Review: Vietnam: The Australian War

Paul Ham’s Vietnam: The Australian War is a massive undertaking. At well over 700 pages (including Honour Role, unit list and notes) it is a definitive and comprehensive account of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and well deserving of the awards it has garnered.

Where Ham excels is in his ability to condense and make accessible complicated political, social and military factors; to provide context to the struggle.

Ham begins by providing a quick sketch of the history of Vietnam, focusing on conflicts with foreign invaders. There are eerie parallels from distant wars with the Chinese — surprise attacks during Tet celebrations, fierce women fighters, a people seemingly prepared to endure any amount of suffering to inflict a price an attacker cannot pay. It is hard to believe that supposedly progressive, rational democracies such as France, the USA and Australia could so completely have ignored the lessons of the past and not expected to be met with the same relentless opposition.

The return to French control of Vietnam at the end of World War II heralded the beginning of the next phase of conflict, which stretched through the fall of Dien Bien Phu to the entry of the first US and Australian ‘advisors’, and later combat troops. Ham is scathing in his assessment of French rule, and the colonial attitudes that drove the Vietnamese people into either the camp of the nationalists or communists. Australia’s muddled response to this period also comes under attack.

No side avoids exposure — Ham describes in detail the failings and cruelties of both the North and South Vietnamese governments. While it is true that the supposedly democratic governments of Diem and his successors lost the support of the people through unfeeling land reform and enforced settlement of Catholic supporters fleeing from the North, the methods of repression and violence of the communists certainly shows them to have been no saviours of the ordinary workers.

On one level, the Australia of the 1960s that Ham describes seems so very foreign: a country where on the one hand trade union leaders could declare that Australia workers would welcome invading Soviet troops, while political leaders could talk seriously of the danger that Australian kids would one day be employed pulling rickshaws for Chinese overlords. And yet, when we consider the hysteria now shown towards Muslims by some elements in Australian society, perhaps we are closer than we think. Certainly, the idea of forward defence, of taking the fight to ‘them’ to defend ‘our shores’ seems to be reborn.

The main body of Ham’s book then settles into a detailed account of the Australian experience in that war. Not only does he provide harrowing accounts of relatively well known actions such as Long Tan and Fire Base Coral, thanks to access to newly declassified documents, he also gives us the chance to learn about individuals and actions previously unknown. Take, for example, Captain Barry Peterson, of the Australian Army Training Team, who acted in a Kurtz-like role as leader of a 1200-strong Montagnard guerrilla force (but without the insanity) before he was removed under CIA instructions for fear of the power of his personality cult.

Thorny issues, such as national service and the media’s early role in helping thrust Australia into the war, are also well-covered.

This is essential reading. Ham has given us an eminently readable account of a pivotal period in Australian history — an account which will appeal to both the military historian and the general reader.

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