This week ten veterans from the battle of Long Tan finally received official recognition for their gallantry, 50 years after the events of 18 August, 1966.


For half a century, many of the soldiers of Delta Company 6 RAR who were in the thick of the Long Tan action received little or no official recognition, despite a tireless campaign from their commander, retired Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith.


In 2015, former army chief David Morrison declined to recommend gallantry awards for 13 of the soldiers who had fought at Long Tan, which prompted Mr Smith to make an appeal to the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal.

This week that appeal bore fruit with Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan confirming on Wednesday that he would be writing to the Governor-General to ask him to endorse the ­tribunal’s recommendations.

Mr Smith recommended 13 of his men to receive military honours or have existing honours upgraded in his submission. A recommendation for one soldier – Company Sergeant Major, Warrant Officer Jack Kirby, was that he should receive a Victoria Cross, but the tribunal did not uphold that recommendation.

As commanding officer of 6 RAR’s D Company, Smith witnessed Kirby run under fire around the battlefield restocking his fellow diggers’ ammunition supplies. Mr Kirby died in February 1967 in Vietnam after being hit by misdirected shells from a New Zealand artillery unit.

Despite the VC recommendation being knocked back, 83-year-old Mr Smith told reporters he was pleased with the outcome. ‘I am very happy that I’ve been able to achieve justice for my soldiers,” he said.

Quota systems for gallantry awards in the Australian military in the 1960s, meant in any six-month period, only one medal for gallantry could be given for every 250 serving soldiers.

The army tried to expand the quota towards the end of the Vietnam War, in which only 298 army personnel ­received a medal for their service: 1.74 per cent of the total number of soldiers who served. 2.29 per cent of Australian soldiers who served in the Second World War received medals.

521 Australian troops were killed during the Vietnam War and over 3000 wounded.