Sixty years after the Battle of Long Tan, a simple Canberra commemoration offered a more thoughtful kind of remembrance – one that honours the dead on all sides and questions the mythology of victory.

It could have been a commemoration in any town in the country.

There were maybe a few hundred people gathered and the nearby main road hadn’t been closed, making for a fair bit of noise for the speakers to be heard over.

But the locals still held a moving service on 18 August, Vietnam Veterans Day, the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.

A few things, however, soon made you realise that this was the national capital: a RAAF flyover, the presence of the governor-general and the minister for defence personnel and veterans affairs, and the magnificence of the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial on Anzac Parade (designed by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects and sculptor Ted Unsworth AM, and dedicated in 1992).

But it was the simplicity of this service that was its strength.

The Call to Remembrance was given by Wing Commander Ian Thompson, OAM, who praised the “courage, mateship and selfless sacrifice” of those caught in the Viet Cong ambush that was Long Tan.

And that might have been where it ended, as many such speeches before have ended. But the wing commander continued:

“As we remember Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, we should also remember its enormous human cost.

“The Vietnamese people endured immense........

© Pearls and Irritations