Francis Philip "Ted" Serong | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Colonel Serong as commanding officer AATTV, c. 1962 | |
| Born | 11 November 1915 Abbotsford, Victoria |
| Died | 1 October 2002 (aged 86) Melbourne, Victoria |
| Allegiance | Australia |
| Service | Australian Army |
| Years of service | 1934–1968 |
| Rank | Brigadier |
| Commands | Australian Army Training Team Vietnam |
| Battles / wars | Second World War Vietnam War |
| Awards | Distinguished Service Order Officer of the Order of the British Empire Legion of Merit (United States) Knight of the National Order of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry (Vietnam) |
Brigadier Francis Philip "Ted" Serong, DSO, OBE (11 November 1915 – 1 October 2002) was a senior officer of the Australian Army. Born into a Roman Catholic family in 1915, Serong's opposition to communism led him to join the army, graduating from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1937. During the Second World War he mainly served in training and staff roles, but saw combat against the Japanese at Wewak late in the war. In the post-war period he had a significant influence on the training of the Australian Army, which he helped re-orient to warfare in South East Asia, heading the jungle training centre at Canungra in 1955 and developing the army's counter-insurgency doctrine. He instructed the armed forces of Burma in jungle warfare in the late 1950s and was a strategic advisor to the Burmese Army from 1960 to 1962.
Serong was appointed to command the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) in 1962. He was later seconded to the Americans and was senior advisor to the South Vietnamese Police Field Force between 1965 and 1968. Leaving the army in 1968, he remained in Vietnam as a security and intelligence adviser to the South Vietnamese government, as well as working for the Rand organisation, Hudson Institute and other corporations, and consulting to the Pentagon and several US presidents. He continued to serve in Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in 1975. He was considered a world authority on counter-insurgency warfare and wrote widely on the subject. In later life he maintained an interest in Australian defence issues and was at times a controversial figure due to his support for several citizens' militia groups, conspiracy theories and right-wing political causes. He died, aged eighty-six, in 2002.