Long Tan

Verity Laughton

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781760622800
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro

This is Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, August 1966. This is a rubber plantation called Long Tan.

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This is blood and mud and sweat-sodden heat. It's gunfire, mortars and pounding rain. It's 108 Australians and New Zealanders and 2, 500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers locked in a ferocious battle. For the young men fighting through the raging monsoon, it's something like the end of the world.

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After the battle, 17 Australians (plus another lost later from wounds) and more than 245 Vietnamese would lie dead. Many more would carry enduring physical and emotional scars of their experiences that day.

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Verity Laughton's intense and moving semi-verbatim play is composed from interviews with the surviving Australian soldiers, Vietnamese contributors, and the family and friends of those who died. More than a recounting of one battle, it is an exploration of the trauma of war, the fractures in collective memory, and the need to forgive.

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And tonight I will have another sleepless night. We always do. The worst time in our lives is August. We don't sleep in August.

SCENE ONE: DELTA COMPANY

A young soldier, PRIVATE DOUGLAS SALVERON, is discovered putting on his boots.

CSM JACK KIRBY enters. He is a very tall, heavily built man of about 33. He is impressive for his size and physicality, if not a striking example of physical fitness.

JACK KIRBY: Consider the humble boot. Not your high fashion boot. This sort of boot. [Flourishing a boot] Phew! This is a bloke’s boot. A working boot. This boot has been subject to considerable strain and stress. This boot is Army Issue circa 1966.

Now. Consider the youthful male. They vary. We know.

More SOLDIERS are discovered. This is Delta Company 6RAR, early 1966.

But, by and large—in a simpler time. What do—did—most—boys want? Most boys want to be men. Most boys I knew wanted to be Hercules, to be flung up in the stars, to be immortalised for their strength and courage, for their young, male glory. Me, too. When I was still ‘Johnnie’. Before I was ‘Jack’!

Careful what you wish for, eh?

Enoggera, Queensland, 1966. Delta Company 6RAR.

MAJOR HARRY SMITH, OC Delta Company, enters.

Hup!

The SOLDIERS stand to attention.

H. SMITH: Before we go to Vietnam the CO calls me in and—

TOWNSEND: Ah. Major Smith.

H. SMITH: Colonel Townsend.

TOWNSEND waits.

Sir.

TOWNSEND: There’s a problem, Major Smith.

H. SMITH: Sir?

TOWNSEND: Loyalty.

H. SMITH: Loyalty?

TOWNSEND: Yes. The problem is—I think you’re being disloyal to the battalion, Major Smith.

H. SMITH: Uh. How, sir?

TOWNSEND: To be specific. You do things your own way, Smith.

H. SMITH: To be—?

TOWNSEND: Specific. Yes. Running your company five extra kilometres every morning? In boots. With packs on. Your own camouflaged jungle hats? It uh—upsets—the rest of the battalion, Major Smith.

H. SMITH: Well, how I run my company is not their problem. Is it?

TOWNSEND: Isn’t it?

H. SMITH: Vietnam. Won’t be a battalion war. Sir. It’ll be a company war. And I am the Commander of Delta Company 6RAR, and I have the right, surely, to train my people the way I want to.

Beat.

Sir.

TOWNSEND turns away as in: ‘Dismissed’. H. SMITH salutes.

KIRBY: Major Smith’s known, though not to his face, as ‘Harry the Rat-Catcher’. Goes back to a dark night in Malaya when he surprised a group of reprobate soldiers he’d had his eye on with the words, ‘Got you, you rats!’

A bit of business between KIRBY and H. SMITH. H. SMITH turns back towards his company. They stand at ready.

There’s this exercise towards the end of the training period in Australia. Called Foxhole.

SOLDIER G: Delta Company’s been set a thirty-five-kilometre trek to be done in two days.

SOLDIER A: Major Smith initiates a little subterfuge to reduce the length of the march, though Delta still cover more ground than the rest of the battalion. ‘Using his ingenuity’, Major Smith calls it.

KIRBY: And that’s when we pick up … this little ditty.

They all sing the first verse and chorus of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’, the Delta Company trademark.

SHARP: In the next part of the exercise, when it looks like Delta Company is going to romp it in, the Battalion Commander /

Colonel Townsend—

KIRBY: / Colonel Townsend.

SHARP: —changes the orders to augment the degree of difficulty. By the CO’s calculations, Delta won’t make it. By Major Smith’s calculations it’s a stretch, but Delta Company is by now—almost—as fit as their Company Commander, and he thinks we bloody well can. / And we do!

SABBEN, KIRBY and SOLDIERS: [together] / And we do!

They all loudly sing a chorus of ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’.

KIRBY: You could say … company morale … is good?

SOLDIER I: I am eighteen, and the Vietnam War is about to start. And I think, uh well, just for excitement. I just want to do something that’s different. And I’ll just—go to Vietnam—that sounds like a plan. I know about Indo-China. I think that’s a very exotic name. I know they have changed it to ‘Vietnam’. So I know where it is, I know th...