THE BATTLE OF LONG TAN

'Twas the 18th day of August in a place called Vietnam;
Six score of Aussie diggers crossed slowly through the land:
They were carrying out their orders; they had no axe to grind;
They were simply sent there forward, the VC for to find:

The folks at home protested, 'twas no fight of theirs;
And the Australian Politicians were sitting in their chairs:
'All the way with LBJ', they chorused, they had no bloody idea;
What it was for jungle fighting, they'd never known the fear:

But the boys from Delta Company had no such altruistic dreams;
They were thrown there all together, the youngest was nineteen:
The VC, they had trapped them, they thought to send them home;
Across the weary seas once more, and ne'er their land to roam:

They tore at Delta Company, with rifle, shot and shell;
Reminiscent of Gallipoli was it; they'd not learned their history well:
For the Aussies are not like that, the boy soldiers stood in refrain;
Just as their fathers did before them, they turned on their tormentors, in the driving rain:

When morning brought relief, eighteen Australian diggers had earned eternal peace,
But the Viet Cong had learned that Anzac's will, for freedom, fight;
And more than a dozen score of enemy had perished in the night:
The world had learned a new respect in the place they call Long Tan;
That the true Australian digger was there in Vietnam:

©August 2002 by A.R. [Lex] Fullarton

Author’s Note: Penned to honour Vietnam Veterans' Day in Australia, August 18, 2002. On this day in 1966, the Battle of Long Tan was fought