Vietnam bans Australians from battle site on 50th anniversary of costly fight

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia was making top-level appeals to Vietnam on Wednesday to lift a sudden ban on veterans commemorating the 50th anniversary of Australia’s most costly battle of the Vietnam War.

More than 1,000 Australian veterans and their families traveled to Vietnam to observe the anniversary today of the Battle of Long Tan at a cross marking the site where 18 Australian soldiers and hundreds of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops died on a rubber plantation on Aug. 18, 1966.

But after 18 months of negotiations between Vietnamese and Australian officials over the commemoration, which has drawn some Australian veterans back to the communist country for the first time since the war, Vietnam told Australia late Tuesday that the event was canceled, Veterans’ Affairs Minister Dan Tehan said Wednesday.

Tehan said Australian and Vietnamese foreign ministers would discuss the decision and Australia’s prime minister had requested a telephone conversation with his Vietnamese counterpart to ask that the ceremony be allowed.

The Long Tan anniversary is Australia’s official Vietnam Veterans Day and has been commemorated by Australians at the battle scene since 1989.

In the fighting, a company of 105 Australian soldiers plus three New Zealanders supported by artillery survived a rain-drenched, three-hour battle by driving off wave after wave of attacks by more than 2,000 enemy troops.