Helicopter Flight Vietnam - Essay Example

Name: Institution: Helicopter Flight Vietnam In the earnest spirit in which the Vietnam War started, so was the Australian involvement in the fight between 1962 and 1971 when the last Australian serviceman left the Vietnamese soil. It is worth mentioning at this point that the Vietnam War was not primarily an Australian affair but majorly an American-Communist duel. The War can be defined as the prolonged struggle between the nationalists fighting for oneness and independence of Vietnam and the American driven South Vietnamese that were being used to combat the spread of communism. Although the quest for independence initiated by Ho Minh (Levy 2004) through the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam may appear to have been the drive for Australia to extent its aid; it is the disguised American fear of the unchecked spread of communism if any single country fell in the communist regimes. Australia joined the Vietnam War at the request and in fulfilment of the American interests, which is reflected by the historical chronology of the turn of events leading to deployment of more than fifty thousand Australian soldiers by 1972. Understanding the Australian entrance and succeeding involvement requires a conceptual analysis of every event preceding or succeeding the first deployment of military aid to Vietnam. How Australia Entered the Vietnam War Robert Menzies’s Announcement Australia actively joined the Vietnam War in 1965 following a suggestive announcement by the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies of a receipt of request to extent the country’s aid for the Vietnamese War. According to Westheider (2007), the statement was made in a half-empty House of Representatives, which in essence would have been interpreted as a short term issue that bore little importance in terms of the human and other resource commitment. However, the submission for extension of both military and economic aid to Vietnam would draw Australia deep into the war as it morphed from its initial struggle for independence into a civil and to some degree a regional power contest. The outright involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War was hatched in April 29th, 1965 (Knight and Heazle 2011) when after three years of technical and advisory support, the Prime Minister declared the deployment of army in form of an infantry Battalion to Vietnam. Citing the complete overrun of South East Vietnam by enemies as an apparent security threat to Australia and all the countries of South East Asia, the Menzies conceded the request by the Government of Southern Vietnam of further military assistance, thus effectively marking Australia’s direct involvement. Important to note is the fact that this deployment was the first large military dispatch Australia committed into outside the windows of the two World Wars (McNeill and Ekins 2003). First Military Deployment As aforementioned, Australia deployed the first Battalion into Vietnam in 1965 although there had been some limited support in the War. The Australian involvement though started in 1962 (Corfield 2008) when the leadership yielded to requests by the U.S. and the Republic of Vietnam and sent thirty military advisors in aid of training of the Vietnamese Army. The first team of Australian military advisors comprised of highly skilled and knowledgeable soldiers that had intense experience on Jungle warfare (Wiest 2008). The servicemen had been selected for their experiences from the confrontational involvement with Indonesia, and also the Australia’s jungle participation during World War II. During the training support assistance, Australia had strategically placed a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron in the neighbouring Thailand that would serve a back up at the point of additional need. As observed by Wiest (2008), the first sign of increased Australian involvement in the Vietnam War drew when it became apparent in 1964 that if nothing was done to flex the military capacity, the South Vietnamese forces would be overrun by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese fighters. A gain in this context would imply that the communists would benefit in advancing their power reach. It is at this stage that the U.S. started distending its military count while lobbying other friendly countries to send more troops in order to delude the American invasion perception by the South Asian communities. Knight and Heazle (2011) presents that in the interest of the emerging threats and the marshalled support by the Americans, Australia increased the military advisory team to sixty (60) servicemen, and the number continually raised to more than one hundred soldiers by 1965 before the Prime Minister announced the deployment of the infantry battalion: Australia found itself fully engulfed in the Vietnam War gradually as the fight intensified over the succeeding years. Following the announcement to the House of Representatives in April 1965 that the Australian Army was to join the war in Vietnam, the first infantry of 778 servicemen from the Royal Australian Regiment (RAR) was dispatched in May that year. It is this 1st Battalion that (Corfield 2008) observes that it composed of honed career Army personnel that had joined the forces by voluntarily choosing the job. The Australian military code had re-introduced the conscription program in November 1964 that was called the National Service Scheme, which required all Australian men turning twenty years to join the army for a mandatory two-year service. The first batch from comprising the conscripts joined the Australian front in the Vietnam War in 1966 (Corfield 2008). Expansion of Australian Boot on the Vietnamese Battlefield In the two and half years following the 1965 initial deployment, Australian military expanded its troop numbers at the War front in varied occasions. For example, a Battalion group was formed by just three months after the May 1965 deployment in which the count of Australian troops rose to more than a thousand soldiers (Truong 2010). In a sign of an incremental trend that was to characterize the Australian deployment into Vietnam in the following years, the Battalion group morphed into a task force in May 1966, a time when the number of soldiers increased to 4500 before expanding further to 8300 military personnel by October 1967 (Corfield 2008). The extensive involvement of Australia in the Vietnam War is underlined by the 50,000 count of troops that deployed for the war summarily from the 1964 advisory scale to the 1971pull back. Although the number of Australians deployed to fight in line with the South Vietnamese Democracy may appear large in the country’s scale, a rhetoric that this was an American war is corroborated by the half a million American servicemen deployed during the fight. The expanding Australian military in Vietnam increased its influence on the War particularly on the Viet Cheng fighters that were confronted with defeat by the soldiers that had prior experience in Jungle warfare compared to Americans. Lawrence (2010) argues that although the Americans commandeered the Australian troops in the war, they engaged actively in their custom style. They spent much of their war time roaming the South Vietnamese dark forests and countryside villages searching for the Viet Cong fighters. Although Australian troops were initially stationed near the capital Saigon, they served at other different regions during the more than five-year stay in the war. The 1st Battalion RAR was primarily located at Bien Hoa province in the outskirts of Saigon from where they engaged collaboratively with the Americans to clean the area of fighter elements and secure the nearby airbase (Daum, Gardener and Wilfred 2003). However, the core Australian Task Force was located at Phuoc Tuy province for the most of its service in the war between 1966 and 1971. Australian Troops in the Battle of Long Tan The Battle of Long Tan marked one of the iconic war events used by historians to characterize the Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. The Australian fame in this unprecedented engagement rose because despite being one of the most gruesome and intense, the Australian military men countered a several fold Viet Cheng fighters that would in a normal warfare occasion outrun the relatively small number of Australians involved. In The Battle of Long Tan of August 1966 (Horner and Thomas 2010), the Australian soldiers fought back the Viet Cong that had lured them into a rubber plantation in a disguised ambush involving more than 2,500 enemy fighters. The battle started with an unprecedented attack on the Australian operations base at Nui Dat province in which the Viet Cong forces fired mortar and shell in the early morning hours of the 17th day of August 1966 (Horner and Thomas 2010). The day-long fire fight started when upon being attacked, a total of 105 Australian soldiers from the D Company and the 6th RAR Battalion and three New Zealand artillery men invaded the Long Tan rubber plantation to fight the enemy forces. The relatively small army of Australians confronted heavy fire fight from what historians have numbered 1,500 to 2,500 Viet Cong fighters in the rubber plantation: there was a heavy machine gun fire and mortar attack connoting the pre-panned ambush to massacre the Australians. However, the turn of events in this fight eked a name for the Australians as they pushed back the seemingly ill prepared and experienced attackers. Truong (2010) observes that the sight for victory started with D-Company commander requesting for air support in a Helicopter and ammunitions replenishment. The UH-1B Iroquois and the No. 9 Squadron RAAF hovered over the battle field resupplying the seemingly overpowered platoons that were struggling under the heavy Viet Cong small arms and the rocket-propelled grenades. As presented by Horner and Thomas (2010), the D-Company had faced intense and defeating three hour fire fight when A-Company arrived for strategic reinforcement with armoured personnel carriers (APCs): the injured were attended and more ammunition redistributed. Additional support arrived later in the evening with B-Company coming in to weaken the ruthless Viet Cheng fighters. It is recorded that it was until the arrival of more APCs with more fighter power that the Viet Cong were stopped and the firing ebbed out. The success did not come without a notable loss because history has it that 17 Australian servicemen had fallen at the ending of the fighting as had 245 men of the Viet Cong side. The Long Tan fight tested an appraised the power of the Australian D-Company that Truong (2010) argues had run into a heavily fortified front of Viet Cong waiting to overrun Nui Dat. The company involved the victorious win was crowned in a U.S presidential citation and distinctively proved to the Viet Cong that they had the military power to curtail their progressive engagements. This event also made it apparent to the Viet Cong forces that compared with the large American army in the Vietnam War, Australians had better honed jungle warfare skills (Horner and Thomas 2010). Despite the much lauded win in the Long Tan battlefield, it emerged that the fighting power of the idols behind the Northern Vietnam and Viet Cong were sophisticated and complex for the American and allied countries to register a straight win. Australian Public Opinion on the War Involvement Historical presentations by Horner and Thomas (2010) argue that the escalation of hostilities by the Australian and American forces at the battleground agitated public outcry that was marked by increased anti-war protests. Markedly, Australian public mounted opposition to the conscription as it became apparent to them that the Vietnamese was not a winning fight. The opposition to the war intensified with the decision to sent troops into Cambodia that led to massacre of many Cambodians. The intensified public resistance forced the Australian government to review its position on the War, which culminated into gradual withdrawal and eventual ending of the military commitment in 1973. Conclusion The events that characterized the Australian involvement in the Vietnam War have made the event the most commemorated historic activity in the country’s War history. This is because the Vietnam War was the largest War in which Australian military was actively involved. The involvement was marked by utter controversy in the way of entry and the increment military deployment. The translucent nature of the war in the Australian context raised public resistance to conscription registration and agitated feelings concerning the casualties of the war. Eminence of the Australian involvement in the Vietnam War extracts from the infamous Battle of the Long Tan in which the Australian military registered its biggest loss of servicemen and imprinted the win of the war against the Viet Cong. References Corfield, J 2008, The history of Vietnam, ABC-CLIO, New York, NY. Daum, AW., Gardener, LC and Wilfred, M 2003, America, the Vietnam War, and the world: comparative international perspectives, Cambridge University Press. Horner, D and Thomas, N 2010, In action with SAS: updated edition of the SAS phantoms of the jungle, ReadHowYourWant.com, Sydney, Australia. Knight, N and Heazle, M 2011, Understanding Australia’s neighbours: an introduction to East and Southeast Asia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Lawrence, MA 2010, The Vietnam War: a concise international history, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Levy, D 2004, The Vietnam War, Twenty-First Century Books, New York, NY. McNeill, I and Ekins, A 2003, On the offensive: the Australian Army in the Vietnam War, Allen & Uwin, Sydney, Australia. Palazzo, A 2006, Australian military operations in Vietnam, Big Sky Publishing, Melbourne, Australia. Picken, B 2012, Fire support bases Vietnam: Australian and allied fire support base locations and main support units, Big Sky Publishing, Melbourne, Australia. Truong, HM 2010, The dark journey, inside teh re-education camps of Viet Cong, Strategic Book Publishing, Melbourne, Australia. Westheider, JE 2007, The Vietnam War, Greenwood Publishing Group, London, UK. Wiest, A 2008, The Vietnam War, The Rosen Publishing Group, London, UK. Read More