Two Truths and a Lie: Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
- EA Baker
- Mar 20, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
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With the birth of my daughter, I had an uptick in my movie, documentary, and TV show watching since there’s not much else to do when they are little, and you’re holding them. So, on these graveyard shifts, I watched a movie that had been out for a while. It’s called Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan, which is the most well-known battle the Australian armed forces fought during the Vietnam War. So much so, the day of the battle, August 18, became Australia’s day of remembrance for the war.
Now, the Vietnam War has always been an enigma to me. Half of what you learn is anti-war propaganda, and the other half is skewed the other way or just outright Hollywood fiction. The truth is often in the middle between the extremes. The best books I have read on the war include Colonel Hackworth’s About Face: An Odyssey of an American Warrior, which provides Hackworth’s perspective of what went wrong on the ground. In addition, Brian VanDeMark’s Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam looks at the White House during Johnson’s tenure. But that’s just from the US perspective.
In truth, I have not read much about Australia’s involvement in the war. What I did read was that they were some of the best jungle fighters during the war. They understood the kind of war that was being fought in Vietnam, unlike many of their American counterparts, who wanted to fight it like World War II. So I was interested to see how Hollywood would portray this battle, and to no surprise, it was a mixed bag.
Truth 1: Travis Fimmel is an Australian Playing an Australian
I will give the casting crew credit for getting Australians to play an Australian. Travis Fimmel (known for playing Ragnar Lothbrok on History Channel’s Vikings) is Australian, as is the rest of the cast (to my knowledge). Why does this matter? The battle is wholly an Australian battle and should thus be honored by casting Australians in the various roles.
I know how it is to watch a movie with a character of a particular nationality played by an actor of a different nationality. For instance, my wife’s family is Scottish, so I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen Scottish characters in films played by non-Scots. For most audiences, they don’t care. But for us, hearing terrible Scottish accents for a Scottish character is a bummer and takes us out of the film. And ironically, it seems Scottish actors are always cast in roles other than Scottish ones (like a Russian during the Cold War or a Barbarian leader during the time of Rome). But I digress. Kudos to the casting crew on this aspect of the film.
Truth 2: Much of the Facts of the Battle were Glossed Over
Many of the veterans from the battle took issue with the glossing over of the facts. Most of the time, Hollywood can’t help itself when an archetypal story stares it in the face. The battle of Long Tan is one of the smaller battles in which the Australian forces fought off a superior enemy, in this case, the Viet Cong. The battle fits into that story mold we’ve seen time and time again (300, Battle of the Bulge, The Siege of Jadotville, Zulu Dawn, We Were Soldiers). As such, the story created tension where there wasn’t, used improper weapons (Fimmel’s character using a handgun instead of a rifle in certain scenes), and didn't adhere to standard operational procedures (everyone always wore their boonie hats), taking the story outside the guardrails of what actually happened.
The Lie: The Armored Personnel Carriers Did Not Come to Rescue
For instance, one of the things they changed about the story was the nature of the APC unit dispatched to support the Australian infantry under attack. In the movie, it was portrayed as a rescue mission. Much like Patton's "coming to the rescue" of the surrounded 101st Airborne, this was fiction. In real life, the APC unit was part of a force to reinforce the infantry, not necessarily to “rescue” them, as the veterans disputed.
All in all, the film was what I expected it to be—a solid B war movie. If you’re like me and have exhausted all other options for decent and more accurate war movies (though most are never 100% accurate), this is not a bad choice. However, it will not provide an accurate account of the battle. As you should always do, you should turn to the veterans themselves to learn about past wars. For this battle, one book I am looking at to improve my knowledge is Harry Smith’s The Battle of Long Tan: The Company Commander’s Story.
Photo Credit: https://pin.it/1RpaW1W
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