By 1944, the 7th Division was largely focused on a future role in amphibious warfare. Each of its subordinate infantry brigades were directed to participate in training at the Amphibious Warfare Training Centre in preparation for future operations. Although the 7th Division’s amphibious exercises Octopus and Seagull would be scenarios of proposed Australian participation in the liberation of the Philippines, ultimately the division would conduct two amphibious landings in an effort to defeat Japanese forces in Borneo. Chapters 8 and 9 will examine the 18th Brigade’s transition to an amphibious assault brigade and the conduct of the amphibious assault at Balikpapan. In order to do so, chapter 8 will provide an analysis of the evolution of modern amphibious operation, which led to the Allied doctrine and exercise model that guided the amphibious operations in the SWPA.

At the end of 1939, the newly established 18th Infantry Brigade consisted of four battalions: 2/9 Battalion, 2/20 Battalion, 2/11 Battalion and 2/12 Battalion. As part of the 9th Infantry Division, the brigade was scheduled to depart Australia in May 1940 to join the British campaigns in the Middle East. In honour of this impending deployment, the 18th Brigade participated in a parade through the streets of Sydney, minus one battalion because the 2/11 Battalion had been detached to leave early for action in the Middle East.1 With the impending reorganisation of Australian brigades from four to three battalions, the 2/11 Battalion would not return to the 18th Brigade for the duration of the war. The 2/11 Battalion would, however, join the 19th Brigade in North Africa to participate in more than a dozen battles and campaigns across North Africa, the Middle East and the SWPA.

The Australian Army served in numerous theatres and campaigns throughout World War II, earning distinction and at times facing significant challenges. After Australia declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Australians deployed and served in combined Allied armies in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.1 Conversely, the Australian Army made up the bulk of Allied ground forces in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) during the Japanese push south in the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the consolidation of their initial advances, the Japanese extended their area of control and established a perimeter line of defence from the Aleutians in the north to the Gilbert and Marshalls in the south. In 1942–43, Australian troops carried the bulk of responsibility in the fight against the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy in a gruelling battle for the island of New Guinea. Thus, by 1943, the Australian Army was the most experienced Allied force in the Pacific.

The newly reorganised 18th Infantry Brigade Group (Jungle) would return to New Guinea with the 7th Infantry Division as the division’s reserve force. From the reserve force to the spearhead of the Allied campaign in the Finisterre Range, the brigade would achieve a striking victory against the Japanese 78th Infantry Regiment. This was a battle that required a commander and brigade staff to manage numerous attached units, supporting arms and its own infantry formations – all while assaulting up mountainous ridgelines to fortified Japanese positions. The Finisterre campaign, specifically Operation Cutthroat, demonstrated an excellent example of an Australian infantry brigade group (jungle) in action.

Hanoi entered into negotiations with Washington and Saigon in 1968–9, Chapter 4 explains, but merely to probe and sow division among its enemies. But then unsettling circumstances intervened, including the Sino-Soviet Border War of early 1969; the death a few months later of Ho Chi Minh, who, despite his lack of influence over communist decision-making, remained the venerable face of the Vietnamese struggle for reunification and independence and thus an important public relations tool; and, finally, Nixon’s decisions to “Vietnamize” the anticommunist war effort in the South and then to authorize incursions into Cambodia and Laos. The period 1969–71 was marked by uncertainty and indecisiveness as communist decision-makers reassessed their strategic priorities and placed greater emphasis on alternative modes of struggle. Concerned about potential diplomatic isolation and the loss of Soviet and Chinese support, Le Duan decided to go-for-broke once more. The 1972 Easter Offensive was an abject disaster. Hanoi then tried its luck at the bargaining table, resulting in the Paris peace agreement of 1973 and the suspension of the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam.

Chapter 4 relates the impact of the Americanization of the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam. Despite public claims to the contrary, Hanoi at that time had no desire to negotiate an end to the conflict; it was committed to “complete victory.” Nothing short of the surrender of its enemies was going to satisfy it. To meet that end, Le Duan’s regime relied heavily on political and material support from the Soviet Union and China, which was not always easy to obtain in light of the growing ideological dispute between the two. Mounting frustration with the course of the war eventually prompted Le Duan to order a major, months-long military campaign to break the stalemate and expedite victory: the Tet Offensive of 1968. Although it dealt the United States a major psychological blow, the three-staged offensive fell far short of meeting Le Duan’s own expectations. In fact, it energized the regime in Saigon and rallied the Southern population behind it to an unprecedented degree.

The “two-camp theory” prompted Vietnamese communists to instigate a civil war – the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam – to neutralize domestic rivals immediately after World War II ended. When France initiated its recolonization of Vietnam and the rest of Indochina in fall 1945, Chapter 2 relates, many Vietnamese noncommunist nationalists and other victims of communist attacks and repression opted to collaborate with its armies, for the time being. Thus, the French war in Vietnam became entwined with the Vietnamese Civil War; it also significantly augmented national fracturing and fratricidal violence. French manipulation, a misreading of Vietnamese political realities, and the intensifying state of the Cold War prompted the United States to intrude. By the time of the climactic Battle of Dien Bien Phu, in spring 1954, the United States was footing nearly 80 percent of the French war bill, and Washington policymakers had become obsessed with the evolving situation across the Indochinese Peninsula. The Geneva accords of July 1954 concluded the French War and paused the Vietnamese Civil War by creating two Vietnams separated at the Seventeenth Parallel.

The United States pulled out the last of its combat troops from South Vietnam in March 1973. That ended the American War and completed the de-Americanization of the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam. Shortly after the signing of the Paris agreement, Hanoi resumed combat operations. The regime in Saigon, communist decision-makers publicly claimed, had failed to honor its side of the bargain, leaving them no choice. In 1974–5, Le Duan’s regime mounted yet another major campaign to bring about the collapse of its counterpart in the South. This time it calculated correctly, and its armies triumphed. Chapter 6 relates the rationale for Hanoi’s decision to proceed with the campaign, despite the possible resumption of US attacks against the North, and the reasons for its ultimate – and final – triumph on 30 April 1975.

Chapter 3 explains that Ho Chi Minh insisted on respecting the basic terms of the Geneva accords even as it became obvious that the rival regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon had no intention of doing the same. Ho’s passivity in the face of Diem’s actions shocked and dismayed some of his own followers, especially in the South. In 1959, Hanoi finally sanctioned insurgent activity below the Seventeenth Parallel, but under restricting guidelines because Ho feared provoking US intervention. His tentativeness alienated growing segments of partisans, including Le Duan, a rising star in the communist ranks. By 1963, the tension between Ho and other “doves,” on the one hand, and Le Duan and other “hawks,” who favored all-out war to “liberate” the South, on the other, had split the Vietnamese communist movement into two competing, rival wings. Following Diem’s overthrow in a coup abetted by the United States in early November 1963, Le Duan and his chief lieutenants staged a coup of their own in Hanoi. The new regime at once escalated hostilities in the South, resuming the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam and setting Hanoi on an irreversible collision course with the United States.

The epilogue explains that the resilience and stubbornness of Le Duan and other communist leaders hindered the country’s reconstruction and development after the Vietnamese Civil War finally ended. In the decade of life and leadership left for Le Duan, few positive changes took place in Vietnam. The 1978–9 incursion into Cambodia eliminated the Khmer Rouge threat, but the decade-long occupation of that country by Vietnamese forces that followed brought worldwide condemnation. Vietnam contained the Chinese incursion into its own territory in 1979, but anti-Chinese campaigns domestically prompted an exodus of tens of thousands of productive members of society. Through all this, Le Duan’s unwavering adherence to Stalinist principles of economic transformation hampered economic growth. His death in 1986 paved the way for Đổi mới, the “renovation” policy that introduced market reforms. It also set the stage for the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States – and of life itself for average Vietnamese. Although Vietnam’s American War and Fourth Civil War have been over for nearly fifty years, the struggle for their memory continues.