Return to Long Tan DPR/TV/620

Troops of Charlie Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment completed this week what will probably be their last operation in Vietnam before returning home to Australia. The 6th Battalion hands over to the 2nd Battalion, from Enoggera, Queensland, early in June marking the end of a tough year of duty in Vietnam with the Australian Task Force. For the troops of Charlie Company, 6 RAR Operation Bowen - named after the Queensland town - was a sentimental journey. It was a search and destroy mission that took them to the village of Long Tan. It was at Long Tan that troops of Delta Company, 6 RAR had one of the greatest operational successes against the Viet Cong. The 100-odd officers and men fought like tigers against overwhelming enemy odds and badly mauled the crack Viet Cong D445 Battalion. For what is probably their last Vietnam operation, Charlie Company troops moved out aboard armoured personnel carriers into the overgrown rubber plantation which was the site for the Battle of Long Tan fought in August last year. The 6 RAR soldiers moved carefully through barbed defences and in patrols to the ruined Long Tan village. Carefully they searched houses and looked for Viet Cong hides. Engineers attached to the Company located a Viet Cong tunnel complex which runs for hundreds of metres underground and featured anti-aircraft machine gun weapons pits. The tunnel complexes and enemy bunkers were demolished with TNT charges fixed by the sappers of the 1st Field Squadron, RAE, from Queensland. No contact was made with the Viet Cong during Operation Bowen and there were no Australian casulties. For the troops of Charlie Company, 6 RAR, with only a few weeks left to serve in Viet Nam it was no great loss.