Anzac's Dirty Dozen (25 page)

Close inshore operations like those conducted by
Murchison
had a high degree of risk and were a subject of continual discussion between US and Royal Navy commanders, who disagreed on whether the risks were worth the possible influence on the North Korean negotiators. Certainly the possibility of a vessel grounding was ever-present. On top of the navigation risks,
Murchison
and the other frigates in the area faced the continual threat of enemy fire which could have disabled them, leading to even greater chance of grounding and possible destruction by enemy ground forces.

The weather also had a massive impact on a ship like
Murchison
in Korea. Many of the crew's tasks performed on the upper decks – the ship had an open bridge and all its guns were open mountings – and the temperatures were so cold that exposed skin could
stick to metal and the grease for gun mountings could freeze. The Australian Navy did not have enough suitable cold-weather clothing, so sailors often relied on civilian clothing to keep themselves warm.
Murchison
had also been built for operations in warmer waters, so the ship did not have the heating systems built into the original British design. Even inside the ship, temperatures were so low that condensation froze on the bulkheads and the crew used layers of brown paper to help stay warm. Stephen Joyce recalled:

when we were on shore leave you bought brown paper, and you used to wrap the brown paper round your body, then put your – of course, the singlets in those days, they were like a thermal type thing – then pull your singlet down over that, then your jumper over that, and then you used to cut the brown paper in strips and wrap it round your legs, and the brown paper would act as an insulation against the cold.
¹⁵

The truly amazing thing here is that
Murchison
still reached such high operational standards. The ship overcame immense difficulties of weather, operating conditions and crew training. This success enabled the ship to operate safely and consistently in the Han River estuary, prepared to conduct not only the naval gunfire bombardment tasks, but also to respond the North Korean ground force attacks in response.

In September 1951,
Murchison
was involved in several closerange battles with North Korean forces that had concealed positions on the northern shore of the estuary. The ranges were very short, around 1800 metres (or one nautical mile) and on some occasions much less. This was point blank range for
Murchison
's main armament of two twin 4-inch guns, and not much more than that for its secondary armament of 40-millimetre Bofors guns.
The Australian ship returned fire, but the results were inconclusive and the incidents demonstrated the risks of such operations by large ships. The restricted waters meant the initiative lay with the North Koreans, who could chose if and when to engage from ashore.
Murchison
was hit numerous times by machine-gun fire and occasionally by some larger shells, but no serious damage was done, nor were there any deaths. The engagements did, however, reflect very well on the tactical and operational standards that the vessel had achieved, and this had a widespread positive effect on the Australian Navy's reputation as a fighting service, particularly because on the first occasion she was so engaged
Murchison
had a senior US Admiral on board to observe the bombardment operations.
Murchison
spent more time in the Han estuary than any other ship and was light-heartedly dubbed the ‘Baron of the Han' at the end of her deployment in February 1952, indicative of the esteem in which she was held by Allied forces.

Sadly, on 2 February 1952, while en route to the naval base at Sasebo in Japan,
Murchison
collided at night in rough weather with an unlit South Korean motorised fishing junk, with the loss of several of the junk's crew. In the course of the rescue operation, the ship's Chief Bosun's Mate, Petty Officer Reg Farrington, jumped into the water to help save the fishermen. Farrington had also been responsible for much of the training of the
Murchison
's junior seamen, and as the captain of the after 4-inch gun mount had played a crucial role first in forming them into a highly skilled gun crew and then leading them in the ship's numerous close actions in the Han River. His courage in action and in the rescue at sea was enormous. While this was never formally recognised by any award, there is no doubt that Farrington is yet another small portion of Australia's naval history that is worth to public knowing much, much better.

The purpose of tracing
Murchison
's time in Korea is two-fold.
The fact that its remarkable story, replete with drama, danger and bravery, is unknown outside specialist circles is testament to the traditional inability for naval history to find resonance with the general public, in stark contrast to the land-based military history. It is in this regard but one vignette of a vast trove of under-appreciated stories. At the same time,
Murchison
's adventure in Korea is a story of a crew and its achievements under very difficult and dangerous circumstances, not an account of the type of singular spectacular and climactic engagement resulting in sunken vessels that has so often dominated what is known of naval history in this country.
Murchison
is an example of what can and should be done to help rectify the silence that pervades far too much of Australia's naval history.

Further reading

The Naval Historical Society of Australia, <
www.navyhistory.org.au
>.

The Sea Power Centre – Australia, <
www.navy.gov.au/Sea_Power_Centre_-_Australia
>.

T.R. Frame,
Where Fate Calls: The HMAS
Voyager
Tragedy
, Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1992.

T.R. Frame, J.V.P. Goldrick & P.D. Jones, Reflections on the Royal
Australian Navy
, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1991.

J. Grey,
Up Top: The Royal Australian Navy and Southeast Asian Conflicts 1955–1972
, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.

N. Lambert,
Australia's Naval Inheritance: Imperial Maritime Strategy and the Australia Station 1880–1909
, Papers in Australian Maritime Affairs, Maritime Studies Program, Canberra, 1998.

I. Pfennigwerth,
Tiger Territory: The Untold Story of the Royal Australian Navy in Southeast Asia from 1948 to 1971
, Rosenburg Publishing, Sydney, 2008.

—— ,
A Man of Intelligence: The Life of Captain Theodore Eric Nave,
Australian Codebreaker Extraordinary
, Rosenburg Publishing, Sydney, 2006.

D. Stevens (ed.),
The Royal Australian Navy
, Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001.

On HMAS
Murchison
:

V. Fazio,
River Class Frigates of the Royal Australian Navy: A Story of Ships Built in Australia
, Slipway Publications, Sydney, 2003.

R. O'Neill,
Australia in the Korean War: Combat Operations
, vol. 2, Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1985.

W.O.C. Roberts, ‘Gun battle on the Han',
Naval Historical Review
, 1(2), eptember 1976.

[9]

‘LANDMARK' BATTLES AND THE MYTHS OF VIETNAM

Bob Hall and Andrew Ross

Like all wars, the ‘American War' in Vietnam is shrouded in myth and fabrication. From an Australian perspective, many of these concern the diplomatic and political processes leading to our involvement in the war, or the after-effects of the conflict on those who served there. This chapter focuses more specifically on the myths arising from the combat operations of the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF). Many of these legends and folklore of combat were inherited from the ‘American War' as a whole, and in popular and academic imagination alike have often been applied to 1ATF combat operations. The first of these myths is that the 1ATF combat experience in South Vietnam consisted of a series of major ‘landmark' battles with the Viet Cong (VC) and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).
¹
Australian military historiography of the war tends to concentrate on these landmark battles to the exclusion of smaller, but far more numerous ‘contacts'.
²
It also tends to see these battles in terms of conventional war: as simple contests of military power stripped of their political import. The focus on such landmark battles, and the failure to see them in their political and diplomatic contexts, distorts our understanding of the war.

Another common myth of combat in the Vietnam War is that the enemy controlled the jungle and dominated the night, while the forces of the United States and its allies – including 1ATF – flailed ineptly because they lacked the enemy's superior local knowledge and were unused to operating in these conditions. These popular imaginings are also incorrect, and possibly arise from the failure of Australian military historiography to address the full spectrum of Australian operations including the minor contacts. Finally, this chapter examines the iconic weapons of the war: the AK47 favoured by the enemy forces and the M16 issued to Australian troops. The former took on an almost mythical status and rapidly developed a reputation as vastly superior to anything the United States and its allies could field. In particular it was seen as a vastly more capable and effective weapon than the M16. There is no doubt that the AK47 was robust and effective but it by no means deserves the elevated reputation it seems to have acquired in comparison with the M16.

As the Australian historian Jeff Grey has made clear, like other conflicts the war in Vietnam was not of uniform intensity throughout the country.
³
The northern provinces of the Republic of Vietnam, which made up 1 Corps Tactical Zone (CTZ, or I Corps), and the western provinces of 3 CTZ near the Cambodian border, were the sites of numerous large-scale battles slightly similar to the battles of a conventional war. They sometimes involved divisional or regimental-sized forces – thousands of men – and the application of heavy firepower – tanks, artillery and air strikes. Enemy casualties were often very high.

However, the Australian area of operations in Vietnam was well away from these hot-spots of activity. The Australians focused their combat effort on Phuoc Tuy Province, on the east coast of Vietnam. In this province and its surrounds, the war predominantly took the form of a classic counterinsurgency, characterised
by thousands of small, often inconclusive fire-fights. These were so fleeting, involved so few participants on either side, and were so open to doubt as to which side might have ‘won' them that to describe them as ‘battles' would be inappropriate. Instead, they were known as ‘contacts', the term nicely conveying the implication of the fleeting, often chance encounter which, in nearly all cases, they were. The Australian Task Force experienced about 3900 such contacts.

Nor was the war uniform over time. There were, for example, peaks of VC and PAVN activity that took the form of general offensives, and from 1969 onwards what might be called ‘high points'. These were often followed by a lull in the fighting while both sides regrouped. During enemy offensives or ‘high points', the general pattern of small contacts was interrupted by ‘landmark' battles. These engagements had their own distinct characteristics. They involved a 1ATF force greater than a rifle company (about 120 men) engaged in combat against a larger – sometimes much larger – VC or PAVN force. They were all initiated by the enemy, often after a long period of planning. They often involved a ruse, by which the enemy drew a force out of the 1ATF base into ground that had been selected and prepared – ‘luring the tiger from the jungle' as the enemy called it. These landmark battles were always characterised by a strong tendency on the enemy's part to stay and fight. Unlike the fleeting contacts, which usually lasted just minutes, some of these battles lasted for several hours. They often resulted in high enemy casualties. Usually, the enemy sought a political as well as a military outcome. Consequently, these battles were few in number – only about 16 in total. Such engagements include the battles of Long Tan (18 August 1966), Operation Bribie (17 February 1967), Baria, Long Dien and Fire Support Base Anderson during the Tet Offensive of 1968 (in the period 1–19 February 1968), Fire Support Bases Coral (13 and
16 May 1968) and Balmoral (24 and 28 May 1968), Long Dien (22–23 August 1968), Binh Ba (6–7 June 1969) and Nui Le (21 September 1971). Despite their small number, these battles, and the battle of Long Tan in particular, have tended to influence the public conception of the Vietnam War.

The largest and most iconic of the landmark battles for Australia was the battle of Long Tan. It is often depicted as an heroic struggle by an under-strength D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6RAR), of just 108 men against the combined enemy forces of the 275th VC Regiment and D445 Local Force Battalion, numbering about 2500 troops. Over a period of more than three hours, D Company was subjected to wave after wave of enemy assault, taking many casualties in the process. Pinned by overwhelming enemy small arms fire, with accumulating wounded and ammunition running low, the company faced annihilation. But in a display of immense courage, determination and outstanding tactical skill, it survived the enemy onslaught.

What is often overlooked, however, is that the Australian company was supported by a regiment of 105-millimetre artillery, a battery of medium artillery, air support in the form of airstrikes, an emergency resupply of ammunition by airdrop from helicopters of the 9th Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, and in the closing stages of the battle by the timely arrival of an armoured personnel carrier squadron carrying another company of reinforcements from 6RAR.
⁴
Elements of a third company from 6RAR also soon arrived on the battlefield. The Australians then, formed what would later be termed a ‘combined arms team': a balanced force of infantry, armour, artillery and air power all linked together under a single command and co-ordinated using radio communications. By contrast, the enemy force at Long Tan (and the other landmark battles) consisted only of light infantry
troops with no armour or air support, poor communications below battalion level, and with no capacity to resupply themselves with ammunition mid-battle. The VC and PAVN troops at Long Tan also lacked indirect fire support. The field artillery supporting the Australians at Long Tan fired over 3100 rounds, while another 242 rounds of medium artillery were fired by supporting US Army artillery units. In contrast, the enemy force managed only a few mortar rounds in support of their troops.