[Targan]

As part of Commonwealth joint operations Australian and New Zealand forces had been involved (with considerable success) in the Malayan Emergency and the Borneo Confrontation in the years before the height of the Vietnam War. As you know, there were very real concerns in the US that a "domino effect" could occur all the way over on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Well here in Australia we held the same fears, but we were a great deal closer and many Australians at the time honestly thought that the communist hordes could be on our doorstep before we knew it.

Commonwealth forces did very well in the counterinsurgency jungle warfare that characterised the Malayan Emergency and the Borneo Confrontation. We won those fights and we thought we could do the same in Vietnam if allowed to fight our way. And in fact we pretty much did, in Phuoc Tuy Province. The US agreed to hand responsibility for Phuoc Tuy Province to ANZAC forces and we kept things pretty much under control there until the war became untenable as a whole for the US and its allies. Even when the North Vietnamese had their chance to inflict major damage on ANZAC forces at the Battle of Long Tan, they learned the hard way that 106 Aussies and 2 Kiwis are well capable of killing or wounding nearly 1000 of the enemy for the loss of 18 killed and 24 wounded. There wasn't much trouble in Phuoc Tuy Province after that.