Re the Australian SAS and the American soldiers in Vietnam, this documentary (link below) is quite good, and pretty accurate.
A lot of the war and military scenes are irrelevant, repetitive and often unrelated - but the narration is accurate.
I'm not sure the Americans have learn anything since Vietnam, their arrogance and gung-ho attitude still persists.
Even Gen Westmoreland was quoted as saying, "If you want to see how it's done, go to Phuoc Tuy province and see how the Australians do it".
The American military was totally obsessed with one thing - enemy kill numbers.
They prioritised that over anything else, this attitude simply led to American soldier lying about kills and simply throwing more and more heavy weaponry into any battle with the enemy.
The VC and NVA knew this and specialised in hit and run ambushes on American troops that were very effective.
Kill a good handful of Americans in the first 30 seconds, then withdraw rapidly before the Americans could even determine where the enemy were - and the VC and NVA were well away before the U.S. gunships and artillery arrived to fill the entire region with lead and explosive armaments - and half the time killing more American troops than the numbers of VC or NVA that attacked them.
Many Australian SAS members had serious reservations about working with U.S. soldiers, simply because it was well known the Americans stood as high a chance of killing you, as the VC or NVA did.
The technique of gathering up and studying every piece of enemy information that could be obtained, was reinforced by an Australian Army Engineer, Capt Sandy McGregor.
McGregor was OC of our Engineer Squadron while I was in Vietnam - 17 Construction Sqdn. He was formerly OC of 1st Field Squadron, where he developed the Tunnel Rats teams - Engineer Sappers that went down into VC and NVA tunnels and bunkers, armed only with a torch and a pistol, to determine tunnel layouts and size - and especially, to try and capture enemy documentation and equipment.
It took real guts to be a Tunnel Rat, and they had to cope with hidden booby traps in tunnels and bunkers (even poisonous snakes and scorpions), coming across enemy, and being flooded and drowned by VC/NVA traps.
But the intelligence gathered by Tunnel Rats, especially documents and equipment, was utterly invaluable to Australian Intelligence. The Americans would just bomb or destroy bunkers and tunnels with explosives, and gain no enemy information.
In one intelligence-gathering raid, the Australian Engineers captured a large list of NVA soldiers names, and top VC operational commanders names - but the list was ignored, and filed away by the Americans.