Predators in the Grass: The Forgotten Lesson of Vietnam

Part 1: Into the Jungle

August 12, 1966. Fuaktu Province, South Vietnam.
Staff Sergeant Mike Brennan crouched in the elephant grass, sweat stinging his eyes as he scanned the treeline 200 meters ahead. His platoon had been humping through this godforsaken province for six days, searching for a Viet Cong battalion that intelligence swore was operating in the area. They’d found nothing but empty villages and cold cooking fires. Brennan’s men were tired, hungry, and restless. The jungle pressed in from all sides—a living, breathing thing, indifferent to their mission.

“Movement, two o’clock,” whispered his point man.

Brennan raised his fist, halting the column. Forty men froze in place, M16s at the ready. This was it. The moment they’d been training for. Find the enemy. Fix them in place. Destroy them. That’s what “search and destroy” meant. That’s what General Westmoreland’s doctrine demanded.

But 300 meters to their east, hidden in a stand of bamboo, sat Captain Bob Milligan of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV). He watched through binoculars as the American platoon prepared to advance on what was obviously bait. The movement was a single VC scout, deliberately exposing himself. Beyond the treeline, Milligan knew at least two dozen guerrillas waited in prepared positions. He’d seen this dance a dozen times. The Americans would charge forward with overwhelming firepower. The VC would retreat after inflicting casualties. And tomorrow, the guerrillas would be back, stronger and wiser.

The Americans were hunting the way they’d been taught: moving toward the enemy, seeking contact, trusting in superior firepower to win the day. What Brennan didn’t know yet—what Milligan and his Australian SAS advisers were about to teach him—was that in the jungle, the hunter who moves forward is often the prey. The real predators moved backwards.

The Doctrine Divide

When Australian advisers first arrived in South Vietnam in 1962, they encountered an American military machine gearing up to fight the war the way it had always fought wars: with massive firepower, aggressive maneuvers, and the unshakable belief that American military doctrine, forged in the victories of World War II and tempered in Korea, would prevail. Major General William Westmoreland, Commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), articulated this confidence in a 1965 briefing to visiting Pentagon officials: “We are going to out-guerrilla the guerrilla and out-ambush the ambush because we’re better equipped, better trained, and better led.”

His search and destroy strategy relied on helicopter mobility, artillery support, and aggressive patrolling to find enemy forces and annihilate them through superior firepower. The math seemed simple: kill more of them than they can replace, and eventually they’ll quit.

American infantry doctrine emphasized movement to contact—aggressive patrolling designed to provoke enemy engagement, then using supporting arms to destroy the enemy force. Units moved in column formation through likely enemy areas with point elements designed to trigger ambushes so that the main body could maneuver and overwhelm the enemy position. It was a doctrine that had worked against the Wehrmacht in France and against Chinese forces in Korea.

Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Gunfighter” Emerson, commanding the Second Battalion, 500th Infantry, expressed the prevailing American attitude: “We’re going to go out there and find Charlie. And when we find him, we’re going to kill him. That’s what infantrymen do—close with and destroy the enemy.”

The problem—one that wouldn’t become fully apparent until much later—was that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army weren’t fighting to hold ground or win battles. They were fighting to survive long enough to make America quit. And they had spent years perfecting the art of survival against the French, who had employed similar tactics with similar confidence.

Patterns in the Jungle

Initial American patrols in 1965 to 1966 followed predictable patterns. Companies would helicopter into landing zones at dawn, sweep through grid squares on maps, then extract before nightfall.

“We’d land, walk around all day in the heat, find nothing, and fly back to base,” recalled Specialist James Walsh of the First Cavalry Division. “Then next week, we’d do the same thing in a different grid square. Meanwhile, Charlie was watching us the whole time.”

The statistics told one story. American units were racking up impressive body counts, with kill ratios sometimes reaching 10:1 or higher in favor of US forces. But the enemy kept coming. Villages that were pacified one week would be VC-controlled the next. Trails that were cleared would be booby-trapped again within days.

Something fundamental wasn’t working. But the Pentagon’s metrics-driven approach focused on the numbers that looked good, not the strategic reality those numbers concealed.

The Australian Way

The Australian approach to jungle warfare hadn’t been developed in PowerPoint presentations at the Pentagon. It had been forged through brutal experience in Malaya, Borneo, and the jungles of Southeast Asia, where Australian and British Commonwealth forces had spent the better part of two decades learning to fight communist insurgencies on their own terms.

The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) had been the crucible. British and Commonwealth forces, including Australian SAS and infantry, faced an enemy that operated from jungle bases, struck without warning, then disappeared into the population or the rainforest. Initial British tactics, which emphasized aggressive patrolling and large-scale sweeps, produced mediocre results and high casualties. But over twelve years, they developed something different—a patient, methodical approach that emphasized tracking, ambushing, and denying the enemy his sanctuaries through persistent small unit operations.

Captain Barry Peterson, an Australian army officer who had served in Malaya before deploying to Vietnam, explained the fundamental difference: “In conventional warfare, you advance toward the enemy. In jungle counterinsurgency, you get ahead of the enemy and wait. You don’t chase him, you predict where he’ll be, and you’re already there.”

When the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam arrived in 1962, it consisted of just thirty officers and warrant officers, the “Thirty Originals,” led by Colonel Francis “Ted” Serong. Unlike American advisers who focused on building up South Vietnamese conventional forces, the Australians were tasked with teaching unconventional warfare. Serong, who had extensive counterinsurgency experience, immediately recognized that American tactics were poorly suited to the enemy and environment.

The key innovation the Australians brought was something they called “counter-tracking”—the art of following enemy tracks not to catch up with them, but to understand their patterns, predict their destinations, and set ambushes ahead of them. This required a fundamentally different mindset than the American approach.

Warrant Officer Kevin “Dasher” Wheatley, one of the original Australian advisers, described training South Vietnamese Rangers in 1964: “We’d spend three days following a VC trail without making contact. The Americans thought we were crazy. Why not just call in air strikes? But we wanted to know where Charlie was going, what his routine was, when he’d come back. Once you knew that, you owned him.”

The technique required patience that American commanders—under pressure to produce body counts and show progress—often didn’t have. But it produced results. Australian-advised units in Fuaktu Province were achieving kill ratios of 20:1 or higher while taking minimal casualties themselves.

Part 2: The Jungle’s True Hunters

By 1966, when the First Australian Task Force (1 ATF) deployed to Phuoc Tuy Province with nearly 4,500 troops, they brought with them a fully developed tactical system. They established a base at Nui Dat and began operations that looked nothing like American search and destroy missions. Instead of large-scale sweeps, they sent out small teams—usually five to seven men—on patrols that lasted up to two weeks. These teams moved slowly, sometimes covering less than a kilometer per day, observing rather than seeking contact.

Major Harry Smith, who would later command D Company, Sixth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment at the Battle of Long Tan, described the philosophy: “The Americans wanted to find the enemy and destroy him immediately with maximum firepower. We wanted to find the enemy and watch him until we could destroy his entire unit at a time and place of our choosing. It’s the difference between shooting one rabbit and understanding where the whole warren is.”

The Australian SAS squadron, which deployed in early 1966, took this approach to its extreme. Five-man patrols would insert by helicopter, then spend up to fourteen days in enemy territory, moving silently, avoiding contact unless they had overwhelming advantage, gathering intelligence, and calling in strikes on confirmed enemy positions. Their casualty rates were remarkably low, but their intelligence value was extraordinary.

What made this system work wasn’t just tactical skill. It was a different strategic understanding. The Australians recognized that in a war without front lines, intelligence was more valuable than immediate body count. Knowing where the enemy was going was more important than knowing where he had been. And patience—the willingness to let small opportunities pass in order to create larger ones—was a combat multiplier that didn’t show up in Pentagon statistics.

The American Frustration

January 8, 1967, near Suoi Da Creek, Phuoc Tuy Province.
Captain Jim Hughes of Charlie Company, Fourth Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, had been in country for four months and he was frustrated. His company had run dozens of patrols, made sporadic contact, tallied a respectable body count, but the VC in his area of operations seemed to multiply like mosquitoes. Kill three, five more appeared. His platoon leaders were experienced. His men were well trained. But something wasn’t clicking.

That morning, Hughes sat in on a briefing given by Captain Bob Grandon of the Australian SAS. Grandon’s patrol had spent eleven days tracking a Viet Cong logistics unit through the same area where Charlie Company had been operating, often just hours or days behind the Americans.

“You’ve been walking right past them,” Grandon said, laying out photographs of tracks, disturbed vegetation, and subtle trail markers the VC used. “You’re moving too fast, making too much noise, and following predictable patterns. They hear you coming a kilometer away.”

Hughes bristled. His company used proper noise discipline, moved in staggered column, employed point security—all the standard infantry tactics. “We’re following doctrine,” he said.

“American doctrine works brilliantly in Europe,” Grandon replied. “But Charlie’s not playing that game. Let me show you something.”

The next day, Grandon took Hughes and two of his platoon leaders on patrol. For the first hour, they covered less than 300 meters. Every ten minutes, Grandon would stop the patrol entirely for five minutes of silent observation. He pointed out barely visible disturbances in the undergrowth—a snapped twig at ankle height, discolored mud on a leaf, a stone turned over with its wet side up.

“The VC patrol, eight to ten men, moved through here between 0300 and 0400 this morning,” Grandon whispered. “They’re moving northeast, probably toward a cache site near the creek.”

Hughes was skeptical. “How can you possibly know that?”

Grandon pointed to the tracks. “Look at the depth and spacing of the impressions. They’re carrying heavy loads, probably rice or ammunition. The gait is purposeful, not tactical. And see this?” He indicated where the trail forked. “They took the easier path. Men under tactical conditions take the harder path with better cover. Men on a logistics run take the faster route.”

Over the next three hours, Grandon tracked the VC patrol to within 500 meters of a concealed cache site. Instead of attacking, he called in the coordinates and withdrew. Two days later, an SAS team ambushed the cache site, killing six VC and capturing three tons of rice and weapons with zero friendly casualties.

Hughes was converted. “You weren’t hunting them,” he said. “You were herding them.”

Backwards Hunting

This realization—that the jungle war required predator skills, not warrior skills—began to spread through select American units that were fortunate enough to work closely with Australian advisers.

April 23, 1967, Operation Ingham, Phuoc Tuy Province.
Lieutenant Mike Berghoff commanded Second Platoon, A Company, Second Battalion, 503rd Infantry. His platoon had been attached to an Australian operation, working directly under Australian tactical control for the first time. The Australians had given him three days of intensive instruction in tracking, sign reading, and backward patrolling.

“Everything you’ve been doing is reactive,” explained Warrant Officer Brian Wickens of the Australian SAS. “You patrol until you get hit. Then you react with firepower. We’re going to teach you to be proactive—to know where Charlie is before he knows where you are.”

Wickens took Berghoff’s platoon through a complete retraining in patrol tactics. The changes seemed counterintuitive at first.

Move slower. American patrols typically covered four to six kilometers per day. Australian-trained patrols covered one to two kilometers, with frequent halts for silent observation.

Move quieter. Every piece of equipment was taped or secured. Metal-on-metal contact was eliminated. Canteens were half-filled to prevent sloshing. The crack of breaking vegetation was avoided, even if it meant taking twice as long to move.

Move backwards. Instead of pushing through terrain toward suspected enemy locations, patrols would move to a concealed position near trails or water sources and wait—sometimes for days—until the enemy came to them.

Think like prey. American doctrine taught soldiers to be aggressive, to take the initiative, to close with the enemy. Australian doctrine taught them to think like prey animals, to see without being seen, to sense danger before it materialized, to use the enemy’s expectations against him.

On April 23, Berghoff’s platoon, now trained in Australian tactics, set up a silent ambush position along a trail that Australian intelligence suggested was part of a VC supply route. They waited for thirty-six hours, communicating only through hand signals, eating cold rations, not smoking, barely moving.

At 0415 on the second night, a VC patrol of eleven men came down the trail. They were talking quietly, weapons slung, clearly believing they were in a safe area. American forces had swept this area just four days earlier and found nothing.

Berghoff’s platoon detonated Claymore mines and opened fire at point-blank range. The engagement lasted forty-seven seconds. Eleven VC killed, including a company commander with maps, documents, and weapons captured. Zero American casualties.

“We’d walked that same trail five times in the past month,” Berghoff later wrote in his after-action report. “Every time we pushed through, made noise, and Charlie faded away. This time we did it backwards. We got there first, got quiet, and let Charlie walk into us. It felt wrong, like we weren’t being aggressive enough, but it worked better than anything we’d tried before.”

Part 3: Evolution and Adaptation

Success stories began to accumulate, but the diffusion of Australian tactics through American forces was uneven, resisted by some commanders and often misunderstood by troops trained in conventional doctrine.

By mid-1967, several American units had worked extensively with Australian advisers and were producing remarkable results. The Third Brigade, 2nd Airborne Division, operating in the Mekong Delta, reduced its casualty rates by 60% while increasing confirmed kills by 40% after six weeks of training with Australian advisers in small unit tactics.

Captain Paul Busha, who commanded D Company, Third Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, described the transformation:
“Before training with the Aussies, we were on patrol about 25 days a month, making contact maybe once or twice. After retraining, we went on patrol maybe 15 days a month, but we made contact almost every time—and on our terms. We stopped chasing ghosts and started setting traps.”

The tactical refinements included tracking teams—small specialized teams, usually four to six soldiers trained extensively in reading signs. These teams would identify enemy movement patterns, then call in larger ambush forces to predetermined positions ahead of the enemy.

Counter-tracking: When American units were being tracked by VC scouts, a common occurrence, trained soldiers could identify they were being followed, then lead the trackers into a pre-positioned ambush. The 173rd Airborne Brigade executed 17 successful counter-tracking ambushes between June and September 1967, killing 43 VC with zero American fatalities.

Hide positions: Instead of establishing visible patrol bases or night defensive positions that announced American presence, trained units learned to establish concealed observation posts that could remain in place for days, watching enemy movement without being detected.

Noise discipline: Units that embraced Australian techniques made noise discipline a religion. Sergeant First Class Robert Howard, who served with MACV SOG and trained extensively with Australian SAS, recalled, “We got to the point where a 30-man patrol could move through bamboo forest and sound like a light breeze. The Aussies taught us that silence was a weapon.”

But adoption was incomplete. Many American commanders remained committed to the search and destroy doctrine’s fundamental premise: find the enemy and destroy him with overwhelming firepower immediately. The patient, methodical Australian approach didn’t produce the daily body counts that MACV headquarters demanded.

Lieutenant General William Peers, commanding I Field Force Vietnam, acknowledged the tension in a 1968 briefing:
“The Australian techniques work exceptionally well for the units that master them, but they require a level of junior leadership maturity and discipline that frankly not all of our units possess, and they don’t scale well. You can’t do these tactics with battalion-sized operations.”

The Enemy Learns Too

The Viet Cong and NVA were not passive observers of these tactical changes. As some American units became more dangerous, the enemy adapted. VC intelligence networks became more sophisticated at identifying which American units had adopted Australian tactics.

According to documents captured after the war, VC commanders specifically briefed their units on the different Americans—those who moved slowly, silently, and used ambush tactics.

One captured VC document from October 1967 warned:
“The new American units advised by Australian specialists are extremely dangerous. They do not patrol like regular American units. They move like we do, slowly, quietly, and they ambush trails instead of sweeping through areas. When facing these units, do not assume American soldiers will be noisy or careless.”

The VC response included counter-ambush tactics. VC units began sending smaller scouting elements ahead of main forces to trigger potential ambushes, then using the main force to assault the ambush position from the flank.

Avoiding trails: In areas where Australian-trained American units operated, VC logistics moved off established trails entirely, accepting slower movement for increased security.

False trails: VC units became more sophisticated in laying false trails, deliberately creating sign that would lead tracking teams into prepared kill zones.

Night movement: Recognizing that even well-trained American units were less effective at night, VC forces increasingly moved during darkness, accepting reduced navigation accuracy for improved survival.

Guan Van Than, a former VC company commander who operated in Phuoc Tuy province, later recalled:
“We could usually tell within 15 minutes whether we were facing regular American units or the dangerous ones trained by Australians. Regular Americans moved in straight lines, made noise, and stayed on paths. The others moved like hunters, slowly, watching, waiting. Against regular Americans, we could choose when to fight. Against the others, we had to be much more careful or they would catch us sleeping.”

Battle of Long Tan: The Doctrine Tested

August 18–21, 1966. Battle of Long Tan, Phuoc Tuy Province.
The most dramatic demonstration of Australian tactical doctrine came before most American units had even begun adopting it. D Company, Sixth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment—108 men—walked into a prepared position held by an estimated 2,500 VC and NVA troops from the 275th Regiment and D445 Battalion.

By conventional military logic, D Company should have been annihilated. They were outnumbered 23 to 1, caught in the open during a monsoon storm, cut off from reinforcement, and fighting a force that had home ground advantage.

But Major Harry Smith’s company didn’t fight conventionally. Instead of attempting to withdraw or calling for immediate extraction, Smith established a tight defensive perimeter in a rubber plantation and waited. His men created overlapping fields of fire, rationed ammunition, and shot with precise discipline rather than panic. When the VC attempted human wave assaults, the Australians broke them with aimed fire and artillery support called in with devastating accuracy.

The battle lasted four hours. When relief arrived and the enemy withdrew, D Company had suffered 18 killed and 24 wounded—grievous casualties, but a fraction of what they should have been. Enemy casualties were estimated at 245 confirmed killed, with hundreds more wounded.

The battle demonstrated that superior training, fire discipline, and tactical composure could overcome overwhelming numerical disadvantage. It also showed that Australian tactical doctrine—emphasizing precision over volume of fire, intelligence over aggression, and defensive discipline over offensive elan—was devastatingly effective in jungle warfare.

The Kill Ratio Revolution

By late 1967 and early 1968, American units that had fully integrated Australian tactics were achieving results that seemed almost impossible compared to conventional operations.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade, which had worked extensively with Australian advisers, reported kill ratios that averaged 18:1 between September 1967 and January 1968—triple their previous performance. More importantly, their casualty rates from ambush dropped by 70%. MACV SOG reconnaissance teams trained in Australian tracking and patrol techniques were conducting deep penetration missions into Laos and Cambodia with casualty rates below 5%—extraordinary for units operating in the enemy’s rear areas without support.

Captain Paul Busha’s D Company, after adopting Australian tactics, conducted 47 patrols between November 1967 and March 1968, made contact 31 times, and achieved a kill ratio of 22:1 while sustaining only 4 KIA and 11 WIA—remarkably low for a company operating continuously in a hostile environment.

A study conducted by MACV in early 1968 showed that American units trained in Australian tactics had 65% fewer casualties from ambush, 80% fewer casualties from booby traps, triple the confirmed kill ratio of conventionally operating units, and four times the intelligence value per patrol.

Part 4: The Limits of Excellence (Conclusion)

But here’s where the story turns tragic. These successes were tactical, not strategic. Individual companies and battalions became vastly more effective at killing Viet Cong. But the war’s fundamental dynamic—a conventional military attempting to defeat a revolutionary insurgency through attrition—remained unchanged.

Tet 1968: Tactical Victory, Strategic Revelation

When the Tet Offensive exploded across South Vietnam on January 30, 1968, American and South Vietnamese forces responded with devastating effectiveness. The offensive was a military catastrophe for the Viet Cong. They suffered an estimated 45,000 casualties and failed to hold any of their objectives beyond a few days. Units trained in Australian tactics performed exceptionally well. The 173rd Airborne Brigade operating in II Corps helped destroy VC units with minimal friendly casualties. Australian forces in Phuoc Tuy province essentially annihilated local VC units attempting to attack district capitals.

Yet Tet revealed the war’s central truth: tactical effectiveness meant nothing without strategic coherence. The American military had become extraordinarily good at killing Viet Cong and NVA forces. Australian tactical innovations had made some units even better at it. But the enemy kept coming. The political will of the American public was crumbling, and the South Vietnamese government remained corrupt and unpopular.

General Creighton Abrams, who replaced Westmoreland as MACV commander in June 1968, recognized this reality. He began shifting American strategy away from search and destroy toward clear and hold operations and increased Vietnamization—training South Vietnamese forces to take over the war.

Ironically, Abrams tried to spread Australian tactical methods throughout the American military in Vietnam. In late 1968 and 1969, training programs based on Australian techniques were established at division and brigade levels. But by then, American domestic support for the war had collapsed. The question was no longer “How do we win?” but “How do we leave?”

Brennan’s Lesson

Staff Sergeant Mike Brennan, the soldier we met in the opening—frozen in elephant grass about to walk into a VC ambush—survived his tour in Vietnam. More accurately, he survived his first tour. After working with Australian advisers in late 1966, he extended for a second tour specifically to master and teach the tracking and ambush techniques he’d learned.

“The Australians showed us that we’d been doing it backwards,” Brennan reflected in a 1989 interview. “Not wrong, exactly. American soldiers were brave, well-trained, and fought hard. But we were playing the enemy’s game. We’d walk into an area making noise, practically announcing, ‘We’re here. Come fight us.’ And Charlie would fight on his terms, or not fight at all, then disappear. The Aussies taught us to flip that script—to be there first, be quiet, and make Charlie walk into us. It sounds simple, but it required completely retraining our instincts.”

The tactical lessons were clear and quantifiable. Units that fully adopted Australian techniques had dramatically better performance metrics. But the strategic lesson was darker. Superior tactics don’t overcome flawed strategy. You can perfect the art of jungle ambushes while still losing the war.

The Australian approach to jungle warfare—patient, methodical, intelligence-driven—was fundamentally incompatible with the American military’s institutional culture in the 1960s. The US military was optimized for conventional warfare: large-scale operations, overwhelming firepower, clear objectives, and measurable progress. The metrics-driven approach of Robert McNamara’s Pentagon demanded body counts and territory controlled—metrics that looked impressive in briefings, but meant little in a war without front lines.

Australian doctrine prioritized what couldn’t be easily quantified: enemy patterns understood, supply routes interdicted, insurgent infrastructure degraded over months. These effects were real but invisible in weekly statistics reports. As a result, even when American commanders recognized the effectiveness of Australian tactics, they struggled to justify them to higher headquarters obsessed with quantifiable results.

Legacy and Reflection

The lessons did influence future conflicts, though often imperfectly. Special Operations Forces—particularly Army Rangers and Special Forces—incorporated Australian tracking and small unit tactics into their doctrine. These techniques proved valuable in Afghanistan and Iraq, where insurgent warfare again required patient, intelligence-driven operations.

But the fundamental error persisted: the belief that any tactical excellence, any operational innovation, can substitute for strategic coherence. The Australian SAS could teach American soldiers to triple their kill ratios, but they couldn’t teach American politicians and generals to answer the essential question: What political objective was worth the cost of the war?

In the end, Australian tactical genius didn’t fail in Vietnam. It succeeded brilliantly at what tactics can accomplish. The failure was strategic, not tactical. The Australians taught Americans to hunt VC backwards—to become better jungle warriors, to kill more efficiently with fewer casualties. And the American soldiers who learned these lessons became formidable.

But wars aren’t won by soldiers alone. They’re won when military means serve coherent political ends. And in Vietnam, no amount of tactical excellence could bridge that gap.

Captain Bob Milligan, the Australian officer who watched Staff Sergeant Brennan’s platoon prepare to walk into that ambush in August 1966, survived his tour as well. He returned to Vietnam for two more tours, continued training American units, and watched the war’s slow collapse despite tactical improvements. In a 1975 letter to a former American student written just after Saigon fell, Milligan wrote:

“We taught you to be better soldiers. You learned well. Some of you became the finest jungle fighters in the world. But we couldn’t teach your country to want victory more than North Vietnam wanted it. That was the only lesson that mattered, and it couldn’t be taught at all.”

The ambush Brennan’s platoon walked into that August morning? It never happened. Milligan radioed the American company commander, warned him off, and directed the platoon to an Australian-style ambush position 600 meters from the VC bait. Two days later, a combined American-Australian patrol caught the VC unit in the open and killed seventeen of them with zero friendly casualties. Brennan lived because he learned to hunt backwards, but the war was lost anyway.