By the winter of 1966, Fuji province had become the center of gravity for Australia’s war in Vietnam. It was not the most populous region, nor the most politically symbolic, but it mattered for a different reason. Fui sat astride key Vietkong supply routes linking coastal landing points to inland command areas.

 Whoever controlled this province controlled movement, secrecy, and initiative. At its center stood Nui Dat, the base of the first Australian task force. Unlike the vast American installations elsewhere in South Vietnam, NUIDAT was deliberately understated. No sprawling runways, no neon-lit perimeter. It was built to disappear into the terrain rather than dominate it from afar.

 If you’re watching from the US, Australia, or anywhere else in the world, take a moment to subscribe and tell us in the comments where you’re watching from. Stories like this connect people across continents and this one is only just beginning. The Australian approach in Futoui followed a different logic from the American war unfolding around them.

 While US forces relied heavily on large-scale search and destroy operations, air mobility and overwhelming firepower, the Australians pursued control through constant pressure. They cleared a 5 km exclusion zone around Newat, relocating villages and denying the Vietkong the ability to blend into civilian life.

 More importantly, they flooded the jungle with small, disciplined patrols. Day after day, night after night, Australian infantry and SAS elements moved quietly through scrub, rubber plantations, and jungle tracks, laying ambushes, observing trails, and disrupting supply lines. There were no dramatic headlines, but the effect was cumulative and corrosive.

For the Vietkong, this presence became intolerable. American operations were loud and episodic. They came and went. The Australians were different. They stayed. They returned to the same ground repeatedly. They learned the terrain in granular detail. Supply caches vanished. Couriers failed to arrive.

 Units found themselves ambushed in areas once considered safe. Over time, Fuakui began to feel less like contested territory and more like a shrinking trap. The Australians were not winning by spectacle. They were winning by erosion. By mid 1966, Vietkong and North Vietnamese commanders concluded that this situation could not be allowed to continue.

 Newat was the nerve center of Australian operations. As long as it functioned, the pressure on local communist forces would only intensify. The solution was decisive action, not harassment, not symbolic attacks. The base had to be neutralized and the Australian task force had to be struck hard enough to shatter its aura of control. Plans were drawn up quietly.

forces were concentrated beyond the usual patterns of guerrilla warfare. The objective was not merely to kill Australians, but to break the system they represented. Unseen by those inside the wire at Nuiidat, the quiet war in Fui was about to become very loud. The plan began to unfold on the night of August 17th, 1966.

At approximately 2:43 a.m., the quiet routine of Newuidat was violently interrupted. Mortar rounds, recoilless rifle fire, and artillery shells slammed into the base perimeter in quick succession. More than 80 rounds fell across the position, punching into bunkers, tearing through tent lines, and wounding two dozen Australian soldiers.

It was a sharp, sudden strike, intense, but deliberately brief. Then, just as abruptly, it stopped. To the Australians, the pattern was familiar. Enemy mortars had fired and displaced exactly as doctrine predicted. Counterb procedures were initiated, firing into suspected positions, but the jungle quickly swallowed any trace of the attackers.

 What mattered more was what came next. Australian operational doctrine was clear and well rehearsed. After a mortar attack, patrols would move out at first light to locate firing points, confirm tracks, and pursue the crews before they could reconstitute. The Vietkong commanders understood this doctrine in detail. They were counting on it.

 In the darkness beyond the base perimeter, the mortar attack had already served its true purpose. It was not meant to destroy Newat. It was meant to pull Australian infantry into the field exactly where the enemy wanted them. In the hours that followed the bombardment, Vietkong and North Vietnamese forces remained concealed, holding fire, allowing the Australians to do precisely what training demanded.

 The trap was patient. There was no rush. On the morning of August 18th, Delta Company of the Sixth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment was given the task. Led by Major Harry Smith, 108 men prepared to leave the wire and conduct what was expected to be a routine sweep. They were replacing another company that had tracked the mortar crews through the night without success.

 There was no talk of large enemy formations. Intelligence assessments suggested scattered guerilla elements, not main force units. The men checked their weapons, adjusted their loads, and moved out with the practiced efficiency of soldiers performing a job they had done many times before. Nothing about the departure suggested impending disaster.

The mood was calm, professional, almost mundane. Delta Company was not being sent on an assault. It was a follow-up patrol intended to confirm enemy movement and return by evening. What none of the men could see, what no report from New Dat could reveal, was that beyond the treeine in the scrub and plantation ahead, thousands of enemy troops were already in position.

 Main force regiments reinforced by local units lay silent, watching the Australians advance. By stepping beyond the perimeter that morning, Delta Company was not chasing a retreating enemy. They were walking directly into the center of a carefully prepared battlefield, one designed to turn Australian doctrine against itself.

 By late morning on August 18th, Delta Company had pushed several kilometers east of New Dat. The patrol moved steadily, following faint tracks and signs left behind by the mortar crews. As the men advanced, the terrain began to change. Dense scrub gave way to the long tan rubber plantation, an unnatural landscape carved into the jungle.

 The rubber trees stood in straight, evenly spaced rows, their trunks forming long corridors of visibility forward but deceptive angles to the flanks. It was terrain that looked open but behaved like a maze. The monsoon season pressed heavily on the men. The air was thick, humid, and still.

 The kind of oppressive calm that dulled sound and magnified tension. Movement inside the plantation felt exposed. Footsteps echoed softly against damp earth. The canopy overhead filtered the light into a greenish haze. For hours, nothing happened. Delta company found discarded enemy mortar base plates and clear signs of a hurried withdrawal.

 On the surface, the patrol appeared to be progressing exactly as expected. Shortly after 3:40 p.m., the silence broke. 11 platoon positioned forward of the company cited a small group of enemy soldiers moving through the trees. Their uniforms were khaki, their bearing disciplined. These were not local guerillas. They were regular troops.

 Contact was made, weapons cracked through the still air, and the enemy withdrew almost immediately. To the Australians, this behavior reinforced familiar patterns. Enemy scouts were encountered, engaged, and chased. Following standing doctrine, 11 platoon pursued. That pursuit carried them deeper into the plantation and into the heart of the ambush.

 Within minutes, the sky darkened as if the jungle itself had turned hostile. A sudden monsoon storm crashed down with extraordinary violence. Rain hammered the leaves, turning dust into slick red mud and reducing visibility to less than 50 m. Wind tore through the plantation, and thunder rolled so close it felt physical.

 Radio transmissions became distorted by static. Commands were shouted, then lost in the downpour. The environment collapsed into noise, movement, and confusion. Then the firing intensified, not sporadic shots, but sustained automatic fire from multiple directions. 11 platoon reported heavy contact. Almost immediately, it became clear this was no delaying action.

 Enemy forces began to appear in numbers, emerging from the rain and mist in disciplined formations. Bugles and whistles pierced the storm, signaling coordinated assaults. The sound carried an unmistakable meaning. This was a main force engagement. Major Harry Smith, monitoring radio traffic from the company headquarters, understood the gravity of the situation almost instantly.

 The patrol had transitioned from reconnaissance to survival. 11 platoon was being pressed hard, pinned down on a slight rise, and separated from the rest of the company. Attempts to maneuver were met with heavy fire. Moments later, reports came in that second lieutenant Gordon Sharp had been killed while directing his men.

 As Delta Company tried to consolidate, enemy pressure increased from multiple axes. What had begun as a routine sweep had collapsed into a regimental level engagement under monsoon conditions. The Australians were no longer hunting mortar crews. They were fighting to hold ground against an enemy force that vastly outnumbered them in terrain that offered no clear escape.

 The trap had closed. As the monsoon raged across the long tan rubber plantation, the true scale of the disaster became impossible to ignore. 11 platoon, having pursued the initial enemy contact, was now pinned down and under sustained assault. From the gray curtain of rain and mist, waves of enemy infantry began to advance, not in scattered groups, but in organized formations.

These were veteran troops from the Vietkong 275th Regiment, reinforced by elements of the D445 Battalion. Their numbers were overwhelming. Historical records would later confirm that approximately 200 enemy soldiers had been committed to the engagement. Against them stood just 18 Australians.

 Major Harry Smith quickly realized that Delta Company was being compressed from multiple directions. The enemy was attempting to envelop the Australian position, using the plantation’s geometry to mask movement and close the distance. Human wave tactics followed one after another. Bugles and whistles cut through the storm as assault groups surged forward, absorbing heavy casualties but maintaining momentum.

 The Australians responded with disciplined controlled fire. Each man firing deliberately, conserving ammunition even as the pressure mounted. 11 platoon bore the brunt of the fighting. With their commander killed, leadership fell to Sergeant Bob Buick, who organized a shrinking defensive perimeter around wounded and dying men.

 The Australians lay prone in the mud, firing their self-loading rifles until barrels overheated and hands went numb. Every time an enemy wave was cut down, another emerged through the rain. The closeness of the fighting became a tactical threat of its own. Enemy troops deliberately pushed to within meters of the Australian line, attempting to neutralize the Australians greatest advantage, supporting fire.

 Faced with annihilation, Major Smith made a decision that carried extraordinary risk. He requested artillery fire at danger close distances. This meant bringing high explosive shells down within tens of meters of his own men. Any miscalculation would be fatal. At NewAtat, gunners from the Australian 103 and 105 field batteries alongside New Zealand’s 161 battery worked in appalling conditions.

Rain soaked everything. Fuses were shielded beneath slouch hats. Gun crews loaded and fired continuously, building a relentless rhythm that would not stop for hours. Forward observer Captain Mory Stanley operated amid the chaos with remarkable precision. Under constant smallarms fire, he adjusted fire missions in real time, walking the artillery closer and closer to the Australian perimeter.

 Shells burst in the trees and on the ground, shredding enemy formations and creating a moving wall of steel that halted repeated assaults. At times, rounds detonated just 30 to 50 m from Australian positions. Shock waves rattled teeth and filled the air with the smell of cordite and splintered rubber wood. The artillery did more than kill the enemy.

It bought time, but time alone was not enough. Ammunition stocks dwindled rapidly. Some soldiers were reduced to their last magazines. Others scavenged rounds from the webbing of fallen comrades under fire. The rate of enemy attacks showed no sign of easing. Without resupply, the defensive line would eventually collapse under sheer persistence.

 By late afternoon, the battle had reached its most critical point. Delta Company had been engaged for more than 3 hours without pause. The men were physically spent, soaked to the bone, and shivering as the monsoon continued to hammer the plantation. Enemy movement suggested that the Vietkong were preparing for a final coordinated assault designed to overwhelm the Australian perimeter before nightfall.

 Bugles sounded again through the rain, signaling renewed attacks. Ammunition remained dangerously low and casualties were mounting. The line was holding, but only just. At Newuiidat, commanders understood that artillery alone would not be enough. A relief force was ordered forward despite the weather and enemy presence.

 Leading the effort was three troop first armored personnel carrier squadron commanded by second lieutenant Adrien Roberts. 10 M13 armored personnel carriers began pushing toward Long Tan, battling flooded creeks, deep mud, and jungle tracks barely passable under normal conditions. At one swollen stream, the vehicles were forced to swim across under fire, engines straining as rainwater poured into hatches and vision blocks.

 Without hesitation, the armored vehicles charged directly into the enemy flank. 50 caliber machine guns opened fire, tearing through the rubber trees and the advancing infantry. The effect was immediate and devastating. Vietkong troops lacking effective anti-armour weapons were caught in the open. Some attempted to flee.

 Others were cut down or scattered by the sheer momentum of the vehicles forcing their way through the plantation. At approximately 6 p.m., the APC’s broke into the Australian perimeter. For the exhausted men of Delta Company, the sight of the armored vehicles emerging from the rain was transformative. The relief force formed a defensive ring.

 their heavy weapons adding overwhelming firepower to the battered infantry line. Faced with artillery, armor, and a cohesive defensive position, Vietkong commanders finally ordered a withdrawal. Under cover of darkness and heavy rain, enemy forces melted back into the jungle, leaving the battlefield to the Australians. Strategically, Long Tan changed everything.

 The Australian task force’s reputation was cemented. US commanders acknowledged the discipline and effectiveness of Australian operations, recognizing them as the premier jungle fighters in Vietnam. For the enemy, the lesson was equally clear. After Long Tan, Futry Province was no longer safe ground. The Australians had proven that they would not break, would not abandon their wounded, and could hold against impossible odds.

 Long Tan became more than a battle. It became a standard.