I had it explained to me once by a retired army officer, who said under the imperial system they were only allowed a certain number of medals for any particular action, and it was made worse by the pommy medal-counters in England who continually pointed out that Australia was in Vietnam without the mother country's approval.

Never checked as to whether the info was correct or not (even though it sounds about right), but he was a colonel at retirement.

_________________

Chris O'Keefe
R43136
Ex WO Chippy
19th MOBI Intake
July 65 to July 85
HMAS Nirimba X 4 -Penguin-Sydney-Queenborough - Creswell - Moreton - Stalwart - Platypus - Coonawarra Reconstruction Team 76 - Platypus - Hobart - Cerberus - FHQ - Coonawarra.

Anyone can be ordinary. Shipwrights choose to be extraordinary!

Essentially what you said about the medal allocation is correct CJ......we used the Pommie allocation method.....and of course some ranks couldn't get the same medal as Officers for exactly the same act of valour.
MC and MM for example.

Pretty much how it was explained to me as well Seejay, I was also told that the powers to be at HQ in Canberra (defence) wanted to maintain a low profile on what was happening in Vietnam.

_________________
Ray Lawrence (Boris)
R95904
Ex-POETC3
18th JRTE Rhodes
Dec 1966 - Dec 1986
Leeuwin, Diamantina, Cerberusx4, Harmanx4, Waterhen, Barricade, Lae, Tarangau, Melbourne, Buccaneer, Coonawarrax3, Stuart, Swan, Adroit, Perth, Vampire.

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Sorta reminds you of the Bell Curve for PP1's back in the 70's and 80's doesn't it? I had a blazing row about that subject with the XO in Coonawarra in 84. I had to fit my Barrackmaster's staff (Chippies and greenies) into the same mix as the transport WRANS, and get a bell curve out of it.

XO was the head of my department, and I got the sh*ts and took it straight to the CO. CO agreed. XO didn't like me any more. I lost at least 4 seconds sleep over it.

_________________

Chris O'Keefe
R43136
Ex WO Chippy
19th MOBI Intake
July 65 to July 85
HMAS Nirimba X 4 -Penguin-Sydney-Queenborough - Creswell - Moreton - Stalwart - Platypus - Coonawarra Reconstruction Team 76 - Platypus - Hobart - Cerberus - FHQ - Coonawarra.

Anyone can be ordinary. Shipwrights choose to be extraordinary!

Aaaaah....the old bell curve!!
Terrific in theory.....abject failure when used for PP1 rankings!!
I got into the crap over it when I had to apply it to all the Engineering Crew who were selected to go to France.

VIETNAM VETERANS’ DAY 2010

ADDRESS BY CAPTAIN RALPH T. DERBIDGE MBE RAN (Retired)

AT THE SHRINE OF REMEMBRANCE, MELBOURNE, VICTORIA

WEDNESDAY 18 AUGUST 2010

****************************

The Vietnam War and the Royal Australian Navy

Vietnam - tropical, alluring, fun-filled, breathtakingly beautiful, gastronomically exciting and friendly – today, a magnetic attraction for numerous tourists, businessmen and capital investors, many of them Australians, including Vietnam War veterans. Ask my wife about Vietnam. She welcomed me home from the war 39 years ago, but in recent times she enjoyed greatly with friends a group bicycle tour from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. I didn’t go – I get sunburnt!

But it was not always like that.

Vietnam, some 7,500 kilometres to our north west as the crow flies from Melbourne, and three hours behind Australia’s Eastern Standard Time, lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator. It is bordered to the west by Cambodia and Laos, and to the north by China. The northern part of the long eastern shoreline sits within the Gulf of Tonkin while to the south the coastline is washed by the South China Sea. The shorter western shore faces the Gulf of Thailand.

The scope of my primary interest covers the period from 1956 to 1975 when the country was divided at the 17th parallel of latitude by the Demiltarised Zone (or ‘DMZ’) into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam, albeit South Vietnam. To understand the Vietnam War, and the Royal Australian Navy’s involvement in that war, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the relatively modern history of Indo-China and Vietnam.

Indo-China had been a sphere of French protectorates and colonisation since the 1850’s but the French influence was interrupted by World War 2 and supplanted by Japanese occupation. The French returned in 1945 to face much turmoil and unrest as the countries of the region sought self-determination as the sun was setting on British and European empires. It is not in my brief to dwell at length on the complex issues and proceedings that spawned communist parties and governments in the region and to the north in China and Korea, as Cold War tensions mounted. It is sufficient for me to note that the Viet Minh forces of northern Vietnam, under the command of General Vo Nguyen Giap, comprehensively defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu some 320 kilometres from Hanoi in May 1954 to end the First Indo-China War.

The armistice and Geneva Conference that followed, and the division of the country at the DMZ, set the scene for future hostilities in the guise of the Vietnam War. At the time of the French defeat, I was a 14 year old Cadet Midshipman in my first year at the Royal Australian Naval College, then located down the track from here at Crib Point on Mornington Peninsula.

The Vietnam War officially was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975 when Saigon fell. This war followed upon the First Indo-China War and was fought between the communist North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United State and other anti-communist nations, including Australia and New Zealand.

The Viet Cong, a lightly-armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The North Vietnamese Army engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. US and South Vietnamese forces relied principally on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search-and-destroy operations involving mainly ground forces, artillery and airstrikes.

The United States entered the war to prevent a communist take-over of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment. Military advisers arrived, beginning in 1950. US involvement increased in the early 1960’s, with US troop levels

tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962 when Australian military advisers were first sent to the country. US and Australian combat units were deployed, beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia being heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, US and Australian ground forces were progressively withdrawn as part of a policy called Vietnamisation. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued in the South. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.

It can be argued that the first peripheral involvement by the RAN in the Vietnam War occurred between 1956 and 1963 when six Australian naval vessels in successive pairs visited the Republic of Vietnam, beginning with HMA Ships ANZAC and TOBRUK, followed by VAMPIRE and QUICKMATCH and, lastly, QUEENBOROUGH and QUIBERON. Former Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, was primarily the focal point for this ‘showing of the flag’ as it is colloquially known, but demonstrating at the time, in concert with the United States of America, support for the internally and externally hard-pressed South Vietnam regime of the aloof President Diem and his domineering wife, Madam Nhu.

Politically and militarily, in and around the Capital, in the Highlands and the Mekong Delta, and in the Central Lowlands, the South was opposed by the increasingly worrying Viet Cong, supported by surrogate North Vietnam, and home grown military and religious dissidents. Who can forget the images of self-immolating Buddhist monks.

I first visited South Vietnam in 1963 as the Gunnery Officer of HMAS QUIBERON, then exercising this form of ‘gunboat diplomacy’. It was two years after the Bay of Pigs and Cuba, when the Cold War perhaps was at its most threatening. Memories of the Malayan Emergency and the Korean War were still vivid, confrontation with Indonesia over newly formed Malaysia was under way and the ‘Domino Effect’ of successively falling democatic governments in Asia and South East Asia was the all pervading fear of the free world lead by the United States of America. Australian membership of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, or SEATO, and the Australia New Zealand and United States, or ANZUS, Treaty both had implications and obligations for our nation. A vigorous stand would soon be taken by the United States and some of her allies in South Vietnam.

But back in 1963, I recall a good will port call at Nha Trang, the riviera of Indo-China, and a flurry of official social and ceremonial activity in once Saigon. All seemed relatively calm and business-like in the South’s capital, but there were disconcerting signs for the keen eyed visitor that not all was well – such as the transit of the scenic Saigon River with overhead escorting aircraft, the requirement to travel in armed convoys up-country and the militarisation of, and midnight curfew in, the city. I was 23 at the time and unaware that I would return to this troubled land eight years hence in far less pacific circumstances as the Gunnery Officer of HMAS BRISBANE. Within three years, the Diem regime had been toppled from within and Australia would soon find itself engaged in active hostilities alongside the United States.

As mentioned earlier, Australian Army advisers were sent to South Vietnam as early as 1962 and an RAAF transport flight, No 35 Squadron, was established at Vung Tau in Phuoc Tuy Province in 1964.

But it was not until 1965 that the RAN was in the front line, so to speak, when the former aircraft carrier HMAS SYDNEY, as a fast troop transport, made the first of her 22 trips to South Vietnam to off-load initially an Australian infantry battalion and supporting infrastructure at Vung Tau. Australian military assistance to the Republic of Vietnam was substantially increased from mid-1966 and it is fitting that I pay tribute to the important logistic role played by the RAN in delivering and returning Australian troops, equipment, ammunition and supplies to and from the war until December 1972.

From June 1966, HMAS SYDNEY was supported in this role by the Australian National Line coastal cargo ship MV JEPARIT, commissioned into the RAN in 1969, and by another ANL vessel, MV BOONAROO, being the first ship commissioned under the new RAN White Ensign in March 1967 for her second voyage to Vietnam. Escorts for this seaborne logistic lift effort to and from Vietnam over the course of the war were HMA Ships ANZAC, DERWENT, DUCHESS, MELBOURNE, PARRAMATTA, STUART, SWAN, TORRENS, VAMPIRE, VENDETTA and YARRA.

Although the logistic ships and escorts had been ferrying Australian troops and supplies to Vietnam from May 1965, the RAN did not enter the war in a combat role until February 1967 when a six man clearance diving team arrived in country to carry out harbour defence, salvage, explosive ordnance disposal and a variety of special operations. This unit, Clearance Diving Team 3, was formed specially for service in Vietnam and eight contingents of the team were to be deployed in-country until May 1971.

In March 1967, the new US built guided missile destroyer or DDG, HMAS HOBART, was deployed for service in Vietnamese waters to join the US Seventh Fleet in operations entailing coastal surveillance and interdiction, shore bombardment of North Vietnamese military targets and similar naval gunfire support of ground operations in the four military regions of South Vietnam. Sister ships HMAS PERTH and HMAS BRISBANE followed in rotation for a total of eight typical deployments of seven months each until this commitment was withdrawn in October 1971. The Australian built Daring Class destroyer, HMAS VENDETTA, complemented this effort with one such deployment.

During these operations, HOBART and PERTH came under fire on numerous occasions. PERTH was hit once during her first deployment and HOBART was struck inadvertently in the dark of one night by missiles fired from a US Air Force aircraft. BRISBANE, during her first deployment, suffered a gunmount crippling inbore detonation of a faulty high explosive shell in the forward 5-inch gun barrel.

When not on typically month-long Gunline operations, the RAN destroyers were employed on escort duties with United States Navy aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf or receiving ammunition, stores, food, spare parts and mail by underway replenishment from USN fleet train supply ships in the South China Sea. Periodic detachments were scheduled for routine one-week-long ship maintenance periods and ‘R & R’ in ports such as Subic Bay in the Philippines and Hong Kong and Singapore. In their five years’ service in the Vietnam War, the four Australian destroyers steamed over 397,000 nautical miles and fired 102,546 rounds of 5-inch and 4.5-inch ammunition amounting to some 2,800 tonnes of high explosive.

The RAN Fleet Air Arm, as a separate entity, was also actively and uniquely engaged in the war from late 1967 when the first contingent of the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam was integrated fully with the US Army’s 135th Aviation Company. Four contingents of the Flight served in Vietnam until June 1971, flying mainly in the Mekong Delta in support of ground operations, a hazardous business at the best of times.

There were other, smaller, but no less important RAN contributions to the war effort in South Vietnam, such as Fleet Air Arm helicopter pilots serving with 9 Squadron RAAF at Vung Tau, detached medical officers in Australian and US military hospitals and liaison personnel in Saigon. Several sea transport officers were seconded from the Department of Shipping and Transport and commissioned into the

Naval Reserve. Back home, a number of dedicated staff in Navy Office and Fleet Headquarters, and in the operational and training establishments, looked to the professional, military intelligence, logistic support and welfare needs of those personnel, ships and aircraft deployed to the war.

The return of HMAS BRISBANE to Sydney from her second deployment on 15 October 1971 marked the end of the RAN’s combat role in the Vietnam War. All told, some 2,800 naval personnel, all male and volunteers, saw active service in Vietnam. Of these, eight were killed while 15 received serious injuries. Eighty naval personnel were honoured with decorations and awards, the majority ‘mentioned-in-despatches’.

Today, Vietnam is united and at peace, but there was a time when we were adversaries of those who sought and gained that unification by a spectrum of ideological and military means. It was a complex and costly war, and the longest to that point fought by the United States and Australia.

To put it into one context, nine million men served in the US military during the Vietnam War, one third of whom went to the Vietnam theatre, and there has been little latter-day recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground. Those who believe the war was fought incompletely on a tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 266,000 Army of the Republic of Vietnam deaths and 58,000 total U.S. dead. Those who believe that it was a ‘dirty little war’, where the bombs did all the work, might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought; five times as many dead as in World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in World War 2.

Significantly, those sacrifices were made at a time when the United States, and to a lesser extent Australia, were deeply divided politically and societally at home over our military involvement in Vietnam, particularly after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Ask any surviving veteran who returned from that war. He will tell you all about that!

Thank you.

***********************

_________________

Rick Pengilly
WEBMASTER
Ex-CPOMTH3
R42630
13th MOBI Intake
July'62 to July'74
HMAS Nirimba - HMAS Melbourne - HMAS Cerberus - HMAS Tarangau - HMAS Lonsdale - HMAS Tarangau - HMAS Nirimba - HMAS Brisbane

I remember Martha Raye very well. What a trooper she was!!

What you didn't know about Martha Raye:

Most of the old time entertainers were made out of a lot sterner stuff than today's crop of activists and whiners .

The following is from an Army Aviator friend who takes another trip down memory lane:

It was just before Thanksgiving '67 and we were ferrying dead and wounded from a large GRF west of Pleiku. We had run out of body bags by noon, so the Hook ( CH-47 CHINOOK ) was pretty rough in the back. All of a sudden, we heard a 'take-charge' woman's voice in the rear.

There was the singer and actress, Martha Raye, with a SF ( Special Forces) beret and jungle fatigues, with subdued markings, helping the wounded into the Chinook, and carrying the dead aboard. 'Maggie' had been visiting her SF 'heroes' out 'west'.

We took off, short of fuel, and headed to the USAF hospital pad at Pleiku. As we all started unloading our sad pax's, a 'Smart-Ass' USAF Captain said to Martha.... Ms Ray, with all these dead and wounded to process, there would not be time for your show!

To all of our surprise, she pulled on her right collar and said.....Captain, see this eagle? I am a full 'Bird' in the US Army Reserve, and on this is a 'Caduse' which means I am a Nurse, with a surgical speciality....now, take me to your wounded. He said, yes mam'.... Follow me.

Several times at the Army Field Hospital in Pleiku, she would 'cover' a surgical shift, giving a nurse a well-deserved break.

Martha is the only woman buried in the SF (Special Forces) cemetery at Ft. Bragg .


Hand Salute!

_________________
Wayne Johnson
(B149415)
OSC(SW) RET (RADARMAN)
Joined the Navy Jan 6, 1970, retired Jan 31, 1994
USS Trenton LPD-14, Hermitage LSD-34, Shreveport LPD-12, Saipan LHA-2, COMPHRIBRON-4 staff embarked in the Guam LPH 2, Saipan LHA-2, Nashville LPD-13, and Wasp LHD-1

Well, it seems that the whole matter may go to court. While that may appear sad, it might also expose some of the bullshit that went on (and still does) amongst the upper ranks....

Long Tan's unsung heroes to get day in court

December 31, 2010
(The Sydney Morning Herald)
HARRY SMITH is again leading his soldiers from the Battle of Long Tan, this time taking their fight for battlefield honours to court.
The lieutenant-colonel, who has been campaigning for 14 years to have his men appropriately honoured, said the recent recognition of a tribunal set up to examine the Long Tan awards controversy in 2008 as a statutory body under the Defence Act had opened the door for a class action on behalf of 11 of his men in the Federal Court.
A key issue is the claim that high command manipulated the awards system to favour officers over the men who actually fought in the battle.
It is understood two highly placed senior counsel have already offered to take the case pro bono.
Colonel Smith, now 78, said his men had been denied their medals and bravery awards by the senior command's perception that Vietnam was not a ''real war'' and an honours system that was manipulated in favour of the higher ranks.
Of the 726 awards given out in the 10 years Australians served in Vietnam only 22 medals had gone to privates, he said.
''Many more went to major-generals, brigadiers, colonels and lieutenant colonels far from the action.''
He believes the Federal Court will reverse previous decisions by a succession of Defence inquiries and appeal hearings to deny the medals and commendations he had recommended.
The colonel, who led 108 Australian soldiers against an estimated 3000 Vietcong regulars on August 18, 1966, is particularly passionate about the case of Second Lieutenant Gordon Sharp.
Lieutenant Sharp, a national service officer shot and killed while directing artillery fire to protect his men, was put forward for a Mentioned in Dispatches.
At the same time Colonel Smith's recommendations were refused, a postal officer at Vung Tau, a rest and recreation area near Saigon, was Mentioned in Dispatches for ''good administrative procedures'', he said.
A sticking point in previous inquiries has been the absence of the recommendations filled out by Colonel Smith - then a major - the day after the battle.
He believes senior officers had torn up his citations and replaced them with others of their own.
Long Tan is now recognised as one of the Australian Army's greatest feats of arms.
Colonel Smith said his men, who fired 10,200 rounds of ammunition in the three-hour battle, killed between 1200 and 1500 Vietnamese soldiers with the aid of intensive artillery and air support.
While Colonel Smith is reluctant to publicly criticise his former commanders, there is little doubt any court action will focus attention on the two Distinguished Service Orders awarded to senior officers who did not take part in the firefight.

_________________

Chris O'Keefe
R43136
Ex WO Chippy
19th MOBI Intake
July 65 to July 85
HMAS Nirimba X 4 -Penguin-Sydney-Queenborough - Creswell - Moreton - Stalwart - Platypus - Coonawarra Reconstruction Team 76 - Platypus - Hobart - Cerberus - FHQ - Coonawarra.

Anyone can be ordinary. Shipwrights choose to be extraordinary!

Or will still go on - no doubt the Army has an "Old Boys" network to further stuff this over.........

_________________
Brian Mackenzie
ex-Shipwright Instructor
Oct '88 to Dec '93 (NIRIMBA) before and beyond

There was an interesting (and appropriate) reader’s comment about The Courier Mail’s version of this story.

The reader asked why the battle of Fire Support Bases Coral and Balmoral in May 1968 has been ignored by most Australians for so long.

Anyone who knows little about this battle might find a few minutes with Google quite enlightening.

_________________
Ray (Dick) Powell
R43054
Ex WOMTH
18th MOBI Intake
Jan 65 to Dec 79 and Aug 82 to Dec 89
Nirimba, Sydney, Perth, Stalwart, Melville, Cerberus (several times), Derwent, Torrens, Jervis Bay, Kuttabul, Stirling, Waterhen