I'd like to inform
you all on behalf of the Australian War Memorial that we have
just made available via our website, scanned digital images
of the commanders' war diaries for the Australian Army during
the Vietnam War. Just a few points to qualify this:
1) Not all have
been scanned yet, but there is a substantial portion available
now, with the remainder to follow later in the year. Commanders'
diaries for all major units involved in the Battle of Long
Tan are available now.
2) Some older units'
diaries actually pre-date our involvement in Vietnam and document
our involvement in Malaya, Singapore and Borneo as well, from
about 1959.
These commanders
diaries are accessible via the Australian War Memorial's home
page http://www.awm.gov.au/
Or, here is a direct link to the index page http://www.awm.gov.au/diaries/seasia/index.asp
. We thought it important to get them up prior to the Long
Tan 40th as there's likely to be a lot of interest generated
by this event and the new Battle of Long Tan docu-drama premiering
on the History Channel on the 16th. See http://www.historychannel.com.au/vietnam_lt.aspx
.
I'd also like to
point out that we have scanned selected Australian Army war
diaries for the Second World War and Korea. They have been
available for a few years now. See the WWII and Korean diaries
via http://www.awm.gov.au/diaries/
Our next major project is the war diaries of the AIF during
the First World War. This will be much larger project and
will take a while - probably around three years. We aim to
start progressively putting these WWI diaries onto our website
beginning some time early next year (2007).