Sixty years after the Battle of Long Tan, a simple Canberra commemoration offered a more thoughtful kind of remembrance – one that honours the dead on all sides and questions the mythology of victory.

It could have been a commemoration in any town in the country.

There were maybe a few hundred people gathered and the nearby main road hadn’t been closed, making for a fair bit of noise for the speakers to be heard over.

But the locals still held a moving service on 18 August, Vietnam Veterans Day, the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.

A few things, however, soon made you realise that this was the national capital: a RAAF flyover, the presence of the governor-general and the minister for defence personnel and veterans affairs, and the magnificence of the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial on Anzac Parade (designed by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects and sculptor Ted Unsworth AM, and dedicated in 1992).

But it was the simplicity of this service that was its strength.

The Call to Remembrance was given by Wing Commander Ian Thompson, OAM, who praised the “courage, mateship and selfless sacrifice” of those caught in the Viet Cong ambush that was Long Tan.

And that might have been where it ended, as many such speeches before have ended. But the wing commander continued:

“As we remember Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, we should also remember its enormous human cost.

“The Vietnamese people endured immense suffering. Soldiers on all sides, civilians, families and entire communities experienced loss that can never truly be measured.

“War leaves grief and sacrifice, and its consequences can endure for generations.

“That is why today is not simply about remembering a battle.

“It is about remembering people.”

This gentle call reminded me immediately of Brigadier Kevin O’Brien’s forensically researched 2025 book, Long Tan: Memories, Myths and Reality.

In the telling of Long Tan in the years since, many myths have taken hold, especially about:

1. Just how far the Australians were outnumbered: the 2019 movie Danger Close proclaims on its cover that it was 20 to 1, whereas the brigadier’s book says that common sense and documentary evidence put the lie to claims of even half that number.
2. The number of VC dead: initial reports spun out of Canberra, and reported in newspapers the day after the battle, had a toll of 600 dead or wounded with an army spokesman saying, “the actual figure would be considerably higher as the Viet Cong undoubtedly carried away many of their dead”. The “official” figure of dead was 245 (more than 13 times the number of Australians killed) but Brigadier O’Brien notes that Australian soldiers were left “to do their best” in relation to the disposal of enemy dead, who did not receive “proper arrangements for burial”. He concluded: “The Vietnamese government have now also searched for their soldiers … 96 bodies have been located and reinterred.”

The brigadier is blunt: “Some Long Tan veterans are uncomfortable with the seemingly endless claims of a victory and the level of ‘bragging’ that has set in with Vietnam Veterans Day.

“For them it is not about who won. They believe that Long Tan commemorations should be about the 18 young Australians who died in a single day; and about the many young Vietnamese men who died charging bravely into deadly Australian artillery fire.”

This seemed to me to be the essence of the wing commander’s message this week, a feeling expanded on by the leading military historian, and P&I writer, Professor Peter Stanley, who said the O’Brien book “corrects more than 50 years of exaggerations, errors, misunderstandings and outright lies …

“His revelations do not diminish the scale or intensity of the fight but they do give us a clearer idea of the real story, and why it has been distorted for so long.”

The book is brave, calmly outlining that memories can and do fail, and can be mightily influenced by the incredible stress of the times, and by the barrage of reporting, and other recollections, heard repeatedly after events.

As well as that, the author’s meticulous examination of all the battle records shows that some personnel simply were not in a position to have seen what they have recalled.

And the brigadier makes a most telling further point about enemy casualties, which also makes a confronting conclusion about Australia’s entire involvement in Vietnam, 1962 – 1973.

“The fact that 275 Regiment suffered relatively high casualties was irrelevant in achieving their objective at Long Tan,” he wrote. “For the Vietnamese it was a tactical failure, but a successful political victory, conversely the Australians seemed to not comprehend that the war could not be won by military means alone and that popular support [in Vietnam] was essential for eventual success …

“In Australia, the most significant impact of the battle was that the ‘victory’ at Long Tan [emphasis in original] contributed to major political electoral success and a continuation of the war …

“The reasons for our involvement were misguided. A wise government should ensure similar mistakes are not repeated.”

That feeling was top of mind for Reverend Mick O’Donnell, who served in the navy in Vietnam, and who broke before reading the prayer for peace at the memorial this week to observe that the past 10 years had led him to doubt, just sometimes, that the Lord was listening to such prayers.

He hoped the leaders present remembered the importance of peace and love, as conflicts continued around the world.

“They are in the position where they are making decisions for our involvement in conflicts in the future,” he said. “I hope today that … they might stop and think about love instead of war.”

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.