Steve Kyritsis didn’t tell his mother he was off to war that December day in 1967 as he left the family home in north Carlton.
Every single soldier who fought in that battle deserves some sort of recognition for their gallantry, we’re talking about 108 men fighting perhaps an enemy force of more than 2500
“I told my father, ‘you tell her I’m over there’,” says Steve, no doubt as plain-spoken now as he was 50 years ago. Steve’s like that; up front. Most war veterans are. They’re not usually people prone to hyperbole or high-falutin’ expressions.
Steve was a fresh-faced 20-year-old when he arrived off the plane in Saigon – a ‘nasho’, as all the young diggers on national service were known. Sent as an infantryman with 3 RAR (3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment) deployed to bolster the Australian Task Force in Phuoc Tuy province based at Nui Dat, the young Kyritsis became aware of the battle of Long Tan just after arriving in Vietnam.
The story of that battle is now sewn into the national psyche: how during a monsoonal downpour late in the afternoon of 18 August 1966, 105 men of D company, 6 RAR, and three Kiwis from an artillery unit were engaged by a force of more than 2,000 Viet Cong in a rubber plantation near the abandoned village of Long Tan.
The Australians, more than half of them National Service conscripts, fired more than 10,000 rounds of small arms fire in the short, savage encounter, and thousands more artillery rounds finally routed the enemy.
At least 245 Viet Cong soldiers lost their lives but the numbers are contested, with some reports (including one published by the Australian War Memorial) putting the number of Viet Cong killed at as many as 800 and more than 1,000 wounded. It was the deadliest single engagement for the Australian military during the war, with 17 killed and 25 wounded during the fight, one of whom died ten days later.
Steve remembers how many patrols he was part of revisited the battle site months later.
“The battle had taken place over a year before I arrived,” he says, “but we went through there many times on searches. I remember we were all very scared after hearing what happened in that plantation, we felt that the enemy was still there.
“Long Tan was not far from the Australian Task Force base at Nui Dat. When Australian forces set up camp there they tried to resettle the villages nearby for security reasons.
“Many of the villages, some of which were feeding the enemy at night, were relocated further away, and the Viet Cong didn’t like that.”
Steve says gallantry awards to the soldiers who took part in the Long Tan engagement are long overdue.
“Every single soldier who fought in that battle deserves some sort of recognition for their gallantry, we’re talking about 108 men fighting perhaps an enemy force of more than 2,500. It was a very significant battle and a remarkable act of bravery and defiance.”
Steve (nicknamed Zorba by his platoon) first saw combat in early 1968 when the Tet Offensive started – the North Vietnamese audacious push to seize military and civilian commands and control centres in South Vietnam and to threaten Saigon.
By late January, 3 RAR were sent to defend the towns of Ba Ria and Long Dien, south east of Saigon. Unlike the typical accounts of the Vietnam War, Steve and his unit were involved in intense street and house-to-house fighting in an effort to prise out Viet Cong defenders armed with the latest Chinese and Russian heavy weapons.
In March, Steve’s battalion were deployed south to the Long Hai peninsula – a series of deep ravines and scarred hills overlooking the South China Sea. The hills, dotted with minefields, hid Viet Cong bases, and it was here on patrol – as part of Operation Pinnaroo – that a close mate of Steve’s was killed – John ‘Dusty’ Rapp, the platoon’s ever reliable scout.
“I was in the fifth or sixth line, about 20 feet behind him,” says Steve. “He was shot by a Viet Cong sentry. We got him afterwards.”
Following this devastating personal loss, Steve went on to take part in some of the largest engagements fought by the Australian Army in Vietnam, which took place between mid-May and early June 1968, around Australian defensive positions named Coral and Balmoral – ‘fire support bases’, under threat from thousands of NVA troops.
3 RAR was tasked with blocking enemy movements as NVA forces retreated and withstood two determined assaults. With the battles in this short period claiming 25 Australian lives, it was one of the most deadly periods of the war for Australian forces.
War is an experience that leaves an indelible mark. Reflecting on his military service 50 years ago, for Steve, it was a transformative experience.
“We were young diggers, conscripts, don’t forget that. We were thrown into the war, and when we came back we were different people,” says the man who has painstakingly researched, written and had published two books which chronicle the duty and sacrifice shown by Greek Australians over more than a century.
His next book, revealing the scores of Greek Australians who served in New Guinea and the Kokoda campaign, will be published next year.
Meanwhile, on 18 August – Vietnam Veterans’ Day – Steve and fellow veterans of 3 RAR will march proudly together once more.
“We’re a band of brothers, there’s no question about that,” he says. “On Anzac Day we march as a group, and on the 18th of August we’ll be marching together under our banner once more. As you can imagine, there’s a very strong bond between us and it’ll continue to the end.”
