In May 1968, in the western jungle of Vietnam near Laos, a Special Forces Company under the command of an Australian army captain, supported by a U.S. Marine artillery detachment, occupied an old French fort on a hill known as Ngok Tavak. Though the ensuing battle and subsequent retreat appeared relatively insignificant, they proved to have much wider implications. Nearly every major force in South Vietnam was involved, and the battles bloody ending came to stand as a microcosm of what went wrong in the war. In its wake Ngok Tavak left issues that cried out for resolution for decades afterwards. After interviewing battle survivors and American soldiers families, and searching through accounts from official reports that included Vietnamese documents, eyewitness statements, and war diaries, Bruce Davies pieces together the evidence that puts Ngok Tavak in context and addresses questions that still haunt those involved. pp. xx, 242 Illusts, Order of Battle etc #0717 Fine except for piece cut from front blank.

In a month when US and Vietnamese forces suffered their highest casualty rate, apparently no Australian media reported the May 1968 battle at Ngok Tavak Only three Australian army advisers were involved and none were killed or wounded, although a total of 31 Americans and South Vietnamese died. The overrunning of a small, isolated outpost by a force made up of North Vietnamese Army and local Viet Cong, with no Australian casualties, was unlikely to rate a mention. Yet the circumstances surrounding the battle had certain features that aroused the curiosity of Bruce Davies, himself a decorated former member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. What was such a motley group – an Australian Army captain who commanded a Mobile Strike Force company of three platoons commanded by one US Special Forces sergeant and two Australian Army warrant officer advisers with 122 Nung (an ethnic minority) Civilian Irregular Defense Group mercenaries, four other US Special Forces, three Vietnamese Special Forces, three interpreters, 35 Montagnard (mountain people) CIDG reinforcements, one US Navy medic and 43 US Marine Corps artillerymen with two 105mm howitzers – meant to achieve when ‘seemingly dropped in the middle of an enemy-infested wilderness?