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Long Tan cross

27 July 2012

Commemorative service held on the site of the battle of Long Tan, 1969, photographed by Christopher John Bellis

On 18 August 1969, soldiers of 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) erected a cross in the Long Tan rubber plantation in Phuoc Tuy province (now Ba Ria–Vung Tau province), South Vietnam. 

The cross marked the site where three years earlier, on 18 August 1966, 108 soldiers of D Company, 6RAR, had fought a fierce battle against Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces. 

Following the communist victory in 1975 and the reunification of Vietnam, the Dong Nai Museum in Bien Hoa City acquired the Long Tan cross. In 1989 the Long Dat District People’s Committee erected a replica cross on the original site. 

The original cross, on loan from the Dong Nai Museum and the Ministry of Culture, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, will be on display at the Australian War Memorial from 17 August 2012 until April 2013. 

The public is invited to come to the Memorial to be part of a special closing ceremony at 4.45pm on Friday 17 August to commemorate the men who fought in the battle of Long Tan and to remember those who died. 

All Australians who served during the Vietnam War will be recognised at a commemorative closing ceremony on Saturday 18 August.

Last updated: 30 March 2021

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