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 CHAPTER IV

Australia and New Zealand

Long before President Johnson's "more flags" appeal, Australia had been providing assistance to South Vietnam. In 1962 Australia had sent a thirty-man group of jungle warfare specialists as training advisers to the beleaguered nation. Located primarily in the northern provinces, they augmented U.S. advisory teams engaged in a similar mission. Two years later this first group was followed by an aviation detachment consisting of six Caribou aircraft with seventy-four men for maintenance and operations. Integrated into the Southeast Asia airlift, they provided valuable logistic support to dispersed Vietnamese military units. Over the years the Australian cargo aircraft unit was to maintain consistently higher averages in operational readiness and tons per sortie than did equivalent U.S. units.

Australia's support was not confined solely to military assistance. Beginning in July of 1964, a twelve-man engineer civic action team arrived to assist in rural development projects. Late in the same year Australia dispatched the first of several surgical teams, which was stationed in Long Xuyen Province. The second team arrived in January 1965 and was assigned to Bien Hoa.

From this rather modest beginning, Australia went on to provide an increasingly wide range of aid to South Vietnam under the Colombo Plan and by bilateral negotiations. Unfortunately, not all of South Vietnam's ills could be cured by civic action, and as the situation became more desperate the Australian government planned to increase the size of its military contingent.

In 1965 the Australian Minister stated, in response to American overtures, that if the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments would request it, the Australian government would commit an infantry battalion to South Vietnam. Washington suggest[ed]