A Morale-Boosting Bulletin – – for the 33rd NVA Regiment personnel after the Battle of Bình Ba in early June 1969
Background: On 10 September 1969, the 199th US Light Infantry Brigade killed a number of VC in an engagement at YT 557333 in southern Long Khánh Province – including the 2nd-in-Command of the 1st Battalion/33rd NVA Regiment ie: Bùi Đức Nhật. They recovered a 33rd Regiment “News Bulletin” titled: “Information/Propaganda and Training – Đoàn 84C” (Đoàn 84C – as with “A57”, was a 33rd Regiment cover-name). Published quite soon after the Battle of Bình Ba in early June 1969, several articles referred to combat against Australian troops.
News Bulletin Cover – September 1969
Post-Bình Ba – A Bulletin to Boost 33rd NVA Regiment’s Morale
The 33rd NVA Regiment’s Museum at Bình Ba, its history monographs, and its formal history published in mid-2016 all acknowledge the Regiment’s defeat and heavy casualties at the Battle - ie “50 soldiers of our 7th Battalion were killed.” However, in the weeks after the Battle, the Regiment’s political cadre published a 14-page News Bulletin extolling their victories in 1969. Several articles referred to combat against Australian troops - eg claiming to have killed a total of 205 Australian troops to September 1969, and having wiped out two Australian infantry companies – including a mechanised infantry company at the Battle of Bình Ba. An account of the exploits of a 33rd Regiment “model rifleman” – Private Hoàn, specifically claimed that at the Battle of Bình Ba, the 33rd Regiment destroyed 22 armoured vehicles and killed 90 enemy. The News Bulletin also included a “soldier’s derisive poem” recounting the 33rd Regiment’s “victory” at the Battle of Bình Ba – see below. The poem was titled: “The rats’ tails of the fleeing Australians exposed!” (ie a Vietnamese expression also meaning something like – “Australian deficiencies and evilness revealed”).
The news has spread far and wide,
Some Australian soldiers have left their homes and come here,
Where there are rivers and streams, swamps and marshes,
High mountains, and low hills – all obstacles to them, They crept and groped everywhere seeking our sanctuaries,
Their soldiers painted their faces and ambushed our tracks.
In the fires, the people’s houses were set aflame,
The fleeing Australians showed their true rats’ tails,
and we laughed derisively,
Let’s tell the story from beginning to end,
In Long Đất District4 everyone knew,
It was just the Australians that had to take the bitter pill,
In this time of death they fled seeking rescue,
Thổ Giang ((poet’s name))
This time the Australians met with the “VC”,
They felt heavy as if their limbs weighed a thousand kilos,
The “Royal” troops even took off their trousers,
Threw down their guns, cast away their ammunition, and fled afar,
Their deafening screams gave us headaches,
We ask whether the Australians have any capability remaining,
Is it true that they’ve eaten too much candy,
The ghosts of the Australian soldiers fear the mountains and rivers of our land,
The 19th Company ((the 33’s Sapper Company)) fought very skillfully,
The 5th Company ((the 1st Company of VC D440)) also joined hands with us very well,
The people of Long Đất are very appreciative,
Blossoms flower on a happy summer afternoon.
Note: The Regiment’s soldiers would have been aware of their heavy losses – and such morale-boosting hyperbole as included in the Bulletin was routinely disseminated by their political officers. During the Vietnam War, over 3,000 of the 33rd Regiment’s soldiers were recorded by the Regiment as killed or missing – with the Regiment’s average strength being only about 1,300. Following the “fall of the South” in 1975, the Regiment also fought the Khmer Rouge in the “South-West Border War” and later within Cambodia from 1978. The Regiment was deployed back to “North Vietnam” in December 1979 – ie following the early 1979 Chinese “incursion” into Vietnam (however the Regiment was not involved in any combat operations against the Chinese forces).
Note : The red kangaroo symbol was painted on many Australian military vehicles in Vietnam – and also on road signs and unit signs. The red kangaroo – in the style as depicted on the Australian penny, had also appeared on RAAF aircraft roundels from 1956.