93rd Military Police Battalion and the Coastal Surveillance Boat Escort Mission
When the first elements of the 93rd Military Police Battalion deployed to South Vietnam in 1966, they inherited a security challenge that stretched far beyond the usual perimeter checks, convoy duties and prisoner handling that defined the military police trade in other theatres. The waterways of the Mekong Delta, the Rung Sat Special Zone and the long coastline south of Da Nang had become contested corridors, threaded with Viet Cong logistics and lined with fishing villages whose junks doubled as cover for supply runs. Coastal surveillance had already emerged as a joint project between the Navy, the Army and the Vietnamese government, and the MP contribution to that effort remains one of the more unusual chapters of the battalion's service record.
For readers tracing the wider story of the military police in Vietnam, a useful starting point is the main archive at https://militarypolicevietnam.com/main.html, which preserves a steady flow of period imagery, duty rosters and veteran testimony. The 93rd's coastal work sits at the intersection of riverine patrol and traditional law-and-order policing, and it rewards close study because it forced ordinary military police into an unfamiliar maritime rhythm.
Origins of the Battalion and the Move to the Coast
The 93rd MP Battalion was constituted from elements that had trained at Fort Gordon and, for many of its personnel, the assignment to Vietnam was a first overseas posting. Once in country, the battalion was split geographically: detachments handled gate security at major logistics bases, while other companies were attached to larger formations for combat support. The coastal surveillance responsibility came through the chain of command in 1967, when Task Force 115, the Navy's interdiction effort, requested additional Army manpower to protect the small fleet of surveillance vessels operating in the inshore waters.
The arrangement made operational sense. Navy Swift boats and Army riverine patrol craft needed an escort presence that could investigate vessels of interest, detain suspected smugglers and handle prisoners without pulling a patrol boat off station. Military police were already trained in search procedures, evidence handling and detention documentation, so the fit was logical on paper, even if the salt air, monsoon swells and mangrove horizons felt a long way from the battalion's barracks at Long Binh. Platoons were rotated through the boat escort role in two-month cycles, which kept individual soldiers from burning out but also produced a small community of MPs who became unusually comfortable working from a forward deck.
The Coastal Surveillance Environment
The coastal surveillance force of the late 1960s was a hybrid fleet. Navy units operated the Patrol Boat, or PBR, a small fiberglass craft that became almost emblematic of riverine work. Alongside them, the Army ran heavily armed monitors and, increasingly, the Vietnamese Navy provided the junks that formed the visible presence in the inshore traffic. The MP escort sat one rung below the interdiction craft in firepower but one rung above a routine harbour patrol, a position that required both patience and a quick hand.
A typical day for an escort detail began before sunrise at a small pier, often near Vung Tau or at one of the smaller bases south of the delta. The team boarded a surveillance boat, usually a converted trawler or a purpose-built patrol craft, and slipped out among the fishing fleet at first light. The job was to board vessels flagged by the surveillance crew, search holds for concealed weapons, and escort any detained personnel back to a holding point. A Melbourne-born sergeant who served with the battalion later told an Australian Vietnam veterans' gathering in Adelaide that the strangest part of the work was how ordinary the sea looked, even when an interception went badly wrong. The horizon stayed flat, the gulls kept circling, and yet the rules of engagement changed by the hour.
Daily Life Aboard an Escort Vessel
Life aboard a coastal surveillance boat was compressed and uncomfortable. Space was at a premium, rations were limited, and the MP escort often shared a cramped deckhouse with the Vietnamese crew. Hammocks were slung wherever a beam allowed, and there was no privacy in any meaningful sense. Personal kit had to be packed to a strict inventory because every item on deck needed a reason to be there.
For an Australian reader trying to picture the routine, it helps to remember how a patrol departure in Vietnam resembled, in spirit, the early-morning launches that used to run out of Sydney Harbour in the days when working trawlers still tied up at Mosman Bay. The mechanics were not the same, but the pre-dawn quiet, the smell of diesel, the sense of a working crew slipping out before the city wakes — that rhythm translated across hemispheres. The MP escort carried sidearms, a shotgun for boarding actions, and a short-wave radio tied into the Navy net, and they learned fast how to brace themselves when a Vietnamese pilot brought the boat hard about to intercept a junk that had tried to veer away. Discipline on the deck mattered as much as marksmanship, because a stumble at the wrong moment could put a soldier over the side and into waters that were not, on any day, friendly.
The Tet Offensive and the Embassy Aftermath
The 1968 Tet Offensive reshaped the 93rd's commitments overnight. Elements of the battalion, alongside other Army MP units, were rushed into Saigon to reinforce perimeter security at the American Embassy after the iconic assault on the compound. The famous photograph of military police sitting on the embassy steps in the early hours, faces drawn, weapons across their knees, was taken from this period. It is a quiet image, but it speaks to a sudden shift in the battalion's working life: from long, slow days on the water to the sharp urban crisis of a city under coordinated attack.
The Tet period also exposed how thin the coastal escort cover had become. Several MP platoons that would normally have been at sea were pulled back into the Saigon corridor for embassy and depot defence, and the surveillance fleet had to make do with reduced support. When the immediate crisis passed, the escort role was re-established but with a sharper awareness that the war could arrive on any doorstep. Veterans who later settled in Australia — including a small community around Brisbane's Centenary suburbs and another in the Fremantle area — often recalled Tet as the moment they understood that no assignment in Vietnam, however routine it looked, was ever truly safe. ANZAC Day services in those towns still occasionally feature readings that draw on this period, because Australian Vietnam veterans have long integrated the lessons of Tet into their own commemorations.
Joint Operations and the Riverine Web
The boat escort mission could not have functioned as a standalone effort. The 93rd's MPs worked under Navy tactical control while remaining administratively Army, and they were stitched into a wider riverine web that included the Mobile Riverine Force, Australian advisory personnel attached to the Vietnamese Navy, and the Civilian Irregular Defence Group. Intelligence about which junks to interdict came from a combination of signals intercepts, village informants and aerial observation, and the escort team had to be ready to act on fragmentary information at short notice.
Coordination sometimes ran through informal channels as much as through formal ones. A junior officer might pass a tip to an MP sergeant over a shared meal of rice and canned fruit, and the next morning's boarding list would change accordingly. The battalion's command at Long Binh tracked these networks closely, because the political consequences of a mistaken boarding — particularly one involving a legitimate fishing family — could be severe. Several after-action reports preserved in the battalion's records describe near-miss confrontations where a quick-thinking MP defused a tense deck encounter by stepping back, allowing a Vietnamese liaison to do the talking, and reaching for the radio rather than the weapon. These small acts of restraint have aged well in veteran memory, and they sit comfortably alongside the kinds of restraint celebrated in Australian accounts of jungle contact further north.
The Post-War Legacy and Veteran Reflection
After the stand-down of coastal operations, the 93rd's personnel dispersed into a wide range of postwar careers. Some remained in the Army, others joined police forces or federal agencies, and a small but distinctive group emigrated to Australia in the years that followed. The Australian Vietnam veterans' community, which has long been organised through state branches and dedicated sub-groups, has absorbed these former MPs into its commemorative culture in Townsville, Geelong, Hobart and elsewhere. They bring with them a particular memory of the war — not the jungle sweep of the Infantry, nor the high-end politics of the embassy compound, but the strange, sun-bleached routine of a deck watch in a mangrove estuary.
That memory has shaped how the 93rd's coastal work is now written about. Historians and family researchers regularly consult veteran forums and, increasingly, the digital archive at https://militarypolicevietnam.com/main.html to piece together duty rotations, crew lists and boat identifications. The site's careful preservation of period photographs makes it possible to see the MP escort teams not as a generic silhouette but as named individuals, some of whom are still alive and still attending quiet reunions in Australian RSL halls.
Comparing Coastal Escort and Inland MP Duties
A useful way to grasp the distinctiveness of the coastal escort mission is to set it beside the more familiar inland MP workload. The two shared a legal foundation and a chain of command, but the texture of each day was very different. The comparison below summarises the key contrasts as remembered by veterans and recorded in battalion after-action reports.
| Aspect | Coastal Surveillance Boat Escort | Inland MP Duty (Base, Convoy, Urban) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary terrain | Inshore waters, estuaries, river mouths | Roads, base perimeters, urban streets |
| Typical partner force | Vietnamese Navy, U.S. Navy PBR crews | U.S. Army units, local national police |
| Core skills called on | Boarding, vessel search, prisoner transfer at sea | Convoy escort, traffic control, gate security |
| Dominant risk | Ambush during boarding, drowning, weather | Sniper, mine, traffic incident |
| Rhythm of the day | Pre-dawn launch, multi-hour patrol, evening return | Shift-based posting, often predictable hours |
| Equipment emphasis | Sidearm, shotgun, radio, flotation gear | Sidearm, rifle, flares, evidence kit |
| Emotional register | Slow tension broken by sudden action | Constant low-level alertness |
The table is not a judgement of which duty was harder, because veterans of each will argue that point into the night. It does, however, show why the 93rd's coastal escort story is worth telling on its own terms. The battalion's service cannot be reduced to the embassy steps, the convoy briefs or the stockade counts that often dominate a quick history of military police in Vietnam. The waterline work, the deck searches, the quiet patience of an escort team waiting for a junk to heave to — these are the moments that give the 93rd's record its particular shape, and they are the moments that still draw Australian readers back to the archive.
