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The Minefield: An Australian Tragedy in America's Vietnam War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Greg Lockhart
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Blinded by imperial hubris, the author vividly shows how Australian and American forces received a bitter lesson in guerrilla warfare and the uses of technology from the NLF.

In 1967 the commander of First Australian Task Force (1ATF), Brigadier Stuart Graham ordered the construction of an 11 kilometre ‘barrier fence and minefield’ in Phuoc Tuy Province, southern Vietnam. This ‘barrier’, which ran for some 11 kilometres through the southern Phuoc Tuy, would constitute the biggest blunder in Australian military history since the Second World War. It would also constitute a story of strategic self-destruction that epitomised both Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and the wider Australian imperial tradition of sending expeditions to farflung wars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 6 , June 2007 , e9
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007