
their call-up deferred until their studies had been completed but the
less well-educated draftees, and there less socially advantaged had a
much greater chance of being sent to Vietnam
 Failure to register, the burning of a draft card and failure to attend a
medical examination brought three weeks gaol
 Failure to report to an army induction centre after a receipt of a call-up
notice bought two years imprisonment
 Many of the draftees genuinely believed the war to be wrong
 o Some damaged their bodies in order to fail medical tests

The anti-Vietnam war campaign

 The conscription of troops for Vietnam was supported enthusiastically
by the Returned Services League and various Liberal Party
backbenchers and branches
 Most Australians were surprised at the announcement (of conscription)
 The Australian Labour Party also seemed to have been taken
unawares and was slow to organize opposition
 It was the public's increasing awareness of the realities of thr war that
lifted the level of protest

We oppose overseas conscription because:

We believe that we may be sent to fight in Vietnam… This would be a moral
wrong and an unjust call upon our lives by the Government of our country. We
share a fundamental belief that… Australia's role in these perilous times is to
seek an end to South-East Asian disputes, through negotiations for peaceful
settlements – not to pursue the murderous path to world conflict.
Advertisement in The Australian
Youth Campaign Against Conscription
1965
 When President Johnson toured Australia in support of the Liberals the
protests became more strident and police reactions more violent
 On 18 July 1965, Bill White, a Sydney school-teacher, became the first
draftee to refuse a note requiring him to report for duty at an army
induction centre
o His stand served as an example to others
 The ALP's defeat in the 1966 election had forced the protest movement
further in this direction
 An increasing number of 20-year-old Australians refused to comply with
the ballot
o Others refused to comply with the ballot
o Others refused to attend medical examination
 During 1968 the first of the protestors were imprisoned
 The Draft Resistance Movement was a militant organisation
established in Melbourne
o It claimed that it had 'not been formed to oppose conscription, it
had been formed to wreck it'
 It did not last long, but influenced others
 Many trade unions, academics and religious bodies now gave their
support
 Police arrests increased, under the Crimes Act and city by-laws
 Public opinion polls in mid-1969 indicated a new and in some ways
puzzling direction of opinion, with a majority opposing the war and a
falling number, though still a majority, supporting conscription
 the 1969 election returned the Liberals to power
 At a national meeting in Melbourne early in 1970 anti-war groups from
around the country reached agreement on the concept of the
moratorium
  On 8 and 9 May 1970 over 200 000 people took part in moratoriums
across the country
 A second was held in October 1970 and a third in June 1971
 In Melbourne, Jim Cairns led a march of around 100 000

I believed that the war was not justified as a defence of America or her allies,
nor was it in the interest of the Vietnamese people whose interest… the
American military intervention was impeding and suppressing.
Jim Cairns
 The Government tried to take the heat out of the confrontation by
delaying the prosecution of a number of resisters and by promising
partial withdrawal of troops
 Resisters were given shelter, government ministers were confronted by
mail and at meetings
 By this time public opinion had begun to turn decisively not only
against the war but also conscription and well known politicians and
church leaders came out against the draft
 The war became the fundamental issue of the 1972 election campaign
o Gough Whitlam made clear his opposition to conscription and
when his government was elected conscription ceased
 The groundswell of opposition was such that it became impossible for
governments to ignore it

Civilian life resumes

The adjustment to civilian life posed similar difficulties to the Vietnamese
veterans as it had to many of previous wars
 This time the publics reaction was not the same
o This time there was little of the enthusiasm that had heralded
the ending of previous wars
o Soldiers were flown in quietly, given civilian clothes and
reparation benefits
o Few were regarded as heroes
o Some passed from war to civilian life in a matter of hours
 There was much to be put out of their minds, but such was the national
'guilt' associated with the war that few people wanted to hear their
experiences and help relieve the tensions
 Some soldiers felt betrayed by the nation, others that they had
betrayed themselves
 The debate about the effects of the defoliant Agent Orange continues
o Deformed babies were being born to families of Vietnam
veterans
Only time will tell just what the true effects have been
Changing Perceptions
Australians objected to the Vietnam War for a wide variety of reasons. Some
saw it as a strategic mistake; others rejected it on political grounds; others
objected to the war as the last flicker of colonialism; others again saw it in
quasi-Marxist terms as a classical conflict between advanced capitalism
(represented by the USA) and an emergent socialist society. A number of
Australians, however, rejected the war on specifically religious and moral
grounds, seeing the allied conduct of the conflict as violating the conditions of
a just war.
M. Charlesworth and V. Noone
War: Australia and Vietnam, 1987

 Conscription caused litter response among the public

o possibly as it was before the announcement that Australian
troops would serve in Vietnam
 On 9 August 1964, though, the first anti-war demonstration was held
during the Hiroshima Day Commemoration march
 20 000 marchers carried banners that declared 'No War in Vietnam'
 In Melbourne two hundred demonstrators protested outside the US
Consulate
 The first specifically anti-conscription meeting was held the day after
the announcement on 11 November 1964
 Save Our Sons was established in June 1965 by Joyce Golgerth and
Pat Ashcroft in Sydney
o Conscripts serving overseas were its concern
 in a Gallup Poll taken in 1965, 43 percent of those asked considered
America as Australia's 'best friend', 39 per cent nominated Britain and
only a small minority questioned the extent of our involvement and
alignment with the USA
 On 30 June 1965 when a demonstration was held at Sydney's Central
Station as the first group of national service conscripts left for training
at Puckapunyal

I am opposed to a State's right to conscript a person, I believe very strongly in

democracy and democratic ideals – and I believe that it is in the area of the
State's right over the life of the individual that the difference lies between
totalitarian and democratic government. My opposition to conscription, of
course, is intensified greatly when the conscription is for military purposes. In
fact the National Service Act is the embodiment of what I consider to be
morally wrong and, no matter what the consequences, I will never fulfil the
terms of the Act.
YCAC Newsletter,
 September 1966

In those years [1966-72] what 'made news'? Amongst other things, forms of
protest – new forms (like bra burnings, freedom rides, talk-ins, sit-ins, vigils),
or old forms of protest done up with new words ('demo'; 'women's lib'; 'green
bans'). Police arrests made news.
D. Horne
Conscription denies the humanity and individuality of a human being. He
becomes no more than the servant of the authority which conscripts. The
authority of a government over an individual's life can, under no
circumstances, be justified. It has no inherent divine right to conscript for
military service, nor does democratic sanction legitimise such authority.
Peter Hornby, We Resist Because, 1970

Christian discipleship challenges me to resist an Act which crushes basic

human rights and sends young men off to a war which world opinion
condemns.
Robert Mowbray

Not with my life you don't napalm women and children in Vietnam, burn down
their flimsy huts and villages, deprive them of their future by backing a corrupt
military dictatorship

Not with my life do you kill a child's parents and offer him a bar of chocolate or
maim him cruelly and offer him a new artificial limb.
Michael Hamel-Green

The DRM has not been formed to oppose conscription, it has been formed to
wreck it. We are opposed to the war in Vietnam and we intend to resist the
conscription of Australian youth for the war by all available means…
Peacemaker,
February-March 1968

 The groups that followed the DRM were essentially the same in
philosophy, were university based and, consequently, middle-class
 The major groups were
o Students for a Democratic Society (Sydney University and
Tasmania
o The Pacifist Society (Melbourne University)
o Students for Democratic Action (Queensland University)
 By the beginning of March 1968 over one hundred people had been
arrested for handing out pamphlets in front of the Melbourne GPO
 In June 1969, 500 academics signed statements of support for draft
resisters
 A Gallup Poll in August 1969 showed, for the first time, a majority of
people who wished to see the end of Australian involvement in Vietnam

When you leave here today, realise a sacred trust. You have the trust to stand
for peace and for the qualities of the human spirit to which we must dedicate
ourselves… Our spirit is the spirit of peace and understanding. Our spirit is
opposed to violence, opposed to hate, opposed to every motive that has
produced this terrible war. And in developing our own spirit, we will change
the spirit of other people. We can overcome, ladies and gentlemen, and I
have never seen a more convincing sight than I can see now to give me
confidence that we shall overcome.
Jim Cairns,
In his address to the Moratorium marchers
8 May 1970

 There were no arrests during the moratorium

 On 22 April 1970, two weeks prior to the moratorium, Prime Minister
John Gorton announced that one of the Task Force's three battalions in
South Vietnam would not be replaced when it finished its tour of duty

Draft resistance confronts the government in a way that legal methods of

opposition do not. The person who deliberately and openly defies the law on
conscription, presents the government with a dilemma. To prosecute him
would draw attention to the opposition to conscription. To allow his challenge
to go unanswered calls into question the very authority of the government and
encourages others to refuse to be conscripted with impunity. Thus draft
resisters have the government in clift stick. Even a small number can provide
the catalyst for a massive movement against conscription. This is what is
happening in Australia today. The number of draft resisters who have publicly
declared themselves has risen from about 6 in 1967 to over 300 in 1971.
Downdraft – A Draft Resisters Manual
Melbourne Draft Resisters Union, 1971

 There was support for draft resisters from people like the headmaster
of (the prestigious) Newington College in Sydney
 On 30 March 1971 Prime Minister William McMahon announced the
further withdrawal of 1, 000 men from Vietnam and followed this by
saying that most of Australia's combat forces would be withdrawn by
the end of the year
o In June the ALP announced that it would end national service
and void any penal consequences
 The Australian Labor Party, under the leadership of Gough Whitlam,
won the federal election of 1972
o The Liberal-Country Party coalition had governed Australia for
twenty three years
 The Government did maintain the Australian Embassy in Saigon, but it
also established diplomatic links with North Vietnam in 1973 and
established an aid programme before 1975

The Vietnam Lesson

 Australia entered the Vietnam war:
o to support US policy in Vietnam, in order to have a strong ally in
South-East Asia
 o The Australian fear of communism led to involvement for
security reasons

o The Australian involvement also rested on the assumption that

Asian countries desired western democratic ideals
(ironic)

 The consequences were the political motivation of the middle class in

response to national service and a far more cynical attitude towards
government, politicians and the decision-making process

 Australia's military involvement and its domestic legacy, have been

very influential in determining recent political attitudes towards the
Indo-Chinese region

It was a war whose perceived character did not change until 1966 when it
was seen as one in which the US sought to impose an unwanted, increasingly
discredited regime upon a country of no great strategic importance to it. It
ended as the last war of US television screens.
In hindsight, the primary error over Vietnam was the failure of the US – as
well as Australia and New Zealand – to comprehend that the North
Vietnamese were not only communists but nationalists bent upon the
reunification of the State.
For Australia and New Zealand, America's chief allies, there have also been
lessons learned. Not only lessons, but a loss of innocence… Some 66
percent of those polled [In 1985] now believe Australia was wrong to have
sent forces to Vietnam; in 1967, by contrast, some 62 percent believed it was
right to be doing so.

Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April 1985

Problems with History (American Sources)

Heroes, John Pilger
(Jonathan Cape 1986, Vintage 2001)
This “historical amnesia” is not accidental; if anything it demonstrates the
insidious power of the dominant propaganda of the Vietnam war. The
constant American government line was that the war was essentially a conflict
of Vietnamese against Vietnamese, in which Americans became 'involved',
mistakenly and honourably. This assumption was shared both by “hawks” and
“doves”; it permeated the media coverage during the war and has been the
overriding theme of numerous retrospectives since the war. It is a false and
frequently dishonest assumption. The longest war this century was a war
waged by America against Vietnam, North and South. It was an attack on the
people of Vietnam, communist and non-communist, by American forces. It
was an invasion of their homeland and their lives, just as the current presence
in Afghanistan of Soviet forces is an invasion. Neither began as a mistake.
Page 178
(Emphasis is original)
The accredited version of events has not changed. It is that non-communist
South Vietnam was invaded by communist North Vietnam and that the United
States came to the aid of the “democratic” regime in the South. This of course
is untrue, as documentation I have touched upon makes clear. That Ho Chi
Minh waited so long before sending a regular force to assist the American
attacks seems, in retrospect, extraordinary; or perhaps it was a testament to
the strength and morale of those South Vietnamese who had taken up arms
in defence of their villages and their homeland. In 1965 the American counter-
insurgency adviser, John Paul Vann, wrote in a memorandum addressed to
his superiors in Washington that a “popular political base for Government of
South Vietnam does not now exist” and the majority of the people in South
Vietnam “primarily identified” with the National Liberation Front.
Page 189

During those years the United States dispatched its greatest ever land army
to Vietnam, and dropped the greatest tonnage of bombs in the history of
warfare, and pursued a military strategy deliberately designed to force
millions of people to abandon their homes, and used chemicals in a manner
which profoundly changed the environmental and genetic order, leaving a
once bountiful land petrified. At least 1,300,000 people were killed and many
more were maimed and otherwise ruined; 58,022 of these were Americans
and the rest were Vietnamese. President Reagan has called this a “noble
cause”.
Page 190

Images usurped the judgements of experienced reporters who affected the

roles of innocent bystander and caption writer. Public attitudes follow from
perspectives; by allowing the false “neutrality” of television images to
dominate the coverage of war, journalists allowed misconceptions to become
received truths. The first casualties were truth and context; bang-bang and
contemporary history were deemed not to blend on the screen. That the
Geneva peace conference in 1954 had been undermined by Washington, that
communist China was no friend of communist Vietnam, that the NLF had
sought the establishment of a non-communist, neutral coalition in South
Vietnam — these truths went unremembered and unconnected.
Page 260

Rogue State, William Blum

(Common Courage Press, 2000)
Most people believe that the US lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its
core, by poisoning the earth, the water and the gene pool for generations,
Washington had in fact achieved its primary purpose: preventing what might
have been the rise of a good development option for Asia.
Pages 87 - 88

Show us the Truth About Vietnam, Ignacio Ramonet

(Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2000)
The films shows young “veterans” (20-27) returning from the war. They realise
they have been taking part in an act of butchery, and that they have been
conditioned, dehumanised and turned into criminal “Terminators”. They also
realise that there will never be an international criminal tribunal to look into the
Vietnam war: the politicians and generals responsible for the massacres, the
use of napalm, the bombing of civilians, the mass executions in prisons and
the ecological disasters resulting from the use of chemical defoliants will
never be tried for their crimes against humanity.

The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-

Maker From the Crimea to Kosovo, Phillip Knightley
(Prion Books, 2000),
At a time when the most damage of the was was being inflicted on Indo-
China, the news coverage was at its worst, because editors and producers
had decided that the ground war was virtually over and that, with the steady
withdrawal of U.S. troops underway, public interest had declined. The second
unfortunate result was that those editors and producers decided that there
was no further interest in American atrocity stories.
Page 438

In Vietnam, racism became a patriotic virtue ... All Vietnamese became

“dinks”, “slopes”, “slants”, or “gooks”, and the only good one was a dead one.
So the Americans killed them when it was clear that they were Vietcong....
And they killed them when it was clear they were not Vietcong.
It was the racist nature of the fighting, the treating of the Vietnamese “like
animals,” that inevitably led to My Lai, and it was the reluctance of
correspondents to report this racist and atrocious nature of the war that
caused the My Lai story to be revealed not by a war correspondent, but by an
alert newspaper reporter back in the United States — a major indictment of
the coverage of the war.
Page 424 - 428
(Emphasis is original)

So in the reporting of Vietnam each day’s news was swiftly consumed by the
next day’s. Too few correspondents looked back and tried to see what it
added up to, too few probed beyond the official version of events to expose
the lies and half-truths, too few tried to analyse what it all meant. There were
language problems: few correspondents spoke French, much less
Vietnamese. There were time problems: Kevin Buckley’s investigation into
“Operation Speedy Express” took two men two and a half months. And there
were cultural problems: apart from Bernard Fall’s and Frances FitzGerald’s,
there were no serious attempts to explain to Americans something about the
people they were fighting. On the whole, writers for non-daily publications
came out better than most of their colleagues because, free from the tyranny
of pressing deadlines, they could look at the war in greater depth.
Page 466 – 467