I first became interested in this subject
when I'd been doing some research into some particular elements of the Australian Army
during the Cold War. At first I came across one particular officer who was born in the UK
and I thought I wonder how many more there were. And I saw that he'd had service in Vietnam
and starting delving a bit deeper and found more and more, which made me think about what
exactly was Britain’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Before I go on I will say that I’ve come
across a lot of myths, legends and speculations about the British Armed Forces in South East
Asia during the Cold War. So I will start with the disclaimer that because there is
a lot of unverifiable information, some of the things which I might talk about might
not be provable, so we will see how we go. For many people the Vietnam War is remembered
as an American war against the communist regime of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV),
or North Vietnam as it is better known. It was a war of foreign policy assertion with
the aim of limiting the expansion of communist influence in South East Asia and in the greater
geopolitical context of the Cold War, and an attempt to blunt Soviet influence in Asia. The main element of the American war was about
eight years, but US forces actually spent closer to 25 years attempting to destroy communism’s
hold in the region, fighting communist forces in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and against
both the conventional forces of the North Vietnamese Army and the communist and nationalist
guerrilla allies that were known at the Viet Cong (VC), or National Liberation Front (NLF). The era in which the Vietnam War was fought
is also often associated with the counter culture movements that arose around it -
civil rights and mass anti-war movements and the associated music and cultural revolutions
that occurred around these times, such as free love and more liberal attitudes to drug use. There is a very broad misconception that the
Vietnam War was an all-American effort. It was actually fought by an alliance of anti-communist
forces including troops from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the Philippines, the
Khmer Republic, Laos and Thailand. But whether people recall the Vietnam War as an American
war or a war of an international anti-communist alliance, most people believe that the Vietnam
War was one of the major Cold War conflicts in which Britain was not directly involved. In 1944 British members of the Special Operations
Executive's Force 136 had begun conducting raids and sabotage operations throughout Japanese-occupied
French Indochina and were increasingly joined by French Vichy defectors and members of the
'Maquis' or French Resistance. When the Japanese eventually surrendered on 15 August 1945,
British troops from the 20th Indian Division and the Republic of China rushed into Indochina
to disarm the Japanese, to restore order and to assist the French reassert control over
their former colonies. From 1948 to 1960 Britain was also leading a Commonwealth alliance in
a 12-year struggle against Malayan communists known as the Malayan Emergency. Indochina had come to become dominated by
the French between the 1850s and 1890s. Despite various opposition movements France maintained
colonial rule over what’s now considered Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia until France itself
had fallen to Nazi Germany in 1940. Rule of French Indochina passed to the Vichy French,
puppet rulers under control of Nazi Germany, who passed their local rule onto their Japanese
allies for more practical reasons. In September 1940, 36,000 Japanese troops
had occupied French Indochina leaving the Vichy only nominally in charge for administrative
purposes. When the Vichy France regime collapsed in Europe their administration in Indochina
remained, but by then no longer any connection with the Axis command. Fearing capitulation
in the face of any Allied invasion, the Japanese brutally overthrew their former collaborators
on the 9 March 1945 murdering many French officers and officials and taking direct command
of Indochina. The Japanese and Vichy occupations of Indochina
had been disastrous for the region. On top of violent suppression of any form of dissidence,
the occupation coincided with a brutal famine which claimed more than a million lives.
A local resistance movement of nationalists called the Viet Minh began to spring up under
the leadership of a man called Ho Chi Minh. The American intelligence and espionage branch
known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had been providing the Viet Minh with
specialist jungle and guerrilla warfare training to aid them in their resistance and sabotage
activities against the Japanese. But the Viet Minh began to call for an independent Vietnam
and began to fight both the Vichy French and the Japanese. Because of their successful
disruption of the Japanese war efforts, the Viet Minh had received finance from both pre-communist
Republic of China and from the Soviet Union, as well as the United States. The United States
had also begun to supply arms and supplies. On 30 April 1945 US support for the Viet Minh
was shown when Major Archimedes Patti of the OSS met Ho Chi Minh personally to offer his
direct support. The Viet Minh recruited skilled Japanese jungle
fighters to join their ranks and teach their men in guerrilla and jungle warfare and some
even took up leadership roles within the Viet Minh. The Japanese even also voluntarily handed
over their arms and armaments to assist the Viet Minh. Ho Chi Minh arranged for famine
relief to the isolated villages that were struggling with the famine and it reached
even the remotest parts of Vietnam winning him widespread popular support amongst the
population. On 2 September, the same day as the Japanese
surrender ceremony was taking place on the USS Missouri, Ho Chi Minh, the newly appointed
supreme adviser of Vietnam, declared the Republic of Vietnam to be independent. In his proclamation
he evoked the rights of men that were declared in the US Declaration of Independence. France,
though, had no intention of permitting independence for French Indochina and with British backing
they intended to reassert their authority. France had few troops in South East Asia as
most of the free French forces had been involved in the liberation of France itself. As the Japanese surrender took effect there
were over 70,000 Japanese troops still remaining within Indochina. 200,000 Chinese Kuomintang
nationalist soldiers began pouring south into Vietnam to oversee the Japanese defeat and
withdraw from the northern sector. The Chinese were surprised to discover that the Viet Minh
had launched their August revolution and seized control of French public buildings refusing
to release former French administrators from prison. Meanwhile, Britain had begun to assist the
French in reasserting its Asian power base with British forces located already in the
region in accordance with the Potsdam agreements. The Allied South East Asia Command was expanded
to include Indochina. As the Chinese were consolidating control of the north of Indochina,
Major General Douglas Gracey led the 20th Indian Division in Operation MASTERDOM entering
Indochina through Burma and taking control of the south below the 16th parallel with
the objective of maintaining law and order, releasing Allied prisoners of war and disarming
and repatriating former Japanese occupiers. When they arrived they came across a bizarre
mix of Viet Minh and Japanese troops still armed together keeping order. A British Anglo-French task force was established
called the Allied Land Forces of French Indochina with the primary responsibility of securing
French Indochina against the independence movement. But on the 13 September the troops
were also landed in Java to suppress Sukarno’s assertion of independence for the Dutch East
Indies and help re-establish Dutch rule there. Divided between the responsibilities of Indochina
and Indonesia they were ineffective. The Kuomintang were occupying territories
as far south as the 16th parallel in accordance with the Potsdam Conference and began linking
up with local Vietnamese Quoc Dan Dang anti-colonialist fighters. The Chinese began supplying them
with more weapons. But France eventually convinced the Chinese to withdraw completely by the
following February in exchange for renouncing all pre-war French claims to extra territorial
privileges in China itself. Ho Chi Minh had spent four months in France in 1946 trying
to negotiate peaceful terms for Vietnamese independence, but France had refused to agree,
instead seeking to reassert its own control. By late 1946 France and the Viet Minh were
in direct war. The bloody and brutal conflict became known as the First Indochina War. The
almost total destruction at Dien Bien Phu of the French Groupement Mobile 100, the major
component of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, effectively ended France’s ability
to reassert any authority in Indochina and saw the dissolution of the French colonies
in 1955. As a result, South Vietnam turned to the United States for military support
and protection from the north. Britain’s supposed non-involvement in the
Vietnam War is something of a foreign policy oddity. Despite a less than harmonious beginning,
since the great rapprochement of the beginning of the 20th century Britain and the US have
shared many ideals. Culture and policy have mostly been aligned and the two nations have
generally been supportive of each other’s foreign policy. Similar cultural and linguistic
backgrounds have helped shape the Anglo-America relationship. The US began as a union of former
British colonies after all. The similar political and foreign policy direction, co-operation
in trade and commerce, military activities and nuclear weapons, and intelligence sharing
is truly unparallelled in world power and it has led to this co-operation being referred
to as the 'special relationship'. The 'special relationship', of course, has been most
recently epitomised by pally scenes between presidents and prime ministers, such as Obama and Cameron
watching college basketball together with hot dogs, or playing one-sided table tennis. America was still living in fear of the evils
of communism that had grown out of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s 'reds under the bed'
scaremongering campaigns of the 1950s. Harold Macmillan, and the very brief administration of
Alec Douglas-Home, had enjoyed very strong 'special relationships' with their US counterparts.
Macmillan and Kennedy got on famously and even managed to overcome secretary of state
Dean Acheson's attempts to marginalise Britain with a vehement attack of rhetoric in 1962
when he labelled Britain as being 'past it' and no longer having a role in world affairs.
Macmillan retorted that the list of those that had previously underestimated Britain’s
will and influence included Philip of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler.
Macmillan quipped that Britain had a duty to guide growing US global power in the same way
that the Greek philosophers had curbed Rome’s excesses. Kennedy trusted Macmillan and they epitomised
the purpose of the post-war 'special relationship', but frustrations were felt on both side. Eisenhower
and the lingering McCarthy-ists in Washington went to the trouble of trying to completely
undermine Macmillan’s efforts at détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960 peace summit.
And Macmillan’s frustrations probably contributed greatly to his decision to pursue British
membership of the European Economic Community. Harold Wilson first won office in 1964. The
Labour government of Harold Wilson had significant differences of opinion to the Democratic administration
of President Lyndon Johnson. Although often accused of being a communist or a socialist,
in reality he was not that much of a hardline socialist. Wilson was more of a soft left
leaning man. He was a founder of the Bevanite Group which was orientated toward democratic
socialism. He was a strong proponent of social ideals such as anti-classism and advocacy
of increased opportunity through access to education, social service and welfare. When Wilson took over from his Conservative
predecessors though, he began as he intended to go on by recasting the Anglo-American relationship
as a 'close' relationship rather than a 'special' one. Kennedy’s successor, Johnson, took
an instant dislike to the Labour prime minster, even once referring to him as a 'creep'. He
resented Britain’s past attempts at mediation and the role that they had played in shaping
the 1954 Geneva Conferences on Indochina. During those conferences Wilson attempted
to create a peaceful union of the divided Vietnam and argued, 'we must not join with nor in
any way encourage an anti-communist crusade in Asia,' and that 'a settlement in Asia is imperilled
by the lunatic fringe in the American Senate who want some holy crusade
against communism'. Johnson called Wilson in the middle of the night to launch into
a tirade in which he stated, 'I won’t tell you how to run Malaysia;
you don’t tell me how to run Vietnam.' Despite the strains in these quarters there
was a general recognition by most in Washington that Wilson was actually having to balance
domestic demands. Wilson was overly concerned about the growing anti-war movement in Britain
and the extreme left of his own party whose sympathies probably lay more with the communists
than in maintaining the 'special relationship'. Despite this he still managed to act both
in the protection of British interests in South East Asia and also to surreptitiously
support the US-South Vietnamese military operation whilst focusing international attention on
their diplomatic efforts. A 1965 Foreign Office report stated that 'Britain’s
interests as a non-communist power would be impaired if the United State’s government
were defeated in the field or defaulted on its commitments. Britain should therefore
give moral support to our major ally.' Unlike the Foreign Office mandarins that had drafted
that report, Wilson though had to also deal with both public opinion and the extreme left
of his own party. In March 1965 US ambassador to Britain, David
Bruce, explained in Washington that the British leader was hotly accused by many in Britain,
including a formidable number of moderate Labour parliamentarians, of being a mere satellite
to US policy and subscribing blindly and completely to policies about which he has not been consulted
in advance. Wilson also came under attack from extreme leftists in the Labour party
for having not directly condemned the Vietnam War as a war of aggression against democratic
socialism. At the same time the US defence secretary, Robert McNamara, had attacked his
lack of commitment of British troops in Vietnam stating that Britain should pay the blood
price by sending troops in as part of the unwritten terms of the 'special relationship'. Although Wilson refused to send combat troops,
he did commit Special Forces instructors. No matter how much he may have wished to do
so, there was never a possibility that Wilson could have committed direct combat troops
without risking an increasing public backlash or potentially a party leadership challenge from within.
McNamara, though, accused Wilson of hypocrisy, pointing out the burden sharing
commitment that Macmillan had demanded of Australia and New Zealand under the terms
of the SEATO [South-East Asia Treaty Organisation] treaty in Britain’s ongoing struggle with
communist insurgence in Malaya and their undeclared confrontation with Indonesia, where at that
time there was more than 30,000 Commonwealth troops still in the field in 1964. Wilson’s finger was acutely on the public
pulse, however. Between 1963 and 1964 the peace, nuclear disarmament and anti-war movements
began to merge in the UK. And for one Trafalgar Square march the new group adopting the ND [Nuclear Disarmament]
symbol as what has become the international symbol of peace. Anti-war sentiment had been
growing and when an international day of protests was called on the 15 October 1965 London joined
Rome, Brussels, Copenhagen and Stockholm in staging anti-Vietnam War protests. A second
international day of protests was held in 1966 and even larger crowds began to gather
in London. Regular protests outside the American embassy soon turned violent with over 300
arrests, but from cities across America and increasingly across the world the cry was becoming, 'Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?' Britain’s involvement in the conflicts in Malaysia and
Indonesia had also become increasingly unpopular. In 1966 defence minster, Dennis
Healy, produced an updated defence white paper for the Labour government of Wilson known
as the 'East of Suez Review' which suggested scaling back global commitments to the withdrawal
of British forces deployed east of the Suez by 1971, including from their major bases
in Malaysia, Singapore and Aden. This was seen as a watershed in withdrawal from empire
in terms of defensive policy. When Australian prime minister, Harold Holt,
gave a speech in Washington in front of Johnson in June 1966 announcing an increased troop
commitment to Vietnam he rounded off with his most famous catch phrase, 'All the way
with LBJ,' prompting some in the US military to quip that Australia was now the US’s
closest ally due to their unwavering support - a subtle rebuke that was felt stingingly
by many here in London. Many in the Conservative opposition saw the withdrawal to Europe as
a huge loss of international prestige, particularly in the eyes of the Americans. There was a
change of government in 1970 that saw the Conservatives back in power under Heath who
immediately set about overturning the withdrawal opting to retain bases in Hong Kong, Diego
Garcia, and a British military garrison in Brunei. In 1971 Heath’s government fully recommitted
to South East Asia by signing a bilateral defensive pact known as the Five Powers Defence
Agreement (FPDA) with traditional regional allies, Australia and New Zealand, and newly
independent former colonial interests, Malaysia and Singapore. This alliance remains active
today. In 1960 the Viet Cong, or the National Liberation Front, began intensifying
their activities and began operating in the south. Group 559 had been formed the year before
to upgrade the Ho Chi Minh trail and allow the increased arms smuggling into the south
to continue. They were particularly focused on encouraging non-communists to join the
struggle against foreign intervention. Although the VC denied they were directly taking
orders from Hanoi there they certainly working to a similar purpose and statements that were
released later in the 1980s showed they were under direct authority from Hanoi. In 1960 and 1961 the
number of guerrilla attacks in the south rose sharply. In the two-year period from his election in
1961 to immediately prior to his assassination, Kennedy had increased aid, finance, weapons
and other supplies into South Vietnam seemingly with little effect. The attacks continued
to increase. The Kennedy administration also began sending helicopters, light aircraft,
intelligence equipment and additional advisers. Washington’s policy makers began to doubt
South Vietnamese leader [Ngo Dinh] Diem's ability to defeat the north. The CIA therefore
decided to assist an Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) plot to overthrow him, resulting
in his assassination in November 1963. To deal with the chaos that followed in the south
with regime change, Kennedy deployed a further 16,000 advisers. Australia also began to increase
its deployment and the elite Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) began
arriving. The AATTV was a training team in name only. In fact they were a highly trained Special Forces unit. The major US combat phase of the Vietnam War
began with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident - a maritime confrontation on 2 August 1964 in
which a US Navy vessel, the USS Maddox, was conducting North Vietnamese signal interceptions
when it came under direct attack from North Vietnamese torpedo boats. From December 1964
the north intensified conventional attacks into the south to capitalise on the internal
unrest and government inefficiency following Diem’s overthrow. As the north began to
make gains, such as the Viet Cong victory in the Battle of Dong Xoai, the US government
called for a greater commitment from their allies as part of the newly labelled Free
World Forces. Citing the risk of the domino theory, they encouraged SEATO alliance members
to provide combat troops and Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines
all agreed to increase their commitment. The first request for British combat troops
had been made in December 1964 and pressure to provide battalions of combat troops was
continually applied thereafter. The US government even made a specific request for the Black
Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), presumably because of their recent experience in counter-insurgency
both in the Malayan Emergency and against the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Wilson used the excuse that as co-chair alongside
the USSR of the Geneva Peace Conference Britain was unable to become a direct belligerent
without threatening the validity of the accords under international law. 'As co-chairman,
Her Majesty’s government are prepared to turn a blind eye to American activities,'
the Foreign Office secretly stated. Douglas-Home suggested to secretary of state, Dean Rusk,
it was being done to avoid any publicity for what the US was doing there. Wilson also privately
added that Britain was embroiled in fighting the communist insurgency in Malaya which was
occupying most of their attention. Johnson responded that even a symbolic token commitment
would be appreciated, as it would add international legitimacy to their actions. 'Not even a bagpipe band?'
Johnson is supposed to have sarcastically replied at Wilson’s final refusal. It soon became publicly clear that the outward
British refusal to directly commit troops personally annoyed Johnson greatly. Upon learning
of the VC bombing of a Saigon nightclub frequented by US servicemen in February 1965 Wilson offered
to fly to Washington to discuss the matter personally with Johnson. When Wilson phoned
to discuss such a meeting he was met by a hostile Johnson who stated, 'It would be a very
serious mistake for the Prime Minister to come over’. There was nothing to be gained by 'flapping around
the Atlantic with our coat tails out'. He reiterated the US didn’t have the
company of many allies in Vietnam, but if the prime minster had any men to spare
he would appreciate them more than him. The Americans then began to resort to outright
bribery to try and coerce Wilson. A massive bailout was offered designed to alleviate
Britain of the problems it was suffering after years of uncompetitive industry and an over-valued
pound, and a postwar failure to reconnect with foreign markets. The bailout offer was
directly linked to Britain both maintaining their commitments east of Suez and in West
Germany, and offering at least a brigade-sized commitment into Vietnam. National security
adviser McGeorge Bundy went further by trying to bring Vietnam directly into the deal, counselling
the president on 28 July 1965 that it made 'no sense whatsoever for us to rescue the
pound in a situation in which there is no British flag in Vietnam... a British brigade
in Vietnam could be worth, say, a billion dollars at the moment of truth for the sterling'. 1965 represented an escalation of the US ground
war to a point of no return. Three thousand five hundred Marines deployed into
South Vietnam in March and, despite the modern contrary belief, the US public was overwhelmingly in
favour of intervention at that time. For much of 1965 the Marines’ assignment was defensive,
protecting against incursions from the NVLA [North Vietnamese Liberation Army]. But as
is often the case US commanders struggled to reconcile with defensive constraint. Their
military is geared towards overwhelming opponents with superior force, then as it is now. By
December the US commitment had grown from 3,500 to over 200,000 men. When a force of
ARVN with US support was overwhelmed at the Battle of Binh Gia in the Mekong Delta it
represented both the growing strength and capability of the Viet Cong but also a shift
from guerrilla attacks to conventional warfare. It also marked a desire by the US commanders
to shift from defence to offence, and taking the fight to the enemy. General Westmoreland
stated, 'I am convinced that US troops with their energy, mobility and fire power can
successfully take the fight to the NLF.' Throughout 1966 and 1967 US and SEATO forces
continued offensive operations such as MASHER, ATTLEBORO, CEDAR FALLS and JUNCTION CITY under
the new banner of 'search and destroy'. But VC flexibility using conventional tactics
when an advantage could be taken and resorting to guerrilla warfare and ambushes and hit
and run when not, meant that the VC were impossible for US forces to pin down and destroy. Unlike
the Americans, the Australian Special Forces actually deployed counter-guerrilla tactics
that they’d learned from their operations in Malaya, Borneo and Indonesia and initially
enjoyed greater success. But by late 1967 allied operations were already struggling
to deal with the VC and NVLA strategy. Operation JUNCTION CITY was a strategic failure and
'search and destroy' was having no effect. The strategic situation deteriorated severely
when General Westmoreland’s troops were successfully lured into the battle of Khe
Sanh in Quang Tri Province in January of 1968. It marked the beginning of what was to be
known as the TET Offensive in which over 100 cities and towns all over South Vietnam were
strategically attacked whilst the Americans were pinned down at Khe Sanh. The Americans were losing touch with the most
crucial element of 'hearts and minds' warfare, one of the elements that had seen Britain
so successful in Malaya. Robert McNamara in particular had made the strategic mistake
of believing that just as the Axis military had been the centre of gravity for the opposition
faced by the Allies in World War Two, so too the VC and NVLA must be the centre of gravity
for communist forces in South East Asia. Therefore, he believed that if they could be isolated,
decapitated or contained the regime surely must collapse, just as Nazi Germany had done.
But in reality the hearts and minds of the populus were actually in support of the communist
regime and even in the south this was beginning to grow in the face of the American aggression
and atrocity. On the converse, the NVLA knew that they could not possibly defeat the allies
militarily, so they focused their strategy on constraining the enemy and promoting political
opposition, and providing for the welfare and security of the populus as their priority.
The Americans did not, and to a certain extent still do not, understand that not everyone sees
US democracy as the greatest gift to the world. In 1966 Ho Chi Minh warned that 'if the Americans want
to make war for 20 years, we shall make war for 20 years. If they want to make peace we will
make peace and invite them to afternoon tea'. From 1965 to 1968 the Americans began
Operation ROLLING THUNDER dropping literally millions of tons of munitions on the NLF,
NVLA and VC positions but also onto civilians, and included controversially dropping munitions
upon the supply line known as the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran through non-belligerent Laos
and Cambodia. US Air Force chief Curtis LeMay promised the communists he was going to bomb
them back to the Stone Age, but the indiscriminate killing and suffering that it caused raised support
for the opposition both locally and internationally. The American heavy bombing of civilian
areas in the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong further enraged the British public
and strengthened Wilson’s case for non-involvement. It also led him to begin publicly disassociating
himself from the American intervention. Although stopping short of joining the International
Control Commission's condemnation of the bombing of the DRV, Wilson did publicly state he was
strongly opposed to such bombing. The bombing of Haiphong was also problematic as a non-belligerent
Britain was technically still able to trade with the north and was doing so. A number
of British merchant vessels were damaged during near misses in Haiphong harbour and a small
group of British seamen were badly injured in American bombing. But the White House was
aghast at Wilson’s response, interpreting his reaction as an active betrayal by an ally. Wilson, recognising his disassociation reduced
his already diminishing standing in Washington, wrote to Johnson about the pressure he was
under to denounce 'the whole of your Vietnam policy'. He tried to explain that he personally
rejected the view 'not only because I distrust the motives of those who put this argument forward,
but because I find their argument to be balls'. Although Johnson continued to
feel frustrated, he finally accepted that Wilson’s hands were tied. But despite Wilson’s balancing of US expectation
and the British public's anger, his reluctance to openly commit ground troops actually stems
from the fact that from 1965 onwards British planners were already concluding that the
war could not be won militarily. A draft Foreign Office report of June 1968 stated,
'It is very much in our interests that the United States should as soon as possible find a means
to escape from her present predicament in Vietnam.’ President Johnson stated that during his presidency
there were over 70 peacemaking initiatives, nine of which had originated in Britain. Wilson sought these peaceful solutions not
just to end the horrendous bloodshed in Vietnam, but also because he felt a personal sentiment
to enable Britain’s traditional allies - the US, Australia and New Zealand - to extricate
themselves from an increasingly complicated and unlikely conflict. Nixon replaced Johnson
in 1969 as US president and Wilson found him a lot easier to get along with. At the back
of his mind also was that British involvement might actually realise the looming menace
of a direct Chinese and Soviet involvement, and risked turning a regional conflict into
a global one. Besides, Wilson had earlier learned from a close friend and Labour backbencher,
Harold Davies, that when Davies had visited Hanoi in 1957 and personally met with Ho Chi Minh,
the communist leader had informed him calmly that 're-unification is inevitable,
time is on our side and the ordinary people of the south are with us'. Davies was convinced
Ho Chi Minh was right and told Wilson so, and so it proved. Caroline Page mentions in her book 'US Official
Propaganda During the Vietnam War' that President Kennedy and President Diem both used British
advice and expertise in the form of the British Advisory Mission (BRIAM) in Saigon. This mission
existed from 1962 to 1965 advising the South Vietnamese government on pacification of guerrillas.
The British Advisory Mission had begun working in Saigon in September 1961 in order to provide
limited support to Diem’s government and the US efforts. The mission consisted of a
small team of experts in counter-subversion, intelligence and information gathering. And
whilst the British government continually proclaimed this to be a civilian team, BRIAM
was taking South Vietnamese soldiers into Malaya where they received counter-insurgency training
from British veterans of the anti-communist war there. In 1961 the British officer Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson,
a veteran of the Burma campaign in World War Two and a successful commander
in the Malaya counter-insurgency campaign, published a draft document that became known
as the Delta Plan aimed to dominate control and win over the population particularly in
rural areas beginning with the Mekong Delta region. Interestingly the British document
heavily influenced the US strategy over the following years. He promoted establishing
curfews and prohibiting areas to control movement on roads and waterways and to hamper the communist
courier system, along with limited food control in some areas. These were tactics successfully
used by Gerald Templer in Malaya and later introduced by US forces in Vietnam. By 1962 there had been two jungle warfare
schools operated by the British in Malaya, one at Johor and one at Kota Tinggi. A British
Army training team also operated briefly in South Vietnam during 1962. However, they were
soon replaced by BRIAM operatives. In August 1962 a proposal was sent to the
War Office from an unnamed counter-insurgency officer in Malaya stating that SAS [Special Air Service]
units could be deployed to Vietnam. However, the British military attaché to Saigon,
Colonel Lee, advised against it on the basis of it undermining Britain’s position
as the co-chair of the Geneva Convention. He did, however, suggest that other covert
aid could be provided by Britain. He included the recommendation that this might be possible
to implement 'if the personnel are detached and given temporary civilian status or are
attached to American Special Forces in such a manner that their British military identity
might be hidden within their US unit... However, the Americans are crying out for expertise
in this field.' Lee also suggested to the War Office that
the civilian mission, BRIAM, could be composed of suitable individuals of both European and
Malay background whose experiences in counter-insurgency work in Malaya would make them effective enablers
in BRIAM’s work in Vietnam. He also suggested that by giving SAS regiment members temporary
civilian status it could allow them to assist BRIAM by providing security cover for their
diplomatic work. BRIAM’s 'Noone mission', under the command of Richard Noone,
began in the summer of 1962 and was still operating in 1963. Other than the British Advisory Mission,
there were other units also continuing to operate directly out of the embassy. There
were the usual military attaché staff, members of the Intelligence Corps, the Royal Military Police,
and in addition to the defence attaché posts the Chief of Staff Committee noted
the posts were another way to introduce 'extra British miliary personnel into Vietnam which
stands up to critical public comment'. The MI6 station in Hanoi and the British GCHQ
monitoring station in Little Sai Wan in Hong Kong were regularly responsible for gathering
and forwarding intelligence reports to their American and Australian counterparts, as they
were obliged to do so under the terms of the defence sharing arrangement known as ECHELON
or Five Eyes. MI6 intercepts of North Vietnamese intelligence were used alongside US intelligence
gathered by the NSA [National Security Agency] stations in Thailand and the Philippines for
targeting bomb strike locations, including NVA SAM [surface-to-air missile] launchers and other
logistics sites. Any questions that might be asked about this intelligence gathering were met with the standard
reply that it was related to Australian operations. Whilst continuing to publicly denounce British
involvement to both the media and in the face of parliamentary questions to the Commons,
a 1964 Foreign Office document stated that 'British provision of arms to the US for use
in Vietnam was done in the knowledge that it would breach Geneva Conventions' and that
'Britain’s direct involvement in Vietnam is insignificant, but their interests as a
non-communist power would be impaired if the United States government were defeated in
the field or defaulted on commitment'. Throughout 1966 the staff of the Intelligence
Corps in the embassy in Saigon were often secondments from 3 Commando Brigade's Special
Forces personnel, providing Special Forces perspective and access into South Vietnam
through the embassy. Although none of these personnel were there in combatant roles, they
were free to move around Saigon and Bien Hoa, and mix with US and other Commonwealth troops.
In 1968 a request from the Foreign Office for additional personnel from the Royal Military
Police (RMP) was sent to the Saigon embassy. The embassy’s guard was made up mainly of
RMP staff and Gurkhas and by this time the embassy had become a hive of activity. One former Royal Engineers sapper tells of
seeing a diplomatic bag full of captured VC weapons being sent back to the UK for origin
and manufacture carbon analysis. He also mentioned how the embassy’s chancery had its own internal
security system which was not accessible by other embassy staff and how the Signals' radio
operators were always locked into an inaccessible cage when dealing with a large volume of radio
traffic to and from London. There were also a small number of mainly ammo techs [ammunition technicians]
from the RAOC [Royal Army Ordnance Corps] and RE [Royal Engineers] who dismantled
US ordnance from Cambodia to stop it being used by the RVN or the VC for satchel charges
or roadside IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. Other British Army engineers also worked on
the construction of air bases in Thailand from which both RAF [Royal Air Force] and
USAF [United States Air Force] aircraft flew missions throughout South East Asia, including
sorties into Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It has been suggested that the RAF's 34 Squadron
Beverleys, or possibly C130s, were flying directly into Nui Dat. Beverleys from the
Far East Air Force Transport Command were based at Seletar in Singapore and were officially
deployed on humanitarian missions for the purpose of delivering food, relief aid, medical
supplies, rice and other food. Flight manifests show that these flights from RAF Seletar did
go directly into Vietnam such as into Can Tho, Ban Me Thuot, An Loc and Loch Ninh. In 1966 11 Independent Field Squadron, Royal
Engineers were based at Terendak Camp in Malacca in Malaysia from where they were flown north-east
into Thailand alongside Royal Australian Engineers. There they began the construction of an airfield
at Leong Nok Tha as part of Operation CROWN undertaken under the terms of the SEATO treaty
with the stated purpose of furthering economic development in that remote part of Thailand.
The area was already home to a small cluster of USAF airbases, but the new airfield had
an airstrip that was two kilometres long and paved, for the first time ever in this region,
with high quality concrete. Caribou and Hercules aircraft can happily land on bitumen runways
or even grass, and do not need anything like two kilometres of runway. The new airbase
was clearly designed to be used by fighter jets and heavy bombers and most probably was
used in covert US attacks into Laos. Sabrefighter jets and RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force]
personnel were stationed at nearby Ubon Ratchathani for long durations during
the Vietnam War. The Australian government did refuse permission for bombing missions
into Laos but the baby air force, also known as Air America, were known to fly missions
from here as well. One of the more intriguing pictures that I
came across in researching this lecture is this. It is clearly the distinctive delta
wing shape of the Avro Vulcan strategic bomber, an aircraft that was only ever operated by
the RAF. This photo was taken from a collection by US Task Force 116, a task force of US Navy
and Marines raised for Operation GAME WARDEN in which aggressive river patrolling into
the Mekong Delta resulted in domination of South Vietnamese inland waterways. This picture
was taken deep over South Vietnam and the Vulcan, as some of you may be aware, serves
no other purpose than as a strategic bomber. Other interesting accounts include former
RAF airmen who told of an RAF Canberra bomber squadron despatched from Hong Kong on a routine
patrol, but when airborne the RAF airmen were ordered to replace their RAF shoulder titles
with RAAF ones. Prior to 1964 and the Gulf of Tonkin, RAF air crew were operating directly
in Vietnam and qualified for the South Vietnam clasp for the General Service Medal. Here
we see RAF aircraft at Nui Dat as late as 1971. British SAS personnel are known to have been
operating in Thailand at this time as trainers for the Thai Special Forces but it has been
suggested that from there they were also able to support covert attacks onto the Ho Chi Minh trail.
One of the men who was responsible in such an operation was Sergeant Dick Meadows
of 22 SAS seen here in June 1969's edition of the SAS 'Mars and Minerva' journal in a US
Army uniform receiving the Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. Interestingly within
'Mars and Minerva' the caption reads as him belonging to USSF/22 SAS. There are also six
SBS [Special Boat Service] personnel located in Thailand at the same time. The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were
also based in the area at the time. HMS Chichester was based out of Hong Kong and provided
support for the rescue of British personnel. British nationals were allowed into and out of
South Vietnam during the conflict. This painting is an interesting one from the
collection of the National Army Museum. It is one of a Malay kelong, a traditional floating
fishing platform. This was painted by a local Malay artist and came to us through the Women’s
Royal Army Corps (WRAC) from a member who had been serving at RAF Butterworth. I found
an interesting account of the use of these kelongs by Australian SAS personnel to launch
raids into Vietnam. This is just some of the images of RAF and
RAAF aircraft operating out of Butterworth, Malaysia. At the same time as the RAAF were flying
combat sorties into Vietnam, the RAF were also flying aircraft into and out of the airbase
at the same time. Most of the British service personnel in Vietnam,
though, weren’t serving directly in British units. According to personal recollections
there is a strong suggestion that British men had been sent to Fort Dix for Nato
[North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] training exercises. When they arrived there they symbolically
resigned from the British Army and re-enlisted in the US Army. After completing tours of
duty in Vietnam the veteran GIs reversed this process receiving discharges from the US Army
and re-enlisting into the British Army. A very interesting extract from the book
'Soldier V SAS: Into Vietnam' by Shaun Clark states, ‘In June 1966, after completing final training
for Vietnam in the jungles and swamps of New Guinea, 3 Squadron, Australian Special Air
Service embarked by boat and plane from Australia to set up a forward operating base in Phuoc
Tuy Province, a swampy hell of a jungle and paddy fields 45 miles east of Saigon.
The VC main forces units had a series of bases in the jungle and the political cardres controlled
most of the villages. The Aussies were still working there under these appalling conditions
when three members of the legendary SAS arrived secretly from Bradbury Lines, Hereford to
give assistance in a major assault against the VC.’ Another telling personal account given by
a former British intelligence officer stated how he recalled trying to keep tabs on the
large number of British passport holders in South Vietnam and that to his surprise they
were often attached to US, Australian or New Zealand military units. Under the terms of the
ANZUS treaty and the 1971 Five Powers Defence Arrangements, the exchange of personnel
between allied forces became much more fluid and allowed for the overlapping of operations
and training exercises. One such training exercise that dates from this time is called
Long Look and still continues today as a tri-nation defence training co-operation between Australia,
New Zealand and the United Kingdom. A small unattached party of British Special
Forces operators were allegedly serving with the joint Australian/American Mekong Delta
river reinforce as well. SAS personnel were supposedly dispatched to serve alongside 82nd
and 101st Airborne and the Australian and New Zealand SASs, and Royal Marine Commandos and
SBS boatmen were serving with the US Navy Marines. There was nothing wrong with the
quality of Australia’s fighting men, indeed the Americans were often praiseworthy of their
jungle fighting skills and their kill ratio of nearly 500:1 was one of the highest of
any conflict. Nor was there any particular need for British fighting men to support them
or improve them somehow. There was no reason for British combat troops to necessarily join
Australian units. But Australia’s commitment was much greater than their ability to expand
their forces to meet it. They had to introduce conscription, but it was more the technical
soldiers they were mainly in need of - armour, military police, catering, ordnance and disposal.
Therefore, they turned to Britain to assist in these areas. The large number of conscript soldiers filling
out the ranks of the regular battalions also meant that they sought skilled NCOs [non-commissioned
officers] from British battalions to bring these men up to scratch and allow Australia’s
existing professional soldiers to concentrate at the sharp edge. The highest percentage
of British-born Australian soldiers with previous experience were senior NCOs. Personnel from
both the SBS and troops of the Special Air Service were also placed in attachment to
the Australian SAS and Mew Zealand SAS regiment in Vietnam. In his book 'SBS: The Inside Story
of the Special Boat Service', John Parker mentions that SBS personnel were training
Vietnamese Navy Seals alongside US Navy Seals. One of the interesting anomalies of sovereign
forces to arrive out of the SEATO treaty at this time was the raising of 28 ANZUK Brigade
in November 1971. Based out of Singapore it was an air portable immediate reaction force
and although technically a brigade of the British Army it had a large portion of personnel
from both Australia and New Zealand and served in Malaya and Vietnam at this time. Although exchanges and training opportunities
were the main method used, the most common story of British-born soldiers in the Vietnam
War were those who had actually resigned from the British Army and then directly joined
US, Australian or New Zealand forces. One such account is that of Private Jim Riddell,
a Royal Marine from 1958 to 1968. He left the Marines and signed on with the Royal Australian
Corps of Infantry at Australia House on The Strand here in London, one of 382 so-called
'Australia House Men'. After induction at the infantry school in
Ingleburn, he was assigned to 4RAR and served in Vietnam from December 1968. One of the
downsides of his experience was that having taken to living in his new country he returned
here to London to visit his sick father and was refused permission to return to Australia,
only finally making it back 32 years later. There’s some statistics there I’ve just
put up. If anyone wants some more information I can gladly provide it, but essentially it
turns out that somewhere in the order of about 4,000 British-born soldiers served with Australian
forces alone. It was much harder to try and track down statistics relating to the US forces,
but we know that at least 4,000 were probably in Australian service. According to the Australian
Department of Veterans Affairs, it is officially believed that six soldiers or so joined the
SAS, although 88 British-born men may have done so. And there are some more Australia House Men.
There’s a couple of very interesting stories including Robin Rencher who fought with 6RAR
at the Battle of Long Tan. He later went back to the British Army and served in Northern
Ireland, West Germany and the Falklands. Another was Guy Bransby who joined the British
Army as an artillery officer in the '60s serving in Vietnam, Cambodia, Kashmir, Northern Ireland
and then the Falklands. His Vietnam service was as attached to both New Zealand and then
Australian Special Forces. Another fascinating character is the one in
the bottom right, Alan ‘Taffy’ Brice, who was a member of 22 SAS and it was alleged
he was one of the SAS men to operate in Vietnam. He then went on to serve in Cambodia, Kenya
and Europe, but most interestingly he spent time in Rhodesia with the Central Intelligence
Organisation where he was ordered to engineer conflict between Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU and
ZIPRA and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU and ZANLA alliances. Ironically, the most decorated US solider
in Vietnam was definitely British. Rick Rescorla was born in Hayle in Cornwall in 1939.
During World War Two his home town had been home to the 175th Infantry Regiment of the US 29th
Infantry Division. The impact of American soldiers in his town had made a big impact
on him. He joined the Parachute Regiment and served
in Cyprus and then the Northern Rhodesia Police Force. He later met an American who convinced him to try
and join the US Army and he later did so. He enlisted in 1963 and after going
through basic training was despatched to Vietnam with the 7th Cavalry Regiment. He fought at
the Battle of Ia Drang earning the nickname ‘Hardcore’. Lieutenant General Moore described
him as 'the best platoon leader I ever saw'. An interesting end to the story is that after
the Vietnam War he retired to the United States where he became a security adviser for Morgan
Stanley. In 1990 he submitted a report on the unsafe evacuation procedures in the Twin
Towers. And when the Twin Towers were bombed in 1993 he recommended Morgan Stanley vacate
the building, although they refused to do so because they thought it was a prestigious
location. So instead he made them revise their emergency evacuation drills and carry out
regular practice runs. When the towers were again attacked in 2001
he was still working for Morgan Stanley. Despite port authority warnings for the employees
to stay at their desks, Rescorla took action into his own hands and began personally evacuating
Morgan Stanley. Remembering how he had successfully calmed the nerves of young American soldiers
in Vietnam by singing traditional Cornish folk songs, he did so again with the Morgan
Stanley staff: 'Men of Cornwall stand ye steady; It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were
not ready; Stand and never yield!' After successfully evacuating 2,687 employees he went back in
to look for stragglers and the towers came down on him and his remains were never found. Foreign Office papers have also been declassified
in 2008 which revealed the extent of British involvement in Indochina. One of the really
interesting things has been the issuing of GSMs [General Service Medals] and the Vietnam
Medal and Australian issue. The official numbers show that very few recipients received the
GSM South Vietnam clasp, but it has also been suggested that there were several unofficial
issues to British personnel. Finally realising that by the mid '70s a military
victory had become impossible, the US began the messy process of extraction with the main
task of saving face. In what was uncannily similar to the current strategy for withdrawal
in Afghanistan, the US began a process they referred to as the Vietnamisation of the war.
The Americans increasingly placed emphasis on South Vietnam’s government to take responsibility
for their own self defence and reverted to training ARV enforcers and conducted a full
drawdown of US operations in anticipation of withdrawal. Wilson’s government had been right to avoid
direct insertion of British combat troops into what was probably an unwinnable war from
the beginning. Although the motivation had probably been more to do with existing over-commitments
and economic challenges, the British government did everything they could to support
Britain’s allies both in theatre and extracting themselves from Vietnam. And although
the British government never directly committed any combat battalions, many hundreds and possibly
thousands of British-born men served in allied armies in the Vietnam War either out of a
sense of adventure or duty to their close allies. Thank you very much.
