Greg Lockhart: The Minefield ... An Australian Tragedy in America’s Vietnam War
[Greg Lockhart is a former army officer, turned Vietnam literary scholar and translator. His book, The Minefield: An Australian Tragedy in Vietnam was published in May 2007 by Allen & Unwin of Australia.]
In 1967 the commander of First Australian Task Force (1ATF), Brigadier Stuart Graham ordered the construction of an 11 kilometre ‘barrier fence and minefield’ in Phuoc Tuy Province, southern Vietnam. This ‘barrier’, which ran for some 11 kilometres through the southern Phuoc Tuy, would constitute the biggest blunder in Australian military history since the Second World War. It would also constitute a story of strategic self-destruction that epitomised both Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the wider Australian imperial tradition of sending expeditions to far-flung wars.
In Vietnam, the purpose of Graham’s ‘barrier’ was to separate and to shield Phuoc Tuy’s most densely populated villages in the southwestern District of Long Dat from his enemy’s regular units in the north and east. These were the regular units of the National Liberation Front (or NLF) for the southern region of Vietnam and/or the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). The problem, however, was that Graham did not know his enemy. He did not realise that the people in Long Dat were also largely hostile to 1ATF’s presence in Phuoc Tuy. He did not realise that, led by the NLF, the people in Long Dat would lift thousands of the mines and turn them back against 1ATF with horrendous, far-reaching results. Amplifying the conceptual travesty of building a ‘barrier’ with his enemy on both sides of it, Graham built it with over 20,000 powerful M16 ‘Jumping Jack’ landmines.
The M16 mine was about the size of a large jam tin, about 10 centimetres in diameter and 12 centimetres high, or 19 centimetres with the M605 fuze installed. With steel inner and outer casings, the mine weighed over three and a half kilograms including about half a kilogram of TNT. To prime it, an M605 fuze (or striker) with three prongs at the top was screwed into a well in the centre of the mine. The safety pin, which prevented the fuze from being driven home in the fuze assembly, had to be withdrawn from a hole in the neck of the fuze. The mine was detonated when a small downward force was applied to the prongs---or there is a similar pull on a trip wire attached to the release pin located below the safety pin in the neck of the fuze.
With detonation either way, a plate moves across the igniter mechanism and frees the firing pin through a hole in the plate. Driven downwards by a spring, the freed firing pin strikes a cap which ignites a two-second delay fuse. This delay fuse ignites a flash cap, which further ignites a bag of black powder, which throws the mine out of the ground with great force, simultaneously igniting a two millisecond delay fuse. This fuse detonates the half-kilogram of TNT when the mine is knee to waist height out of the ground---hence ‘Jumping Jacks’. The cast iron fragmentation body inside the inner steel casing fragments with the force of the blast. The mine was usually lethal within a 25-metre radius, was known to have killed at 75, and was dangerous to 200 metres....
As the Australian sappers were being killed and mutilated laying the mines, some 30 NLF lifters were blown to pieces during suicidal experiments to lift them. Especially as they operated at night, their biggest problem was finding out what caused many of the mines to detonate as they were being lifted. This was an anti-lift device, which the Australians had fitted beneath about half the mines in an attempt to deter their enemy. Each device consisted of an M5 pressure release switch about the size of a matchbox that is fitted with a detonator adaptor and screwed into the top of an M26 fragmentation grenade. If someone attempts to lift the mine and the anti-lift device is functioning properly, the lid flies open releasing the firing pin and detonating the grenade.
The histories of Long Dat District thus recount the story of how a combat engineer named Hung Manh had an unexpected reprieve after being ceremoniously sent off (with drinks) on a likely suicide mission to the minefield. The crucial detail: ‘the grenade beneath the mine did not detonate because the detonator was damp.’ The mechanism of the anti-lift device was studied. Mine lifting training was soon devised for local guerillas and many others in the villages. The mine lifting had begun by the night of 28-9 May when Australian records show that M16 mines, some of them with anti-lift devices, were lifted from the southern part of minefield.
From then on, The Minefield shows how the indigent, lightly armed NLF guerillas in the south-western villages had an inexhaustible supply of M16 mines to turn back against the Australian task force. The far-reaching fact would be that, by inflicting hundreds of casualties on 1ATF and its allies with M16 mines from the 1ATF minefield, the NLF guerillas would defend their strategically vital southwestern area in Phuoc Tuy against Australian incursions. ...
The impact of such mine incidents was devastating given the small size of the Australian force. There were three twenty-man platoons in a company and a mere thirteen rifle companies in 1ATF at its peak. A single M16 mine could gut a platoon. A conservative estimate is that between May 1967 and November 1971 55 1ATF soldiers were killed and some 250 dismembered and wounded on M16s from the ‘barrier minefield’. This constituted about 10 percent of all Australian casualties in the Vietnam War. Even more telling, however, are the following figures: for the protracted period from May 1969 to May 1970, the M16 mine casualties rose to over 50 per cent of 1ATF’s total casualties. At some points, the figures probably spiked at 80 per cent. Furthermore, 1ATF records show that over 200 allied soldiers---very largely Vietnamese but also some Americans---were killed and mutilated by M16 mines.
The strategic suicide built into these casualty figures went with the terrible human cost. As well as defending the NLF’s base areas in the Long Hai Mountains, M16 mines from the 1ATF minefield guaranteed the NLF’s defence of its vital south-western area against Australian incursions. The book concludes that, supported by his US and Australian superiors, Brigadier Graham unintentionally rendered to his enemy the weapons with which they defended their homeland.
This tragedy of strategic self-destruction stemmed from the willful blindness of a regime that institutionalized ignorance of Vietnamese nationalism and inflated the threat of communism. Strategic myth-making was the essential underpinning of Australia’s involvement in the war. But such mystification made it impossible to observe the first rule of war: know your enemy. Brigadier Graham was responsible for his decision. But it was conditioned by an imperial worldview that had shaped Australian strategic thinking for a century before it blinded Australian commanders to the national dynamics of the Vietnam battlefield.
Australia’s imperial expeditions have almost always been sent to support British and, post-1942, American forces on far-flung battlefields so that, in return, those big and powerful Anglophone allies would save Australia against some unspecified future threat in the Pacific. Race, if not exactly monolingual fear, has been a major driver of this impulse to maintain imperial strategic settings.
But then, Vietnam was not the only battlefield on which the far-flung tradition has made it difficult to know what was going on. As at Gallipoli, the Somme, or Singapore, Australian soldiers in Vietnam fought with tenacity and tactical prowess. But repeatedly, as on those battlefields, and now in Iraq, they have been required to fight in the face of impossible odds and/or the strategic futility that has routinely weakened rather than strengthened Australia’s position in the world. This is partly because it is difficult to know enemies who are so remote from Australia and almost never posed a threat to Australian national security. But it is also because the expeditionary tradition is based on self-fulfilling anxieties and sentimental self-deceptions that are generated by an unAustralian sense of Anglo-Australian colonial isolation in the Pacific.
Strategic self-destruction is then a recurring theme in the Australian expeditionary military tradition. The ‘Minefield’ epitomises Australia’s involvement in Vietnam. ‘Minefield’ is also a metaphor for the military history of a country with little or no independent strategic view.
Read entire article at Japan Focus
In 1967 the commander of First Australian Task Force (1ATF), Brigadier Stuart Graham ordered the construction of an 11 kilometre ‘barrier fence and minefield’ in Phuoc Tuy Province, southern Vietnam. This ‘barrier’, which ran for some 11 kilometres through the southern Phuoc Tuy, would constitute the biggest blunder in Australian military history since the Second World War. It would also constitute a story of strategic self-destruction that epitomised both Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the wider Australian imperial tradition of sending expeditions to far-flung wars.
In Vietnam, the purpose of Graham’s ‘barrier’ was to separate and to shield Phuoc Tuy’s most densely populated villages in the southwestern District of Long Dat from his enemy’s regular units in the north and east. These were the regular units of the National Liberation Front (or NLF) for the southern region of Vietnam and/or the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). The problem, however, was that Graham did not know his enemy. He did not realise that the people in Long Dat were also largely hostile to 1ATF’s presence in Phuoc Tuy. He did not realise that, led by the NLF, the people in Long Dat would lift thousands of the mines and turn them back against 1ATF with horrendous, far-reaching results. Amplifying the conceptual travesty of building a ‘barrier’ with his enemy on both sides of it, Graham built it with over 20,000 powerful M16 ‘Jumping Jack’ landmines.
The M16 mine was about the size of a large jam tin, about 10 centimetres in diameter and 12 centimetres high, or 19 centimetres with the M605 fuze installed. With steel inner and outer casings, the mine weighed over three and a half kilograms including about half a kilogram of TNT. To prime it, an M605 fuze (or striker) with three prongs at the top was screwed into a well in the centre of the mine. The safety pin, which prevented the fuze from being driven home in the fuze assembly, had to be withdrawn from a hole in the neck of the fuze. The mine was detonated when a small downward force was applied to the prongs---or there is a similar pull on a trip wire attached to the release pin located below the safety pin in the neck of the fuze.
With detonation either way, a plate moves across the igniter mechanism and frees the firing pin through a hole in the plate. Driven downwards by a spring, the freed firing pin strikes a cap which ignites a two-second delay fuse. This delay fuse ignites a flash cap, which further ignites a bag of black powder, which throws the mine out of the ground with great force, simultaneously igniting a two millisecond delay fuse. This fuse detonates the half-kilogram of TNT when the mine is knee to waist height out of the ground---hence ‘Jumping Jacks’. The cast iron fragmentation body inside the inner steel casing fragments with the force of the blast. The mine was usually lethal within a 25-metre radius, was known to have killed at 75, and was dangerous to 200 metres....
As the Australian sappers were being killed and mutilated laying the mines, some 30 NLF lifters were blown to pieces during suicidal experiments to lift them. Especially as they operated at night, their biggest problem was finding out what caused many of the mines to detonate as they were being lifted. This was an anti-lift device, which the Australians had fitted beneath about half the mines in an attempt to deter their enemy. Each device consisted of an M5 pressure release switch about the size of a matchbox that is fitted with a detonator adaptor and screwed into the top of an M26 fragmentation grenade. If someone attempts to lift the mine and the anti-lift device is functioning properly, the lid flies open releasing the firing pin and detonating the grenade.
The histories of Long Dat District thus recount the story of how a combat engineer named Hung Manh had an unexpected reprieve after being ceremoniously sent off (with drinks) on a likely suicide mission to the minefield. The crucial detail: ‘the grenade beneath the mine did not detonate because the detonator was damp.’ The mechanism of the anti-lift device was studied. Mine lifting training was soon devised for local guerillas and many others in the villages. The mine lifting had begun by the night of 28-9 May when Australian records show that M16 mines, some of them with anti-lift devices, were lifted from the southern part of minefield.
From then on, The Minefield shows how the indigent, lightly armed NLF guerillas in the south-western villages had an inexhaustible supply of M16 mines to turn back against the Australian task force. The far-reaching fact would be that, by inflicting hundreds of casualties on 1ATF and its allies with M16 mines from the 1ATF minefield, the NLF guerillas would defend their strategically vital southwestern area in Phuoc Tuy against Australian incursions. ...
The impact of such mine incidents was devastating given the small size of the Australian force. There were three twenty-man platoons in a company and a mere thirteen rifle companies in 1ATF at its peak. A single M16 mine could gut a platoon. A conservative estimate is that between May 1967 and November 1971 55 1ATF soldiers were killed and some 250 dismembered and wounded on M16s from the ‘barrier minefield’. This constituted about 10 percent of all Australian casualties in the Vietnam War. Even more telling, however, are the following figures: for the protracted period from May 1969 to May 1970, the M16 mine casualties rose to over 50 per cent of 1ATF’s total casualties. At some points, the figures probably spiked at 80 per cent. Furthermore, 1ATF records show that over 200 allied soldiers---very largely Vietnamese but also some Americans---were killed and mutilated by M16 mines.
The strategic suicide built into these casualty figures went with the terrible human cost. As well as defending the NLF’s base areas in the Long Hai Mountains, M16 mines from the 1ATF minefield guaranteed the NLF’s defence of its vital south-western area against Australian incursions. The book concludes that, supported by his US and Australian superiors, Brigadier Graham unintentionally rendered to his enemy the weapons with which they defended their homeland.
This tragedy of strategic self-destruction stemmed from the willful blindness of a regime that institutionalized ignorance of Vietnamese nationalism and inflated the threat of communism. Strategic myth-making was the essential underpinning of Australia’s involvement in the war. But such mystification made it impossible to observe the first rule of war: know your enemy. Brigadier Graham was responsible for his decision. But it was conditioned by an imperial worldview that had shaped Australian strategic thinking for a century before it blinded Australian commanders to the national dynamics of the Vietnam battlefield.
Australia’s imperial expeditions have almost always been sent to support British and, post-1942, American forces on far-flung battlefields so that, in return, those big and powerful Anglophone allies would save Australia against some unspecified future threat in the Pacific. Race, if not exactly monolingual fear, has been a major driver of this impulse to maintain imperial strategic settings.
But then, Vietnam was not the only battlefield on which the far-flung tradition has made it difficult to know what was going on. As at Gallipoli, the Somme, or Singapore, Australian soldiers in Vietnam fought with tenacity and tactical prowess. But repeatedly, as on those battlefields, and now in Iraq, they have been required to fight in the face of impossible odds and/or the strategic futility that has routinely weakened rather than strengthened Australia’s position in the world. This is partly because it is difficult to know enemies who are so remote from Australia and almost never posed a threat to Australian national security. But it is also because the expeditionary tradition is based on self-fulfilling anxieties and sentimental self-deceptions that are generated by an unAustralian sense of Anglo-Australian colonial isolation in the Pacific.
Strategic self-destruction is then a recurring theme in the Australian expeditionary military tradition. The ‘Minefield’ epitomises Australia’s involvement in Vietnam. ‘Minefield’ is also a metaphor for the military history of a country with little or no independent strategic view.