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Airdate: All the Way

Was America more of an enemy in Vietnam for Australia than the Vietcong?

Tonight ABC1 screens All the Way, a documentary based on a book by Australian author Paul Ham, which claims America was almost more the enemy in Vietnam for Australia than the Vietcong because of the “cowboy’’ way the US fought the war and how indifferent and disrespectful to Australia they were.

In May 1965 the first Australian troops left for war in Vietnam. It would become the longest and most hated conflict in Australian history.

This war not only tested Australia’s soldiers. It stretched Australia’s friendship with America to breaking point.

The slogan All the Way with LBJ came to haunt Australians who hitched their wagon to an indifferent ally in the United States, and revealed the truism that governments have no true friends, only interests.

This startling documentary, presented by Paul Ham, reveals why we really went to war in Vietnam, why we stayed, and the price we paid.

And it reveals for the first time a brutal Australian expert in guerrilla warfare who trained local Vietnamese to murder thousands of their fellow civilians in his own personal crusade to stop the spread of atheistic communism.

Australia hoped the Vietnam War would cement us to America, and cement America to Asia; we wanted to lock our great and powerful friend in to our region. But 10 years fighting in the jungles of South Vietnam delivered a very different outcome. While we earned the respect of our enemies, we almost made enemies of our most important friend.

Drawing on exhaustive research from his book Vietnam: The Australian War, Paul Ham presents a film which shows how the Australians fought a very different war to that of the Americans. The Americans relied on massive and sometimes unnecessary firepower. The Australians fought a war of counter-insurgency, relying on stealth and restraint. It proved to be a more effective and humane approach to the conditions encountered in Vietnam.

Australian soldiers recognised that America’s “different’’ wars would lead to unnecessary Australian casualties. They moved to stop this happening, by pushing for Australia to take charge of its own province in Vietnam, outside the control of the Americans.

In Phuoc Tuy the Australians fought a war of counter-insurgency against the Viet Cong, and launched civic action programs to win the hearts and minds of the local people.

The film introduces us to some little known Australian experts in guerrilla warfare. Our first man to arrive in Vietnam, Colonel Francis “Ted’’ Serong, (pictured) would also be the last Australian out when the south fell to the Communists in 1975.

Serong hand-picked a group of Australian military advisers – “the Dirty 30” – whose job was to train the South Vietnamese in counter-insurgency tactics.

Serong was on a personal crusade to stop the spread of atheistic communism; a crusade that would eventually consume him, when he later joined the CIA’s controversial and brutal Phoenix program.

On the severity and magnitude of his terror and killing spree, he said: “Everyone goes over the speed limit from time to time.’’

Thursday April 12, 9.30pm ABC1.

2 Responses

  1. i have a friend who served in the sas in vietnam. he tells stories of the yanks shooting first at anything that moved. in the end the sas didnt bother trying to make contact with them and stop them shooting, they just killed them

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