Secret return from Vietnam for Long Tan cross

The Long Tan memorial cross has been secretly brought to Australia to its new home at the Australian War Memorial.

Long Tan veteran Peter Dinham with the cross at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra last night. Picture: Kym Smith

Two weeks before Malcolm Turnbull was due to fly to last month’s APEC meeting in ­Da Nang, the Australian embassy in Hanoi received an unexpected approach from a Vietnamese ­official.

Ambassador Craig Chittick was told Hanoi wanted to hand over a monument from the Vietnam War — one of only two ­memorials to foreign forces that have been officially allowed in Vietnam. The government official wanted to know if Mr Chittick would accept it. If so, it would have to be done quickly. Such were sensitivities around the item they also wanted it done quietly.

And so began an operation to repatriate the Long Tan Cross, a shrine first hammered into the red dirt of a rubber plantation in South Vietnam almost 50 years ago to honour the 18 Australian soldiers of Delta company 6RAR killed during the now infamous and bloody battle.

For the past month, the 120kg cross that surviving members of 6RAR carved from concrete, has been secretly kept in a warehouse in Canberra after being couriered from Saigon with a military ­escort. It will be unveiled today at the Australian War Memorial.

For Long Tan veteran Peter Dinham, it will bring closure to a 20-year personal campaign to ­obtain a memorial he said had ­become a beacon for all retired Vietnam veterans.

The Prime Minister revealed to The Australian yesterday he had thanked his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, in a private meeting on the sidelines of APEC three weeks ago.

A condition of the goodwill gesture, secured by Veterans’ ­Affairs Minister Dan Tehan following months of quiet negotiations, was that there not be any publicity around the handover due to long-held sensitivities in Vietnam over the annual commemoration of the 1966 battle.

Members of 6RAR at a ceremony to install the cross in 1969.

Both leaders agreed that they did not want the cross to become a focus of the strategic partnership that was being negotiated.

“When I was at APEC last month, it was great to thank him for the cross,” Mr Turnbull said.

“I think it is a fantastic thing to bring back here, a really wonderful thing. It has come to symbolise the sacrifice, the suffering in the eyes of many, the suffering on both sides. It became imbued with symbolism that went well beyond that one engagement.”

Mr Tehan said discussions about bringing the cross to Australia permanently began after last year’s controversial decision by the Vietnamese government to ban access to the site for Australians wanting to visit the site for the annual commemoration.

The Vietnamese take issue with a ceremony that suggests a military victory for foreign forces on their soil. “Fifty years later and the wounds for veterans of Vietnam are still there … this will have a great healing effect,” Mr Tehan said. “It is important for the nation considering what occurred when our veterans returned.”

Mr Dinham recalls that the cross was first mounted on a small rise in a rubber plantation in the shadows of a hill known as Nui Dat. The elevation in the landscape had offered a shield to the line of fire for the 108 soldiers of D company who had managed to defeat a flanking force of about 2000 communist forces. It is recognised as a rare battle to have been won against such odds.

The cross wasn’t erected until three years later when members of 6RAR returned to the battlefield and secured the site. An RAAF helicopter delivered the cross and a ceremony with 10 members of the D company platoon was held.

With the fall of Saigon, the cross was removed and used for a memorial marker for a Catholic priest until the mid-1980s when it was recovered by a Vietnamese museum. A replica has been on the site ever since.

Mr Dinham, a lieutenant with A company 6RAR, had been part of a re-enforcement group sent in to support D company. Yesterday he looked on as the cross was being put in place at the war memorial. “You can tell it is the real one because of the mud stains from where it was put into the soil,” he said. “Many of us see the cross as being fairly sacred … today at the memorial they were touching the cross with rubber gloves.”

Mr Dinham began his campaign to try to convince the Vietnamese government to give the cross to Australia in the early 1990s, when he was still with the Australian Defence Force as a colonel and chief of personnel.

“We are very thankful to the Vietnamese authorities,” he said yesterday. “It must have been a traumatic thing for the Vietnamese … they didn’t want to do it … so good on them. For us it will form some sort of closure.”