Australians at War Film Archive

Good morning, my name’s Alan Anderson. I live here in Brisbane. I was born in 1947, March to be exact in Sydney. Due to a divorce of my parents, we moved away

and we came to live here in Brisbane. From there I went to school, went to work, and as I got older I looked around and saw things that were happening in the world. The Vietnam War had started and I volunteered to be a National Serviceman. I went to Vietnam. Came back. I stayed in the army for an extra two years.

I went to Malaysia and Singapore. I was married. My wife and I were married between returning from Vietnam and Malaysia. We travelled extensively through Asia while we were there. We came back to Australia and built the house you’re now in. We moved here Anzac Day, 1972, and I’ve had just on twenty years in the police. I became ill about

eight years ago. They couldn’t find what it was. Eventually I had a couple of nervous breakdowns so I left work and became a house husband six years ago, and I love my job.

Where I lived in Sydney…I remember it very clearly. There was a railway line and all of my uncles, aunties and grandparents

all lived right on Mascot Aerodrome, which is Sydney’s International Airport and we were all pushed out by the expansion of the airport and we went to different areas. By that time of course I was here in Queensland. I remember the airport. I remember the Super Constellations. That makes me a bit old, doesn’t it. The three tailed Super Constellations. I remember the Vulcan jet coming out of England…that was big.

There were hundreds and thousands of people and we were so close to the airport that we could see the people and we went down to see the aircraft. I loved aircraft. Always wanted to be a pilot, but never got there. I wanted to learn to fly. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Then we moved to Brisbane and that was sort of a culture shock insomuch as…I can remember so clearly that I actually tried

to tune the radio here in Brisbane to 2GB in Sydney. I never realised…it was the excitement of flying for the first time and I tried to tune the radio to 2GB and it didn’t work. Then I asked my mother why, and she told me I was in another state. You’re stretching the memory here a bit. Started here in Grade Four at Moorooka State School. My children

both went there. We have a family brick going into the pavers down there now which is something for the grandkids to have a look at. What happened after that? Schooling…I worked at various jobs. I went back to Sydney when I was about eighteen. I lived there for a while and then came back to Brisbane and eventually started with the army.

Yes, Mum’s still alive. She’s 83 or 84. She lives about two suburbs away. There’s six of us. Three boys and three girls. I had a step father who was a magic man. He was Italian, although you wouldn’t have known, but we used to torment him about it. So I have a half sister but we’re all one family.

So she’s outlived two husbands, because he’s passed away. She’s always been a very straight sort of person. I remember my grandmother…my grandfather had died earlier. She was the spitting image of my grandmother. I can remember that far back.

Oh yes. I knew him until he died.

He didn’t go into the war. My uncles from my mother’s side did. He was in one of those compulsory trades. He was a boot maker. He wasn’t allowed to enlist. He had to remain at home. So he worked for many years as a boot maker. I can remember…oh that’s quite funny actually. I can remember

as a very young child…he was an iceman. Back in those days ice was how you kept the refrigerators cold and we became big time. We actually got a kerosene refrigerator and we were the first in the street to get one. I remember the ice truck. He was a very bad alcoholic, that’s why my parents divorced or separated. In those days divorce was a very serious thing and it was very traumatic for the

entire family. But that’s life.

A bit of both. I actually got to ride in an aeroplane for the first time. I was nine when we came here. All those years, seeing them flying over the house and being able to smell the fumes and going down to see the planes. In those days, security was not a problem. You could walk around Mascot

freely….I’ve lost track.

Yes, moving to Brisbane. I was young and it didn’t bother me. It was an adventure to me. It was probably where I got this roving spirit from and why I travelled so much. Politely put I would ride on the back of a shit cart just for somewhere to go.

Moorooka State School which was just down from where we lived. It was quite unique insomuch as I can remember very clearly, in the corner of the classroom was a .22 rifle and during the school the teachers would have to go out and shoot magpies which were dive bombing the kids. Now even if you suggested that

today, they would nail you to the wall. But that was just an accepted part of life. I enjoyed school.

I walked because I lived in a place called Hamilton Road. That’s where I grew up down near the railway. So I walked over and walked back. Back in those days a tram would still come passed this area. It stopped in 1968 when I was in Vietnam.

So there was a tram line there. We were pretty modern. To see the difference between now and then…it’s just a natural growth. Old people say ‘in my day’, well my children when they grow and their children, my grandchildren I hope…I have a grand dog at the moment, by the way. They won’t see or know of this type of thing. It will be interesting

to see or hear it and this is why I was happy to do this. So everybody has a life and they see it as normal. They don’t feel it’s a problem. They don’t see the changes or are affected by changes. People in general are affected by change and one of the worst things is change. People can’t tolerate change. Fortunately, fingers crossed, I’m keeping up with it. I’ll get old and cranky one day.

Oh yes. The houses were up on stilts which I’d never seen because everything in Sydney is low set. The climate was great. You could just about run around naked in winter…I mean in Sydney you froze and winter here is so mild. Of course sun burn was a big thing…being a red head I suffered from that until I learnt not to get sunburnt.

Nobody ever heard of hats or sunburn cream. So sunburn was a natural thing. Schooling was …I can’t remember…school was all wooden buildings up against the school I had come out of which was asphalt,

bricks. All the buildings were timber, and that was a change to see the difference between the two of those.

No, all grades were separate. Or when I went to school they were. And the school’s just had its 100th anniversary or something like that. It’s been there a long time and it’s still there. I think it will go on for a long time, because we’re an inner city suburb,

we’re only six kilometres from the hub of the city. Nothing dramatic. I was the captain of the school football team, which was Australian Rules. I won a medal for the state championships in that. That was probably my sporting achievement. Academically I was pretty average, so we won’t go into that side of it. I passed though so I didn’t have any problems.

Generally I just enjoyed my younger years.

At school. It was the sport they played at school. That was a thing…the lack of swimming pools was a big thing. Because I grew up on Botany Bay, the lack of water was probably the biggest shock I got because there was always Botany Bay. We used to fish in Botany Bay. My father used to catch leather jacket in a wire trap,

which is similar to a crab pot. The big ocean crabs. I don’t think you’d take too much out of Botany Bay today that isn’t polluted. The lack of water, the lack of swimming pools…that was the biggest shock because I loved the water. I taught scuba professionally when I came back from Malaysia for a number of years. Both my children are swimmers. That’s a lot of the trophies there.

So they both love the water. Both love being outside and both are fairly athletic as well.

It was incredible. It’s still there today. I think it was about one hundred and twenty years old. It was a huge Queenslander. It was massive. The ceilings were ten or twelve feet high. It had been

a school, then it was converted to a convent, and then eventually it came onto the private market. It had big verandahs all the way around it. It had a ceiling that you could stand up inside. You could actually walk around in it. It was all green. In those days there was only one colour. Henry Ford said you could have any colour you like so long as it is black,

and I reckon when the paint was mixed here in Queensland, you could have any colour you liked so long as it was green. And everything was this dull green and my step father painted it and got rid of it, but until then, everything was this morbid green. It looked like a funeral parlour. Being six children of course, everything seemed pretty small with six kids running about the place. Three big mango trees out the back.

A fair big yard.

Oh yes. We never knew what a mango was until we came to Queensland. Never saw a pineapple until we came to Queensland. Wondered what the devil they were. Grew bananas. Had the usual things back in those days, chickens. It was my job every Easter and Christmas to catch the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s that were going to be eaten, kill and clean them. I was so happy to see frozen chickens come in.

That was just part of growing up. The toilet was right down the back yard until many years later when the Mayor Clem Jones pushed for sewerage throughout the whole of Brisbane. Then we started to become a modern city then. But yes, we had a thunder box down the back. That was a shock. Now that was a shock to come out of a sewered place to one of these things. ‘Hey, where are we?’

But yes, the house was fabulous.

You tried to avoid them. You never knew what was down the back. There was no light. There was no light between the back stairs and to the furthest corner of the yard which would be about twenty metres, so you really learnt to go without until the next morning.

I shared it with my youngest brother. There was

he and I. My two older sisters had a room to themselves. My youngest sister was only a baby so she was out in what we called the sleepout area which was attached to the main bedroom. When Bruce came up to live with us from Sydney…he didn’t come at first. He stayed on. He was doing an apprenticed trade.

So he stayed there for many years. Then he came…where did they put Bruce? I think we all slept standing up because there were that many of us.

I’m four out of six.

Oh, great. I got to fight with everybody. If you’ve got siblings you certainly learn to know where things are at.

You had to be very quick at the table because when the food came to the table it was the survival of the fittest. We always had two choices. That was one thing I must say, we always had two choices at dinner time…take it or leave it. And so you learnt to eat what was put in front of you. My two kids when they were growing up, they would sit at the table and say, “I don’t like that.” And I’d say, “That’s fine, you don’t have to like it, you only have to eat it.” Right, Dad. But today they thank us for it because we eat any cuisine, right across the board.

Yes. They’d buy half a lamb, general meats. The milkman and baker used to physically visit. Not like it is today. There was always plenty of vegetables and we’re still very big with vegetables.

It was basic. There vegies and meat. Basic Australian fare. Today, thank goodness, I do all the cooking and I cook with a lot of spice. I like spices. My elder brothers and sisters aren’t too keen on it but myself and the younger ones are. We eat anything and everything.

Yes. She didn’t meet the stepfather until some years later.

Yes, I was the odd one out at school because divorce wasn’t heard of back in those days. Divorce was an ugly thing in those days. But I think you’re too damn busy getting on with life to feel sorry for yourself. It was nice to go to a friend’s house where there was a father.

I became very self sufficient in that regard. It really didn’t bother me that much. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth. I came away from drunkenness and violence. I was getting away from it. That was what my father was like.

Damn good question.

My grandmother supported us financially. She was a headmistress of a very exclusive girl’s school. She was very wealthy and very affluent. Actually that reminds me of something that should be recorded. Many years ago there was a character called Bee Miles in Sydney. She was a local identity who would not pay in a taxi. She was a very intelligent woman, and she was part of a very exclusive family in England.

But through her studies her mind had troubles and she became a little eccentric. So she went to Australia so the stigma wouldn’t spill out onto the English family. But Bee had this incredible habit. She would get into a taxi and then she would refuse to get out. I remember just before we left Sydney, my youngest brother and I…I had sort of heard of this woman but never seen her…my grandmother

took us into Sydney for some reason. I can’t remember why. And we actually saw Bee Miles… and in the early days of the Holden motor car, it had rounded mudguards, and there was an army fellow sitting half asleep in the car and Bee went over and …she was a huge woman. And she flopped down on the mudguard, lent on the bonnet and just stared at this fellow, and he just pretended he was asleep and didn’t

take any notice of her. We then decided we had to get into a taxi and that turned into a fiasco, because we were very close to this woman and when the taxi stopped she was off the car and tried to push us aside and get into the back. The cab driver was over the seat pushing her out and trying to push us in. It was a three ringed circus. She at one stage…

when she received her annual supplement from the family in England, she hired a taxi to go from Sydney to Perth and back. She paid him up front. It was always on the news where the cab drivers had to go to the police stations to have her evicted from the cab. She just wouldn’t get out of the cab. So she was one of the characters. This is one of the things that’s missing in Australia today. The characters are disappearing.

You see and hear about them but they’re all disappearing. We should have those people. They’re an identity and part of society. They’re really unique to have, because if we all end up the same it’s going to be pretty boring, isn’t it?

His proper name was Philippe de Plaid and he came to Australia when he was two. His family escaped from the war.

They came to Australia and they changed their name to Barretta because de Plaid being an Italian name and the Italians being on the German side was not acceptable here in Australia. He grew up in Kalgoorlie and Perth. His family died, and he was placed into a Salvation Army Home with his brother. I don’t know what happened to his sisters. They’ve

all been reunited. He then came to live in Sydney and then the company he was working for transferred him up to Brisbane and he met my mother. Great fellow. An incredible man. He fell on a saw and cut his fingers off and he only had the stump of his right hand knuckle but he could do the most incredible things. He could

build, he could saw, he could do anything, except he could never do the button up for a tie. He couldn’t get his hand up there. I remember, he would take me in the semi trailer. He used to drive a semi trailer and in those days there was road tax. If you took a truck down to the Gold Coast, which was sort of the back and beyond in those days, he would then have to cross the New South Wales border and turn around and come back, and that way you didn’t pay road tax.

So I would get trips down to the Gold Coast. I remember sitting with him while he was driving a truck and rolling a cigarette with these fingers missing…you would become quite nervous after a while. I would think, I wish you’d put what ever hands you’ve got on the wheel. But he was a great guy. Then he used to take us to the coast in the back of a utility because everyone travelled in the back of a utility in those days. Cars were pretty rare, and the vehicle

was borrowed from where he worked. He drove trucks, trains, forklifts. He built the most incredible things. A very unique man. It was a tragedy that he died.

That was the back of beyond. In those days it was just a dirt track leading down to the Gold Coast. Eventually they put bitumen on it and there was one lane up, and one lane down. It was fun.

There would be heaps of us all sitting in the back of the ute. Not just my brothers and sisters, if you went to the Gold Coast you collected all the neighbours’ kids and away you went. It was very primitive compared to today. Today’s it’s a concrete jungle. I prefer the Sunshine Coast. The Gold Coast is just a concrete jungle. It’s lost the relaxed

atmosphere. It’s just a money making concrete jungle. Although I must say, I go to Burleigh Heads and Easter. My wife and I take the caravan to Burleigh Heads at Easter because it’s park the van, park the car and you can walk to all the restaurants, hotels, clubs, the surf and everything. But it was an interesting trip to go down there and back type of thing. It was a day out and then you came back…oh that’s right.

They had this crazy notion…you’ll be shocked at this…of putting methylated spirits on sunburn! It was agony. So I learnt at a very early age, the only way I’m going to beat this mob is don’t get sunburnt. And this is why I’ve been very lucky as a red head not to have severe sunburn….or they’d stick you in a hot shower.

Or put metho on and it was agony. But that was the ignorance of those days. That’s what they believed.

Shirts. I always wore a shirt after ten o’clock and before three o’clock. I tried not to go outside in the mid day. We would go down there and camp at Tallebudgera at Christmas and Easter and those types of things. You

just learnt to avoid it. I have sunburns on the back of my hands because I never got to cover the back of my hands. But as a red head, I’ve been pretty lucky with sunburn.

Seeing how this is being recorded I don’t think I should tell you. As I grew up I had a number of friends and we had a 1936 Ford Pilot with a dickie seat in the back. We all put in and bought this car.

So we used to go hooning around in that. Queen Street was a great place to go. You’d drive up and down Queen Street whistling at girls. God knows what would have happened if any of them had ever come over and spoken to us. We would all have been terrified. Then we used to go to Colleges Crossing which is out near Ipswich. My adopted brother Clarrie Rosetta, he and I used to ride pushbikes from Moorooka to Colleges Crossing,

and we would carry all out stuff, our rifles on push bikes and go up there and camp for the weekend.

Yeah, but in those days there wasn’t the traffic. There wasn’t the speed and the problems. It those days it was great. It was just a day’s ride out there and a day’s ride back. You would get out there…it wasn’t anything really that bad.

Straight out along Ipswich Road.

And I can’t remember whether the bypass was there or not. But then we’d turn off and go out to Colleges Crossing and down the hill. I started talking about the ’36 Ford Pilot. That was our car to sort of rev around in, but we had a rule. If you wanted to drive you had to drink a stubby or a beer, that was the rule.

My wife’s going to say, “Edit this part!” The rule was if you wanted to drive (we were all under age of course) then you had to have a beer. If you didn’t drink you didn’t drive. So you wonder why I grew up like I am today. Paul and I got a Harley Davidson military motorbike with a side car. That was our next vehicle. And that was great revving around in that.

In those days there was no such thing as helmets. How on earth we ever survived I don’t know but we used to tear all over the place. I can remember Chardon’s Hotel, which is still there today. Drinking was twenty one. So one of the biggest jobs was to get grog underage.

Waterford which is a suburb south of here was absolutely in the middle of nowhere. We would all drive out to Waterford and that’s where we’d get the grog. I can remember I was about seventeen and a half or something like that, and I went to Chardon’s with Paul and we got drunk and they threw us out. I thought how disgusting. But they had served us until we’d had enough and then they said we were under twenty-one, so get out.

Yeah. I remember just near the Mater Hospital there, there was a hotel. It’s still there today but I can’t remember the name of it today. We used to go in there and there was a small jazz band with a piano. We used to love the music, so we’d be in there drinking. They knew we were underage. When the police raided they’d pull the piano out and stick us behind the piano, so the police never found us. We were always hidden in behind the piano.

I did a lot of mountain climbing, a lot of walking, a lot of shooting. I train people with weapons today. I don’t know, it was grog, cars and girls I suppose. That was it. There was no drugs. That’s a blessing. There was no such thing as drugs.

That didn’t come in until I suppose the ‘60s. I never had the problem of drugs. It was safe to walk around the streets. My sisters could walk anywhere at night time, never be molested. But if anyone ever grabbed one of them, they’d let her go at the first street light so that was alright.

I tell them that so it doesn’t matter.

No, I never went to high school. The family was too poor. I went to work to support the family. By that stage my mother and step father had married and there was a need for money. So I never went to high school.

No, I went to Year Eight and from there I went to work. From

there, I did a lot of self learning I suppose you would call it. I read a lot. I don’t read fiction. I think that’s a waste of time. Don’t lecture me on this. I’d rather read facts or travel or something that’s educational. I do read the occasional books. I read Catch 22, fascinating book. I’ve read a number of fiction books but I don’t …

I tend not to…I read medical engineering. I read the dictionaries. I read all sorts of strange things. So that was schooling for me.

A place called Raften and Ladder. It was a big timber mill. I worked there on what they called the number one bench, where they used to break the logs down and that’s sort of where I got the passion for the bush with the logs coming in.

I loved seeing the timber being processed. I worked there until I felt I had supported the family enough and it was time for me to move on. I went back to Sydney and worked there in a company which made television sets. Then

I came back to Queensland and worked for a company called J. O’Brien and Sons which were paper manufacturers and that’s where I met my wife. At that time there was a fellow running around called the Ether Man. If you look through criminal history of Queensland, he would attack women by etherising them. My wife used to always look at me…she told me later on that she thought I was the Ether Man and that’s why I never had anything to do with you.

Eventually one day I worked in there…she was working in Montague Road, South Brisbane, and she was in a delivery warehouse and I drove the truck…I used to deliver stuff to this company, and I just said to her one day, “I’m coming over on Friday night and we’re going out.” So she did and I got away with it and we’re still together. Serves her right for listening.

Revisit the past, to possibly see my father again, to see if what I remember had changed, and it hadn’t; just generally I had this roving spirit. As I said I would ride anywhere, so long as I was going somewhere.

So I just had an urge to travel.

Yes. I wanted to be in the police or a pilot. So I became a policeman. It was a long and involved story. I wasn’t a general policeman. I had some unusual jobs. I loved it. I was really disappointed that I had to leave the police because of illness.

It really broke my heart. I did ten years in the SWAT [Special Weapons And Tactics] team; I did VIP [Very Important Person] security – that’s travelling with the royal family – all the royal families from around the world. Prime Ministers and Governor Generals and those types of people. I did general duties …a small amount of general duties. I worked in the fraud squad for about seven years. I loved it.

I wouldn’t have a clue. It was probably the quasi-military side of things. I don’t know. I always wanted to be one. It was just one of those things and never got around to it until later in years. I joined the police when I was about twenty-eight. So I had done a lot and seen a lot and had a circle of friends…life long friends.

I had been to Vietnam. I had been to Malaysia and Singapore. So it was just a natural progression. It was work outside, work with people. It had its bad moment, I can assure you, but generally I liked working with people.

Yes. I was fairly lenient in those areas. That goes back a bit too. There’s a place up on the corner of Greek and Anne Street; I can’t remember the name of the hotel now, but we were in there drinking one night and I went to the toilet, and Paul, my life long friend stayed there. He was in the bar and

I said I was going to the loo, and I couldn’t find it. I got lost and I ended up outside the hotel, and just as I ended up outside the hotel, the police raided and they caught him, and it cost him one pound sixteen shillings and sixpence. That was the fine he got for underage drinking. I think it was thirty shillings court costs so we were grounded for a while.

Yes. My grandfather. He was in the military in England. I think he was in the Scots Guard. He decided he didn’t want to play that game any more, so he jumped on a ship and came out to Australia and when he got here they said to him, “Hello, you’re a deserter are you? You’ve got two choices, the army or prison.” So he took the army and

was sent to Gallipoli. So he didn’t escape from too much, did he? Most of my uncles on my mother’s side. They were in the military, some in the air force but most in the army. I don’t remember that because the war finished in ’45 and I was born in ’47. Then I don’t think there was anyone from the family…and bearing in mind my grandparents

had six children and I was one of six, so you can imagine the multitude that there is. Bred like rabbits. I can’t remember…I think I may have been, although I may be wrong, but I think I may have been the first to be in the military after the end of the war. I think I was the first one to go back. I know I was the first to go on active service. And I think other than my nephew who’s still in the Australian Navy,

he and I are possibly the only two out of the entire family that have ever served overseas. Can’t think of any of the others. Most of the men on my father’s side…there’s a fairly blank space there because we were separated for years with no contact at all, I don’t have a great deal of knowledge.

I’m telling a lie. Lionel was in the navy but I don’t remember when, and he is one of my auntie’s husbands. The others I don’t know…they were in the …the word escapes me for the moment. They were in the compulsory trades or something like that. So they were diverted away from serving in the military because of their trades.

Probably, but I suppose they were a bit like me. You came home and you got on with it and you never thought of it. If you look around here, there’s not too many things to suggest I was even in the army. You just get on with life. There’s too much to be done to dwell on it. This was why I thought this would be important now, to at least put something down to say what we did and where we were.

The worst thing I found about schooling was we had to learn the kings and queens of England and we were taught absolutely nothing about Australia or Australian history or geography. We learnt…and I can still recite every major town between here and Cairns.

It was very, very limited.

Yes, they would raise the flag and that type of thing. The entire school attended, about six hundred kids. The flag was raised. It’s not like the Americans and I think it’s a pity. I think we should be a bit more like the Americans insomuch as

there should be much more honour of the flag, and this creates a culture, it creates a being, a place where you belong, and having travelled overseas, you really learn to appreciate what’s here in Australia. But other than that it was very limited. But we did learn the kings and queens of England and how the devil that helped us, I don’t know.

I would much prefer to have had something to do with Australian history, etc. But we were still tied by the apron strings of dear old England and a lot was lost and that was it.

Oh yes definitely. What else was there?

I believe in our Australian flag. I’ve very conscious of it. I believe it should stay. Hawaii…the Hawaiian flag has the Union Jack in the corner because they recognise the fact that it was founded by the English, and now it’s part of America, but it still has the Union Jack in the corner. I can’t see why we should change. We have our Southern Cross and we have the Union Jack. The Union Jack being our forefathers and families and the Southern Cross which belongs to us.

It’s all part of our flag and I can’t see any reason to change it. I’m very against changing it, as a matter of fact.

Virtually unheard of. I can’t remember as a young person too much about them. I can’t remember if I ever went to one. It doesn’t stick in my mind. I don’t think I even went to one as a teenager. They were probably there,

but Australia is becoming more aware now of its heritage and its culture and we’re starting to look at it and remember it and honour it and I think that’s important. I’m very Australian and very proud to be Australian. I’ve been to a lot of parts of the world and I’m damn glad to come home every time.

The Beatles.

Definitely the Beatles. That was the greatest thing going. I used to have long hair. Shoulder length hair. ‘Old Rubber Lips’ – the Rolling Stones – Mick Jagger. All that type of music, and I do like classical music. I have a lot of classical music. Now that’s a bit odd isn’t it? From hard rock to classical.

I’ve got an air for classical music and I particular like violins, you name it, I’ve got the lot. Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. That was about it.

I can’t remember whether the 45 was first. It was a record of about that diameter and then the 33s came later.

There were singles on 45s. Bear in mind in those days there wasn’t the technology and there wasn’t the availability of record players and radios. It’s in the last thirty to forty years that what you take for the norm today was pretty revolutionary. I remember television when it first came to Moorooka. A company called Chandlers up there in the main shopping centre put a set in the window and nearly all the people who lived in Moorooka went and stood on the sidewalk to watch television.

A black and white television about that size in the window. A fella would sit out the back and when it had finished, he’d come and turn it off and everyone would go home. The technology revolution has really accelerated in this last forty years.

No. Not my parents. No they weren’t very musical in that regard. I don’t think they would have even bought a record. They may have.

Record players in those days were pretty rare. It was a gramophone built into a radio which stood about the size of that television set there. That reminds me, if you don’t mind. My grandparents at Mascot. As I said, we were so close to the airport we had to open the front and back door so they could land down the hallway,

and they had a pianola and if you were very good when you went to visit them, we could play the pianola. You would put the rolls in and this thing used to play. It broke my heart. It disappeared when they moved and I would dearly love to have that as an antique here in the house. It was one of the highlights of me being a young fella.

But record wise…they were around. But not like it is today with CDs.

Pointy shoes, long hair. You followed the general trend of who ever was in musical power at the time…the Beatles and Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. They were a bit away

from the well groomed ones. It was moving towards the sub culture as we call it today. There were other people, but generally the trend was you followed the ones who were on the television. That was where you took your fashions.

Oh yes, the widgies and bodgies, rockers and mods and surfies and…they were segregated but they weren’t a problem. There wasn’t the violence that the groups today have. I’m sure there was the odd rumble or two,

but generally no. I was pretty staid. I just travelled down the middle of the road. I wasn’t too worried. I’m not one to be easily led so it takes a lot for me to follow a trend. Whether I’m old fashioned or what, I don’t know. It just never appealed to me. It’s like being in uniform.

Yeah, quite a lot. As a very young fellow in Sydney

I think a highlight was to be given a shilling and you could go to the movies and you could buy all the popcorn…it wasn’t pop corn in those days, but you could still have money left over. That was big, really big. Then we came to Brisbane the picture theatres were in, because televisions weren’t. There were many picture theatres, almost every suburb had a picture theatre. They’ve all gone of course. There were the drive

ins and they’ve all gone. So as a teenager everyone piled into the back of the car and went to the drive in. That was quite an event, and then there was always trying to hide someone in the boot so you didn’t have to pay to get in. We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. There was those

with the big cars and those with little cars. It was a lifestyle, and the climate here in Queensland lends itself to that open air culture.

Ben Hur. I’ve got a funny feeling the school actually took us to see Ben Hur. I do remember that one quite clearly. I think it was Charlton Heston in it.

Not really. That one sticks in my mind for some reason. It was probably the extravaganza of its era. It was really something out of the ordinary, that one. There would have been…it was pretty much a thing that you went to the movies, and canvas seats which I dare say the kids of today will never see…which by the ache in my back I’m quite happy to say they’re gone now.

Oh yes. Actually my wife and I went there right up until it closed. We used to go to the Boomerang and see the features there. It was absolutely fascinating. It was a pity. It was one of the last surviving picture theatres on the south side. We used to go quite regularly. We’d say to the kids, “Do you want to go?” “Oh no, we don’t want to go.” Typical kids. So yes we’d go a lot to the Boomerang.

Would you believe a character called Hop Harrigan who you’ve never heard of. He was on the radio, bearing in mind this is before television. He was one of those fellows who could beat up the bad guys and come out still without his hair ruffled. That’s a good question.

I can’t answer it because I really don’t lend that way. They were there and I’m sure I was influenced at the time but I don’t know.

Sean Connery in the 007 movies but then who doesn’t.

Other than that, no. That’s stretching the old memory too far for that one.

Yes. It was the thing for the radio to sit around the radio, and then when you got real big time you were allowed to have a radio in the bedroom. That was like, “This is heaven. I’ve got a radio in the bedroom!” Again, bearing in mind that these things weren’t available like they are today.

We even tried to make one, because you couldn’t afford to buy one. And only people of wealth had two. If you had two in the house you were a capitalist. If you had one you were doing real well. That was the way it was.

Being one of six, there were always regular birthday parties, particularly with my older sisters.

Being two girls they attracted boys like bees to the honey, and there were always plenty of parties at the house. The upbringing was quite…not severe, but alcohol wasn’t tolerated due to my father being an alcoholic. So if you wanted a drink you had to slide down the back of the bananas

and have a sip and come back inside again type of thing. But yes, there were birthday parties. We did the same with our two. We had …every year they would have a book to look at and we’d make a cake. You pick the cake and I’d make the cake. But nothing that sticks out in my mind, but yes we had the same sort of thing.

Every Sunday, church. We were Congregational

and we would be in church every Sunday. I don’t think it did me any harm. My sisters were teachers, not kindergarten teachers…I’ll think about it in a moment. I sang in the small choir that was in the church. The church helped us a lot in those early years of separation.

The church did help and having a strong leaning in the church and the people did help, and that’s how we survived for a lot of years until my mother remarried.

Sunday school teachers, that’s what I was looking for. Yes, Sunday school. You would do the normal service in the body of the church and then you went to Sunday school and that’s

where you did religious studies. I still quote passages of the Bible and shock people to think that I can. There’s still a few surprises in this old fella. We would then go out into the back of the church where you would do Sunday school studies.

I think there was a church group on a Wednesday night. It would be a meeting, a fellowship meeting or a young person’s meeting.

Well the very first thing? That’s a beauty. Basically that there was a war going on and it was a war aimed at stopping the spread of Communism down the Asian peninsula into Australia.

And bearing in mind, Menzies was in power in those days and he was very anti Communist. There was a very strong undercurrent of anti Communism here in Australia. And as for the war itself I have done a lot on it since. I know more probably than the average person does. I won’t go into the history of it, because you can look it up in other places. But

basically that there was a war and it was the domino effect that would follow…the collapse of different countries across to Australia. So it was probably the fact of that that made me consider eventually volunteering to go into the army.

Radio and television of course. Mostly television, because it was the most photographed war in history.

That has good and bad points but I think mostly bad points because it glorifies war, it glorifies suffering and people get the wrong idea. It’s not as sterile as turning the television off because when it’s all over it’s still there in front of you. People could look at it and then walk away from it. It’s something that happens. You will never stop it happening. It’s been happening since man became

a social creature. It will go on. We have at the present moment Iraq which is quite concerning. So I would say the greatest influence came out of the television set, but at that stage it hadn’t quite reached the crescendo that it did with the up front filming.

Yes, I’ve always been a person who’s been interested

in the news and in particular in other countries. I’m very interest and to this day and I can tell you most countries, some where other people wouldn’t know. I can tell you what’s going on around the world.

Pro-war. It hadn’t reached the anti-war fever that it eventually did come to. It was mostly pro-war at that stage.

Well, when you looked at it in those days, it was quite really. You weren’t being bombarded with it but if you stopped and reasonably considered it, it was quite a practical thing. A lot of people criticised, and it’s all very well after the battle’s over to sit there and criticise, but at the time what we did, and the men who went there

as National Servicemen, they did it because they believed, and if you didn’t believe you couldn’t do it. It’s as simple as that and for all those who sit around now in their soft armchairs criticising, they should really get out and have a serious look at what the climate was at the time. It wasn’t hysterical thing. You see the hysterical side of things now on the television, different cultures screaming by their thousands, that wasn’t the case.

But the anti-war movement became a very political thing and it was the Labor Party who needed a platform to gain power. I might be howled down on this and I don’t care, I’m going to have my say. They really played on it. The level where it affected society and people became anti-war…I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m saying, though, that we as servicemen were penalised by the public for something that we had to do,

and we had a belief that we were doing the right thing. I keep harping on the part that it’s very easy to sit and criticise.

Probably with friends, but most of them weren’t that way inclined. They weren’t socially aware I suppose you could say.

Some really didn’t care, but I did. I did care about it. I was very…you actually asked me this before and I can answer it now. I remember my uncle talking about fighting in the front lines up in New Guinea and how close the Japanese came to coming to Australia. And I thought, if that’s the case it could happen again, and I think that was the motivating factor for me.

Just the belief within myself. I believed in what was happening and I believed in myself. That’s about the easiest way to explain it. There was no one defining factor. It was just something I considered and moved to it.

I went in and I put my name down for National Service…I was due to come up for the ballot. And I

thought what the hell…so I put my name down as a National Serviceman. I didn’t know if I would go overseas or anything. I thought I would be doing the military service. Eventually the papers came through. I was invited to attend an interview at Enoggera.

I went to Enoggera and had medicals and psychologicals and the usual proddings and probings that they do. Then I went away and I eventually I was told to attend on a certain day and I went into Enoggera and we were then taken by bus to Eagle Farm. We went onto a Boeing 727 by Ansett.

We flew to Williamstown in Newcastle and then we bussed into a wonderful little holiday camp called Singleton Army Camp. And bear in mind, this was now coming into February and as a little Queensland boy I had never seen, since a young age, what winter was, and it was the biggest shock all of us as Queenslanders had, was the weather in Singleton. It is the bottom of the world.

I believed that it was alright. I couldn’t see any problem with it. I was never confronted by the old red raggers or the anti-wars or people running away to hide and this type of thing. It’s quite funny, one of the fellas I’m still friendly with, he disappeared. He actually disappeared up to the back blocks of New Guinea

until they said either you’re coming back, or we’re coming to get you. Now he’s one of the greatest advocates of the Vietnam War I’ve ever met. He disappeared into the boondocks [remote bush area].

There was never anything anti. There was nothing anti about it. It was just an accepted fact of life. The public

always perceived the Vietnam War as being what the vocal minority projected in the anti war era. Nobody ever talked about the pro-war era. So I wasn’t affected by it. It was only in later years.

I don’t think she was very happy, but at that stage I was coming up to twenty years of age and it was a bit hard to talk to anyone who was as headstrong as I am.

So she just shrugged her shoulders.

No…Yes, yes, it was of course. Yes, to the best of my knowledge it was still twenty one. But I had had enough anyway. I had had enough to float a rubber boat.

It didn’t bother me, because I could always get what I wanted. It wasn’t a problem for me. I never had any feelings and to this day I believe what I did was right at the time.

There’s no bones to be picked. That’s all there is about it.

Oh…what a place. I can remember the very first meal I got there. It was something they pretended was stew and the rib cage of a lamb was what we used to feed our dogs here in Moorooka. So the first meal I received in Singleton was a stew made from rib cages of lamb and I thought this is just wonderful.

The meals were very basic, but they were substantial enough to sustain you for the physical activity. You weren’t allowed to drink spirits but you could drink as much beer…because they used to beat it out of you the next day. They had a lot of fun beating it out of you. But spirits were forbidden because it took about three days to clear your system,

and they knew they could sweat it out of you the next day. I got off the plane. Went through the usual sixteen needles, had a stew, two choices, take it or leave it. We went down to huts. I returned to Singleton some years ago and they’re trying to rebuild what was there at the time. Not rebuild but at least try and get a picture,

image of what was there at the time. They were old grey army huts. Fibro walls, tin roofs so when the chill came in you really felt it. There were four men to a cubicle. There were five cubicles so that about twenty men to a hut. You walked in there, on the bed was your kit. There was a stainless steel clasp knife made

in Sheffield, England in 1956 and I have it today. It sits downstairs and it’s still there and it’s still in pristine condition. There was a petrol cigarette lighter because smoking was very big in those days. There was a petrol cigarette light. I’ve still got it and it’s still in its original packet. I’m might just divert here a little and explain…when

you were in training, they had this system whereby they would stop and they would say to you… “For those of you who smoke over here, for those of you who don’t start cleaning drain.” Or, “Stand over there and have a smoke. If you don’t smoke go through the actions.” So you’d stand there going like this until the corporal had finished and then you all started up again.

They went through the usual handing out of uniforms which were designed in England and great in tropical conditions. I think it had twenty six buttons on it, because zippers weren’t invented. And these very heavy woollen khaki uniforms. I still have the

army great coat I was given. That was made in about 1966. It’s pure wool. It’s hanging in the cupboard. I’ve still got that with the infantry buttons on it. Hat, weapons. But I had done a lot of shooting, so it wasn’t strange to me because I would often travel from here out into west Queensland to go shooting.

I did very well with weapons throughout the whole time.

Yes, I think we were known as C Company. I don’t know necessary whether there was a platoon, but there was a group. You were in C Company…there was A, B and C, the recruits, and D,E and F were the infantry trainees,

before they were then dispersed to the battalions.

At that time they were, yes.

Yes. Absolutely. It was 3RTB, 3 Recruit Training Battalion was what Singleton was and then there was a

corps section for the infantry training where if you were sent to another corps you travelled away. But you stayed there for six months from February through to October through one of the best winters you could ever have.

That’s a good question. I think there was three months basic and three months corps. So after three months, you were then transferred.

This is a question I like to answer. I clearly remember they gave us a document and it said to write down our choice of corps, and at that time I well knew that 1 Battalion, 3 Battalion and 4 Battalion were on rotation to Vietnam. They were due to go. I put infantry, infantry and infantry on mine,

others put medical, dental and blah blah blah. And out of all of us, only one man who was a dental technician didn’t go to infantry. The rest just went because they needed the numbers. And I remember they had us on parade one day and some little general turned up and he started asking were the men happy. The papers went away and they came back and everyone was going into infantry, so it didn’t matter, we were all in the same boat.

So this little fella turned up and he was parading up and down like a peacock and he stopped and asked a couple of the fellas, were they happy. Well, they in to him, they actually flew into him, and in the end he walked away. He didn’t want to talk to us any more. So that was it. 3 Battalions were due to be reinforced for rotation to Vietnam and everybody went to infantry. We didn’t have a choice.

One of the corporals explained to us that it was happening and a lot of the men wouldn’t believe it. The fellas who trained us had actually served in Vietnam and they were our training officers and they knew. They were professional soldiers and they knew damn well what was happening and they said, that that was it and that’s the way it’s going to be.

Those who didn’t listen got a hell of a shock.

At the time, bearing in mind that they were professional soldiers and they weren’t highly educated men and the fella we had was very good. He actually said that he understands that most of us were better educated than him. “I’ve been there. I’ve done it and if you don’t listen to me you’re going to die.”

He was very thorough and very forward with what he said. Sometimes I think he could have got into trouble for being too truthful because you weren’t suppose to frighten these little boys. They were given a job to do and one of the jobs was to beat you into the mould of an infantryman…’grunt’ as the word is. Do you know why they call them grunts? Because you grunt from wearing a heavy pack.

And they used to play little games to sort of entertain you during the night time. They would come down and they called it ‘leaps and bounds’. Leaps and bounds was an episode where they would turn up drunk as skunks at two o’clock in the morning and they would call for you to be out of bed in one minute to be standing outside in the freezing cold on the bare concrete, and they would then call three minutes for battle dress.

Now remember there’s twenty six buttons to be done up, so you’d expect to be abused because you weren’t correctly dressed. Then there would be sports gear and then there was something else, in and out in and out. And I remember they were playing this and I was getting a bit sick of it. I don’t wear pyjamas, so I thought stuff you, I’ll go out stark naked. So I went out there, this is middle of winter mind you. Everything was pretty well frozen including me. So I’m standing there stark naked and he looked at me, and he looked at me and

he just said, “Dismissed, get out.” I thought thank God for that. I thought everything was going to fall off it was that bloody cold. So they used to play little games, but I believed they believed in what they were doing. They had been to and gone through what we were about to be sent to and they

tried to do the best from their experiences.

Yes. If you didn’t conform it would happen. There’s no doubting that. I think a lot of this is…we as a society are becoming so soft and melancholy and it was just normal stuff that had to be done to prepare you for war.

There was one fellow who wouldn’t bath, so he got a regimental bath so we got sent down to scrub him with big scrubbing brushes because hygiene’s a critical thing in the tropics. Generally they would deliberately find a fault to show they had the authority and they were very authoritarian. And remember you would have to be taken

from a young civilian person, with very little discipline and brought into a society of high discipline. It was just a progression and bastardisation, unless it becomes violent and beyond, I think it’s a necessary part of toughening people for what they’re about to encounter.

No. No, even when I went to the battalion and mixed with the regular fellas, the toing and the froing and I

won’t go into the name calling, but generally we were all the same person. We came from a National Service Battalion and were dispersed to a regular battalion and everyone was treated equal. You would get the odd here or there, but people were not singled out, no.

Incredible. It’s hard to remember what they all did now. We had the dentist; and carpenters; and bank johnnies; and we had a fella who had been a rodeo rider; a tailor; an apprentice fitter and turner; tradesmen. It was very very across the board.

Everybody they just go on with what had to be done. You were too busy and too damn tired at the end of the day to care. When you first went into the training battalion, we all ate in the same mess. There was a lot of men, probably about a thousand or so, and they would say to you, don’t drink the coffee. Why? Because there’s bromide in it and bromide kills your sexual activity.

And actual fact you were so bloody tired at the end of the day all you wanted to do was go to sleep. You were back out at five o’clock in the morning and they would play this mongrel tune. It was a record and it had more scratches on it than it had music, and anybody ever plays that from my funeral, I will rise from the dead for ever. It was absolutely dreadful and every bloody morning they played the rotten thing.

I didn’t see any selective bastardisation. As I said, there was always normal interaction for people. It’s just part of life.

Actually, the minute

you walked through the door. You weren’t invited to sleep in that’s for sure. From the very minute you walked through the door. Physical fitness was a big thing. First of all they had to bring you up to a standard of physical fitness and in between times, there was weapons training

and there were lectures and church on Sunday. Everybody was taken to the big tents where the ministers were and they would talk about the morals of war and the morals of society and this type of thing. They would march you down and stand you in front of the minister and most of the fellas the first couple of times decided they weren’t going to church, suddenly got religion and went to church because if you didn’t go to church you went cleaning drains. So you learnt very quickly it wasn’t too bad to sit in church for a few hours. At least the bastards couldn’t get hold of you when you were in there.

No. People under stress get quite…first of all let me qualify this by saying I can’t answer for them because back in that day, there could have been a lack of needles.

But when we went through…you were actually like a pincushion. You went down a row of medics and they were just hitting you from both sides. They would throw the actual needle away and obviously they would then replace the fluids with a new needle. Back in the Second World War, I’m quite sure those sorts of things could have happened though.

The big strong ones passed out and the little weedy fellas like me just flowed through it. I’m still the same today. Let’s just get on with it and stop mucking around. No big deal. You had that damn many of them and you had them every year. I think there was something like sixteen a year or something like that. It was just part of, like,

and you knew it was necessary.

Ernie Eyre [?]. I remember Ernie so well and I don’t know what happened to Ernie.

He was a drunk. He was quite a drunk. He used to sleep on the floor because he would wet himself when he got so drunk.

And he was always in trouble. Particularly in corps training. I remember it so clearly. We weren’t allowed to drink in Singleton. We had to go Maitland, I think it was, the next one down. And we used to get drunk except a good friend of mine called Fred Burton. He was very religious. And he would put us all in the car and bring us home

and put us to bed. Anyway, Ernie disappeared this particular night and we didn’t know where he was and knowing Ernie, what the hell. I think we got up at five thirty and we had to go to breakfast at six, and the MP [military police] wagon pulls up. Out steps Ernie. He hasn’t got his hat, or his belt. Half his uniform is missing and the OC [officer in command] by this time

is saying, “Get out of my sight. I’m sick and tired of you, just get out of my sight.” So Ernie came over and joined us and we said, “What the hell happened to you?” He said, “After I left you I ran into this dog. She was beautiful. We ended up in a motel in Singleton and when I woke up in the morning she had no teeth, half her hair and she was so bad I just got out of bed and took off. I left my uniform behind.” He was just one of those people. He would never do anything wrong. He was just a character.

I hope he’s alive today. He was a really decent fellow. Everybody had their idiosyncrasies, that’s for sure.

Mine was Bluey, of course, but that’s been the way it’s been since I was born. Indirectly yes and no. Some do, some don’t. It flows on. You have to do something to be named accordingly. Nicknames come

from various sources. Either something you did right or something you did wrong. I can’t remember, but in later years when we were in the battalion most people had a name and a lot of people don’t know the other person’s correct name. Like Sam Brown. Sam Brown…military people know what I’m talking about. It’s a leather belt

that an officer wears to carry his sword. And Warren Brown obviously got the name Sam. It’s just one of those things.

Very important.

It was always there. You always helped. If someone was having a bad time you helped. There was no two ways about it. If they were bludging

you kicked them in the guts and told them. It worked on the basis that everybody did it and if you were genuinely having trouble you got help, if you weren’t you were told to get up. So you learnt to stick together from a very early age in the service. You still had your arguments, of course.

Oh yes. But they still did and that’s why I hold them in high regards. A very good friend of mine, unfortunately he’s passed away from cancers from Vietnam…Doug was a fitter and turner and a very skilled one and he said he just didn’t want to be there and he played up. A couple of others

disappeared, but eventually they came back. Yeah, there were those who didn’t want to go, but they weren’t the red ragging types who would say they would rather go to gaol. They just said, if this is what it’s going to be, this is what it’s going to be. And I’d say to them, make the most of it. I know there’s not much to make, but let’s get it over and done with.

Nobody ever knew. I would be lying to answer yes. Most people anticipated that they would, but there was no guarantee. They could be injured during training. There was a multitude of things that could happen. When you went to the battalions you pretty well knew it was going to happen. After you were sent to the Corps of Infantry,

you pretty well knew where your destination lay.

I wouldn’t say keen, but you had no choice in the matter and that’s how it was and everybody was going, so it was all in one and all in type of thing. Doug, the fellow I just spoke of, he played up a little bit and they transferred him from 1 Battalion in Holsworthy to Townsville, and three weeks before we were due to leave for Vietnam, there’s Doug standing there with all his bags. So all they

did was just put him aside to keep him quite until things were ready and that was it, away he went. When the government has a war and you’re invited, they become very terse at you not turning up. That’s the easiest way of explaining it.

Yes, there was quite a big one. There was always a passing out parade between recruit training and corps training.

Yes my mother and father came down. None of my brothers and sisters. I think it was just my mother and father who turned up.

Holsworthy, out the back of Sydney near Liverpool. We were there from whatever to when we left for Vietnam. I left in the Advance Party to Vietnam in February ’68. So

we had six months at Singleton and six months in Holsworthy mixed in with Canungra and then we went to Vietnam.

No. Once you arrived you were dispersed throughout the length and breadth of the battalion and that way it would be ridiculous to put all new boys in one spot. You

need the experience and the maturity of the others to get you up to speed to be of any service.

Most of the fellas accepted you very readily. There was always ‘the bloody Nashos’ and that type of thing. There would be the odd one with a snarl but generally it was accepted. Men realise that something has to be done,

and they get on with it. There’s none of this odd one out type of stuff. We’re all in it, all in the shit, so let’s get bloody digging

No because I was in Charlie Company 7 Platoon. Ian Dawson who was killed in Vietnam, he had actually served in Vietnam for the previous tour so

we were pretty keen to be with anyone who had previously done service. That’s where your skills come from and you’re learning. So we were pretty lucky. Dispersed through the battalion were men who had previously served. So we were one of the lucky ones.

They did that with all the battalions. They mixed the old and the new together, and that way you would reach a status quo across the group.

“CanIhaveyourwatch?” And you’d say, “What are you saying?” And they’d say, “When you get killed, can I have your watch? I haven’t got a watch as good as that one.” Well you did ask. That was one of the fun ones.

Generally they just spoke of different operations they had been on and events they had been through. There was no weeping and tearing about it. They were soldiers and they had a job to do. And you were too damn busy getting on with life to be sitting around yarning about those types of things. They loved seeing young fellas, whether they were National Servicemen or others in the mud and that sort of thing,

that was great because they had been through it see. But when the shit’s really start flying, bullets don’t have friends. There’s no such thing as friendly fire. That’s a misnomer. There’s no such thing as friendly fire because when it’s coming in, it’s coming in, and there’s no friends at the end of it.

It was only every now and again they’d talk of certain events. But basically the human mind puts aside the bad things in life and really only relates to the good things. And only if you sit there and prod the memory, will that event come back. If you’re stressed or you’re having medical problems they do flood back.

Ever seen the carnage in a road accident. You don’t dwell on it and every five minutes pick it out of your brain. The main has this incredible ability to put those things aside and move on with what’s more important. What’s present in life.

A lovely holiday camp. Lots of green.

We were all young and fit so it really wasn’t all that tough. I wouldn’t recommend it as a holiday camp, but there was a lot to be done and you were preparing to go somewhere so you took notice and you did it. It was very tough. I finished up doing eleven trips to Canungra,

which meant eleven trips through the obstacle course which everybody fears and dreads. I was in the police emergency squad, commonly known as the SWAT team, and they would go up there every year and run us through and to me it was just hard dirty work. I can remember when I arrived back there I thought, what am I doing here? I promised I’d never come back to this place again. So I finished up doing eleven trips there.

Eight minutes of hard dirty work.

The first time you were very concerned because you didn’t know what was going on? You could hear the low firing. You could hear the explosions. You people survived at the other end of it so you had something to look forward to. You actually got to jump in the river and clean some of the mud off.

It was a challenge and individually you take the challenge on and do the best you can. This obstacle course that everyone makes such a big deal out of, I mean it’s an eight minute walk in the mud. That’s about all it is. It tries to cover the phobias of men. There’s height, there’s confinement, there’s moving platforms, there’s mud. They love you to get wet and dirty because it’s very difficult to do things when you’re wet and dirty.

It’s really to try to show you how to overcome these phobias that you’ve manifested in your mind. You crawl through a pipe and drop about five feet into water. You don’t know how deep the water is because it’s very muddy. The crew in the morning had either been standing there spewing in it or peeing in it because they had drunk too much the night before. So you drop into that. So you had to try and keep your mouth closed as you went through it.

Then there were swinging bridges and barbed wire, live firing beside you and explosions as you went through. You were too bloody busy getting on with it to stop and think about it, and if you stopped and thought about it you wouldn’t do it. It’s simple as that. Once you started, you kept going until you finished. But people make quite a big deal out of it.

It’s a pussy cat, a walk in the park. Even an old fella like me did it so many times.

You would get kicked up the arse by the fella behind you because it’s to be done in a time limit and if you do it too slow they make you do it again. So there was a very big incentive to get through it. So if there was a fella in front of you who got knocked over and pushed the other way, he damn well got up and kept moving. It was always good to go first. I learnt that in later years.

Every thing was clean and dry. After about twenty seven fellas had piled over in wet and muddy clothes, everything was wet and greasy and you fell over and got bruised, so you learnt to get up in the front of the cue. And my name being Anderson, every time the called the roll, who copped it first? Who copped it first to throw the grenades, who copped it first to use the machine gun? Who copped it first to fire the Carl Gustav, who copped it? The A’s.

Being an A and I was probably the only A in the group, so I copped it every time. So I survived and they would all say well if he can do it than I can too.

Yes, and it also showed you what you were going to be up against. It really brought the realisation of what you were going to, because they

had villages and areas set up that were mine areas and like a foolish fool you would have walked into these mined areas and that would have been the end of you. So you became very acute and very aware of your surroundings. There’s a thing called hyper-vigilance, and I think most men who have been to Vietnam do suffer from hyper-vigilance.

They will sit with their back to a wall. They will always be aware of where an exit is. They will always look for something. The wives of servicemen like to go out together and sit there and giggle and say, “I’ll sit here with my back to the door,” and they go on like this type of thing. Their husbands to this day still suffer from that hyper-vigilance.

No one

can create reality. No amount of props or play games or anything can create reality. That’s a fallacy. They can give you an idea, but, definitely no. It prepared you subconsciously. That was about the limit that they could do. Nothing was the same.

On the day I got sent to 1 Battalion. I can remember very clearly some officer came on parade and said to us, “I want to quash the rumour that we are going to Vietnam. I do not want to hear any more of this. This is absolute nonsense.” You are not to talk about this. And then some weeks later they paraded us and said,

“Gentlemen, I’m prepared to tell you now that we have been allocated to go to Vietnam.” And then he preceded with a talk about…some of you will die, some will be injured. This is the reality of it. That was the first official notifications by the CO [commanding officer] saying we are going. And that would have been probably November. But you knew anyway.

I hope it’s not me. People feel that this type of conversation is very bad, but reality is reality and they had prepared us for reality, and as I say, to speak like that wasn’t out of the norm. You are going to a war zone, get it in your head, and there will be death and there will be murder and there will be bloodshed everywhere. Be

prepared. To stand up and say, hey look when you get there everything is going to fine and dandy would be a damn lie and it would be ridiculous of any training organisation or any group preparing men for war to talk in any other terms. It was a reality. That’s what it was going to be, and what would I think? I would think I hope to God it’s not me.

That’s it.

Of course. That’s how you survived. You either got drunk or told silly stories and that’s how you did it. That’s how people overcome tragedy. As I said, the watch episode was a classic. “You’re a new boy. That’s a nice watch, can I have that watch when you die?”

You have those types of things being thrown at you all the time and then of course you find ways of returning it as well. I can’t go into a lot of the things that were said, because I don’t know if they would allow them on the film. But there was all sorts of things.

Little suggestions about their girlfriends for when they got back And if they didn’t get back then you would definitely make a visit for them. Things along those lines. As I say we won’t go into those sorts of returns. That type of thing, and make sure you leave enough money, so we can at least have a drink….it’s hard to remember.

It was banter amongst us all. It was never taken seriously. I always made sure I had a poor watch so no one ever got my watch. It’s how you overcome adversity to make light of it.

Laugh at it, because it’s going to happen so you might as well get on with it. A lot of people may not agree with me saying that but it’s what happened. It was reality, and it’s how you overcome these types of things. That’s it.

Be first off. Be first out of the vehicle because if you weren’t, it made you a better target.

You just learnt to get off in a hell of a hurry. One of the things that were put into your minds was that you weren’t to use rings, because army trucks have a nasty habit of catching wedding rings. A number of fellas lost fingers that way. You never wore rings. I never wear them today. A lot of men, as they were jumping from a truck

if you put your hands down somewhere, it may catch and it would take it off at this joint here.

Yes, and it happened over there. Basically before you arrived in Vietnam your rings were off anyway. The only thing you wore was your dog tags.

It was great. Better than walking seven miles.

Actually…there were a number of flights but I can remember on one particular occasion, the pilot took us down a river near Holsworthy, and there were girls bathing on a sundeck so we just hung over the water until the chief pilot told us it was about time we went back. Flying in a helicopter with open doors is a very unique experience.

You don’t fall out. Centrifugal force keeps you in. You’re always damn scared of falling out the first time. But I would rather fly in a helicopter with the door open. I’ve flown a lot now. But I would rather fly with the door open, because at least you’ve got some change if it goes down. The stop at the bottom is what hurts, so it’s best to get off before it stops.

The stick goes in (the stick is the group). The stick goes in and everybody…you pack in like a sardine. The lift off is usually the best part of the ride.

It’s like being on a roller coaster at the sideshow. Flying itself is very noisy. You have to yell to be heard but most of the time you shut your mouth. There could be…particularly near the ground it gets pretty dusty. There’s dirt and rocks flying everywhere. There’s a lot of dirt flying around.

You don’t wear hats. You get in and hang on and enjoy the ride and wish to god it didn’t stop.

The bloke next to you. That’s all there is. If he goes you go. You could always push him and hang onto his part of the seat. People have a misconception of helicopter flying. It’s

fabulous with the door open. The noise and the wind and the fumes, they’re all things that flood into your mind. But basically I suppose you’re more interested in where you’re going and what’s at the end of it. I think you’d have to ask individuals what they think.

Oh yes. Definitely and I actually still have the original will. Everyone had to make a will. People are frightened of making a will. They think it’s a bogey man that’s going to cause you to die. But yes, ours were made. You were given the will form. You were told the basics that had to be written and then you wrote what ever you felt. I’ve still got mine.

I’ve still got my army pay book when I went in there with all my hair and they put a set of clippers here on my forehead and went straight over. Everyone got the same. I sent photographs home. There was one with me with a hat on and one without, and they all said, “Who’s the other fellow in the picture?” They were two separate pictures. Mum could recognise me with the hat on but not without any hair. I had quite a lot of glowing locks in those days, and I was very red as you’ll see in the photographs.

I’m grey now.

Sit in the one room and you can ask questions. By this time, at the age of twenty and considering what’s happening, you pretty know what the devil is going on, insomuch as not too many men in that era had too much to leave. The three pieces of chewing gum on the end of the bed,

you can have those type of thing. Basically you just wrote it in general terms. I can’t remember what it is. All my worldly assets were to go to the family.

No it was just another form to fill in really. I’ve made a will three times since then.

Again, it could have been an individual thing but it didn’t really cause me much trouble. I think it was a necessary thing that had to be done and I believe every body should make a will. I think it’s very important. As you get older, a power of attorney. As a practicing Justice of the Peace for twenty six years, I fill a lot of these types of things in.

Good

question. Where did we go? I obviously came home to Brisbane. I spent a bit of time with the family. Time with my wife. I don’t remember, funny enough. I know I came back to Brisbane and I know we left from Brisbane. I went by train and went back to Sydney.

There were hundreds of fellas. I don’t know. It’s a blank spot.

Probably. They were non drinkers, so I was the odd one out in that case. I didn’t mind a cold drink on a hot day. I wouldn’t mind two cold drinks on a hot day, even today.

Now my wife. There she is there, good looking. She was very concerned. I had given her a friendship ring which was sort of a commitment, not as much as an engagement ring. I took the realisation that I could be killed and I didn’t want to make a commitment.

It wasn’t until just before I came home that I wrote to…we had corresponded during the time I was away, and I said that I intended staying in the army for a couple of years. I will be going to Malaysia and I said I thought we should get married. She was eighteen and she was below the age of consent, so I had wrote to her parents and her parents had to fill in forms to say she could be married. That was thirty five years and one month ago.

We’re still here, so something must be right.

Absolutely not. Definitely not. No, there was no reason for it to cross my mind because of where I was going and what could happen. It never crossed my mind. I would have liked to have, but it never came into a definite mind thought.

When I came back, but not while I was away.

Yes. Quite easily. It doesn’t take much.

From Sydney to…there’s another blank spot. I daresay it was from Mascot. We went onto a Qantas 707. I flew

in the wing window seat on the starboard side. I can clearly remember seeing a badge of the Flying Eagle of Pratt & Whitney. Today I have a belt buckle of that. We landed…

we were coming into Saigon and we could see all the bomb marks. No sorry, we landed in Darwin and they refuelled in Darwin. One of the boys decided to have a bit of fun, so he got one of the bags for airsickness and put some stuff in it and got a spoon and walked down the aisle eating at it and looking at everybody. We did have a weird sense of humour.

I think I have a wicked sense of humour but my wife tells me it’s weird, not wicked. It was fun, what the hell. We were coming into Saigon and you could see the bomb marks and everything. I remember this as clear as it was yesterday. The pilot came on and he said, the weather is this, the runway is that, the temperature was so and so and the ground fire was light to moderate. So everyone has a sense of humour.

No, no. Sydney, Darwin and Saigon, and on the home flight, Saigon, Sydney, non stop.

Um, 707s fly like buses. They don’t do things very sharp. It’s not like a jet where it swoops in.

They’re big aircraft and they have to have a certain glide path to come through and there was nothing outstanding about the landing apart from the pilot saying about the ground fire being moderate.

Was a bloody experience, because you didn’t know if he was joking or not. You could see the bombs where there had been explosions all around.

At that time during the Vietnam War, Saigon was the busiest airport in the world. It had a flight every minute, a take off. You were too damn busy watching all the aircraft and remember I’m an aircraft enthusiast. There was just too much to be seen and looked at. We were then unloaded and

we walked about one to two hundred metres across the tarmac onto the back of another plane that took off and dropped us into Nui Dat. And coming out was virtually the same thing. Straight out of Nui Dat into Saigon, two hundred metres into the back of another plane and home. When I went back to Vietnam in ’99 I said to my wife I was going to Saigon and she said, “Why, you’ve already been there.”

I said, “Yes I’ve seen two hundred yards of runway that way and two hundred yards that way and that’s all I’ve seen.”

The heat, the smell, the fear, the noise. It was just an incredibly busy place with military things happening.

It was like, wow! It was like Kings Cross on New Year’s Eve. It was just packed with people doing things. Everybody getting on with what they had to get on with. There was just too much to sort of….and remember this wasn’t a leisure cruise. This was get over there and hurry up sort of stuff.

The back door of the plane closed and we took off again. Probably about twenty minutes on the ground and we were gone again. So I really didn’t have too much time to contemplate the niceties of Saigon.

If you said you weren’t scared, you were a liar or a fool. It’s as

simple as that. Everybody would have had an amount of fear because you just didn’t know. You didn’t know where you were going and what was going to be there at the end. You didn’t know where your weapons were. You didn’t have your weapon. That’s pretty scary and that affected me later in years when I was in Malaysia without a weapon. So much is going through your mind at the same time and I’m sure every man would have been the same.

February in Vietnam is quite hot, but Vietnam is hot all the time. The smell of Asia is something that everyone who’s been to Asia will know. It’s the smell of Asia and it’s right across Asia. It wasn’t in Japan and it’s something to do with the humidity

and the different vegetation and particularly where food is prepared there’s a different smell. It’s a smell you won’t forget once you’ve known it. I stepped off the plane in Singapore and it was exactly the same. Every Asian country I’ve been too…there’s a distinctive smell. I’m sure when the Asians come here, there is a smell of Australia.

And we don’t notice it because we live with it but I’m sure they notice it. As I said the heat and noise and the whole bloody lot. But next moment the plane door closing and you fly high enough that you don’t see anything and then you drop in. You were talking about steep angle of entry. Then you drop into Nui Dat

at a steep angle. Even though the area…these planes are designed for this type of thing. That’s their normal flight pattern. Then you turned around at the top of the dust bowl and unloaded. You were replacing a battalion that was currently there and just coming to the end of their twelve months. You were dispersed amongst where you were being sent to,

and preparing for the main body of the battalion to arrive. Everybody has a job to do. It’s not like you’re there on a holiday. Everybody has something to do. There’s no tomorrow. It’s got to be done so you’re back into what you’ve been trained for.

A plane load. What ever a 707 could carry.

Yes. We replaced 7RAR and they had made a sign on a sheet. We had a Shetland pony as a mascot and they had a pig and the sign read (I’ve got a colour slide of it). It read, ‘The pig battalion welcomes the pony soldiers’. It was a picture

of a horse standing on its hind legs and a pig standing up greeting each other. They had that up over the gate.

I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. There would be some reason back in history. Why do they call the Oscars the Oscars? It’s because a fella called Oscar actually resembled the figure and the public picked up on it and

they were literally forced to use the name Oscar, because everybody knew it as an Oscar. And there would be military tradition of course for the reason that those particular animals were used. 5 Battalion has a tiger. One of the battalions has a hawk. I can’t remember which one it is. Each battalion had an animal mascot.

At Nui Dat. We had nothing on the flight between Saigon and Nui Dat and back again. No weapons. The weapons were at the base. It was a very uneasy feeling to step off a plane into a war zone without something. You were really putting your life in other people’s hands. It was pretty scary.

It’s in that book on the table. I would have to look at the dates, but probably about a month…it was a gradual changeover, but the main body arrived en masse and the main body leaves en masse.

Familiarisation with the area; supply lines – bearing in mind I was only a little soldier, one of the ants, not one of the

kings. Mostly being familiar with the surroundings and so you were aware of what was happening at that time. When the main body arrived at least you could be of some assistance to the poor devils.

Get off the plane and start work. That’s it. Nobody invites you to these things. You’re just expected to do it. Nobody goes and holds your hand. Nobody asks if you’re feeling melancholy and missing home. None of those events happen. So you start work. That’s your job. No thank you. No ‘kiss my arse’, no nothing.

Actually when they first rang me and asked me about this…I did patrols, a lot of patrol work from the main base. That was being done all the time the Australians were in the base. One thing I’d like to get across to people is, everything you’ve seen on television so far is Americanised. We are not Americans, we’re Australians, and we have a totally different way of perceiving and performing and

our attitudes are different. They have massive numbers of machinery. We’re a small nation with a small force and we had a totally different way of approaching things. The perception the average person has got is what they see on television and it’s absolutely nothing like it. We were supplied by the Americans and with some stuff out of Australia,

but generally we took what we were supplied with and converted it to our way of life. That’s the easiest way of explaining it. I’d like to break this perception of what the American image showed. It wasn’t. We had a different attitude and a different field of operation. We had different attitudes to things that could be done and should be done. We don’t allow civilians

on the base. The Americans have civilians everywhere. The Australian Army does not have civilians on a base. The base is a closed base with Australian and direct military personnel only. We never saw an Asian on the base, unless they had them in some areas where I may not have visited. But I can possibly say I only saw one Asian on the base in our base and he was in a senior uniform at the time with

senior people. They were just not in the base at all. The movies always show the civilians doing the washing and ironing, no. It doesn’t happen. The Australian army is self sufficient. We do not rely on the civilian population at any time. I hope I made that point clear.

No, because it’s too big. I can’t. This is another interesting thing that’s come out in later years. You never saw outside the immediate area you were in until you had to go somewhere.

And then you saw very little of that. It wasn’t like you could have a holiday and pop over and see Fred over there, that was not the way it operated. Most of the men as I talk with them today, never saw anything of other people. You only saw the people you were with. You had an area

of responsibility and you couldn’t get up and go for a wander somewhere, it just wasn’t done. You had to be accounted for and responsible for your area at the time. I was very fortunate, in that I travelled a lot inside the Nui Dat base because of my job. But most of the men never saw a thing and I’m sure as you talk to more of them they’ll say the same thing.

There would be nothing they could relate to other than their immediate area. I saw most of the areas but to sort of describe it is a bit difficult. It was very crudely in the shape of a clover leaf, the entire base. There was Nui Dat Mountain. Nui Dat is Vietnamese for ‘dirt hill’.

The SAS [Special Air Service] were up on the top of that, the Centurion Tanks, the artillery were behind. The helipad was to the east of the mountain, I think, in other words the opposite side to us. The main task force administration operation centre was over there somewhere. I never saw that. 4 Battalion in essence was on…

we were on the…facing the clover leaf, we were on the left hand side and 4 Battalion was on the top side of the clover leaf, and 3 Battalion was further out. Then the supporting facilities, artillery, engineers, ops, intel, the gasoline cowboys…

They were all there in, let’s call that the right hand clover leaf. That’s about the easiest way of explaining it. Then everywhere around us was completely denuded of vegetation other than grasses and stuff like that. Bear in mind that

the big Battle of Long Tan was only five or six kilometres away…the big Battle of Long Tan actually occurred. The mounting of…I think it was 245D Battalion, the North Vietnamese, their aim was to attack the base. They don’t know. Actually, that’s something that came into my mind. I asked my boss one day. I said,

“Why the hell don’t they have a go at us?” And he said they didn’t know what was in here, and that was the reason civilians were never allowed in. All they could see was the rubber plantation. From the outside if you looked at a photograph, you could see the runways and you could see vegetation, but nothing else. Whereas the Americans, they could flatten everything, which makes you an observer on the outside, clear to look in.

And you can plan what you’re going to do when you get in there. But the base was closed and vegetated and that way it gave you security because if you’re looking in you can’t see what the hell’s in there. It’s like going to a spooky house, what’s inside. You know what’s outside, but what’s inside?

The APC [armoured personnel carrier]

drivers, the tankies. The gasoline cowboys. They road these horses with gasoline. Artillery was drop shots. Peter was one of them. We were the grunts. The ginger beers were the engineers. Who else were there. 161 Recce [Reconnaissance] Flight was just at the edge of us. There was a thing called the dust bowl at the back. It was a turn around area

for the planes because the runway came in and it actually went up hill into a dust bowl, and it was an area for the planes to turn around. So you never went near that area. It was just a dust storm as the planes turned around.

It’s so long ago now to remember these different areas. That’s why it’s important to go back because the mind plays games and confuses and twists things, and when you go back and put it in focus, the mind says…it’s gone. Like when I spoke to you early on about this.

This closure. I’m very much a believer in closure. You can only have closure by visiting and shouting at the devil. That’s the only time you can have it. You have to go back and shout at the devil. Then your mind can rest. And I’ve found a lot of peace in my life by doing that.

Where did that come from? Yes it’s a good thing. Let’s get onto something else.

The God damns. Oh yeah. They were down in Vung Tau. There’s a place called Baria, which was the nearest town to us. It had

a number of outposts between us and them. And the drive to Vung Tau was, I think, about twenty seven kilometres of open road. I’ve got an expression…they probably won’t like this part. Collectively they’re a bunch of bloody hysterical morons, but individually they’re great people.

Truly. They’ve got a different attitude to everything. We’re bits of devils in our attitude and they’re so punched up and gung ho. I don’t know. I’m not criticising. Please don’t think that. I’m not criticising. But they are different. And with all my travelling through the world, people think we’re American,

and when we travel through China, it’s always, ‘When your President does this …or that.” You say, “We don’t have a president, we’re Australian. We look the same but we don’t sound the same.” People say all Asians look the same. They’re not. I can tell you every country, just by looking at the people and their features. But we have the joke that they all look the same, but they say the same about us.

The American military is something to behold. The quantity of munitions and equipment is mind boggling. To see the amount of equipment that they have as against us. It’s just phenomenal. But we made do. We held our end up pretty well. I’m quite proud of what we did.

No, never. Hang on I tell a lie. I was up the Cross [King’s Cross – Sydney], with a few of the boys having a beer one night and we met some fellas on R&R [rest and recuperation]. And as I said, individually they’re really great people but collectively they are so hysterical. So bloody hysterical. The Australians don’t have this

…generally through the society…I call it hysteria. The civilian population is the same. The world is us type of thing. But it’s not, they’re only a small part of the world. Very generous. Always fascinated by us. We were unique to them…’God damn you’re Aussies!’

‘Have this’. “Oh no, I can’t take that back with me.” ‘Have this gun.” “I’ll give you my gun for that hat.” Our Land Rovers were small and under powered compared to the American equipment. Theirs was big and powerful and it makes it a big target to shoot at too. So I prefer the little one.

Any American vehicle that came near our base got a kangaroo stuck on it. Our vehicles didn’t have kangaroos on it. They have symbols and if you look at the vehicle outside you’ll see the unit has a number plate, as in a number

not a number plate as we know of. And there’s certain insignias, and by looking at the vehicle’s insignias you can say what unit they’re from, within reason if you know of course. The infantry battalions, after the Second World War finished, there was the 55th, 56th and 57th Infantry Battalions of the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]

who were disbanded and reformed to create 1 Battalion, 2 Battalion, and 3 Battalion, and the insignia on the 1 Battalion vehicle is number 55, because the bulk of the men were taken out of the 55 Battalion to form the nucleus of the 1 Battalion. From 56 they went to 2 Battalion, and 57 went to 3 Battalion. So it’s a red plate about that

square with white numbers on, and that’s why you’ll see 55 on some vehicles. And if you see a red plate with a number on, it’s an infantry battalion. If it’s got a line drawn across with different colouring, it could indicate artillery, or engineers or any particular group. So the insignia on the vehicle basically indicates who they are and where they’re from. But you’ve got to understand these number plates to decipher who they are.

And a lot of people never knew. A lot of men I spoke to never knew why we had 55. We came from the 55 Infantry Battalion from the Second World War.

Quite well. As I said, we were a fascination to them. “God damn!”

They accepted us very well. There were certainly no problems there. As I said, they were very generous but collectively they were a fairly hysterical bunch. Anyway they were all pumped up. I don’t know what it is, maybe their way of life. But I do like them as people. I’ve got a very good friend over there and he’s been out here to visit us.

Hysterical is probably the word I use. It was like they were on a high all the time. Everything was just gung ho and go. There was nothing laid back about them. They were all bloody twitchy if you ask me. They had a damn good reason to be too, if you ask me.

They’re loud and they’re boisterous and the world revolves around them. So if that’s your bag, you carry it.

I went out with a fella called Ned Kelly.

He had been on the first tour and the bugger went to sleep and snored. I was terrified. I don’t think I ever closed my eyes from the minute I landed in Vietnam to after I came back. I might have gone to sleep, but I’m sure my eyes were always open. Your ears are always open. The very first time out?

It’s scary. You don’t know. You don’t know what’s out there. The mob before us, they knew and they were pretty relaxed because they knew what was there. But for you, the first time…I know I never went to sleep all night. I never closed my eyes. I think they were bloody glued open actually. Nothing happened and we were only out for about twelve hours.

A couple of kilometres and then we came back in. It was sort of a bit of a shake down. That was it. Everybody got to do them, and the base remained secure by having these constant roving patrols out from the base.

I don’t think you ever go to sleep.

You always slept with your ears open. You were always very much aware of what was around you. Any noise, any noise at all, and it took me many years to get over this, the slightest noise would wake you. But after a while…you’re young and fit, and you get on with it. Sleep was something that was rare, as in to lay down and got to sleep and feel comfortable, there was none of that.

You did lie down and go to sleep, but to feel comfortable? I don’t think so. You just never knew what was going to happen. That’s probably what’s affected a lot of people. Just that sheer unknown, more than anything else.

Oh, lovely. Do you want some? Yes,

well the cooks did a damn good job for what they were given. We had etherised eggs. We had pre-digested steaks…and I’ll explain that later. Most of the fresh rations were off by the time you got them, that’s why I can’t to this very day eat fruit salad. By the time the fruit arrived, it was starting to turn, and the cooks would chop it into fruit salad and because it was fresh, you ate it.

I can’t even stand sitting at the table looking at people eat fruit salad. The basic fare was what they tried…they tried to keep us on the same type of ration as we had here in Australia. It was food and you ate it. It was basic and it sustained life. That’s what it’s designed to do. We certainly didn’t get fat. You only have to look at the photos.

But there was always enough to eat and the rations when you were out…you had already been eating tinned rations, so it was just a flow on from what you previously had. The American rations were really good. Most of their food you could eat with a spoon, because everything just came out of a can and they just ate it with a spoon.

They had a more varied diet than we did, because the Australian population has the greatest diversity of cuisine that I’ve ever seen and the average Australian will eat a number of cuisines where the Americans have a very strict diet. The friend who came from America, I was amazed at how little they ate.

It was, “I’ve never eaten that, or we don’t eat that, or…” and Australians would eat a horse and chase its jockey. That’s about the only way to put it.

Oh, hell no. That was the only sedative that you could have. No. There were no spirits unless you smuggled them in. There was beer…just before we got to the beer. Etherised eggs were great. They soaked eggs in ether to preserve them. And no matter what the cooks did to them, they couldn’t get the ether out of the eggs. Powdered eggs, but etherised eggs, I can remember them so clearly. You always had the taste of ether after you had eaten them.

Every smelt it? If you’ve smelt ether, that’s what it tasted like.

They did the best they could with what they were supplied. They copped a lot of shit for no reason at all but generally they were damn good fellas and they did a damn good job. Bearing in mind what they were given to prepare for you.

You never saw the things you were considered to be normal at that time. Ice was like gold.

Ice was used to chill the beer. They had to be careful where they got it from. If it was made out of polluted water, then everyone got sick. An army marches on its stomach. So you had to be very careful. Even today you had to be very careful about what you eat or drink. We have one of the best societies in the world. We can drink out of a tap. A lot of countries, you can’t do that. We can

drink tap water in any state of Australia. It might taste a bit odd, particularly around Rockhampton way, it’s the worst water I’ve every tasted, but it’s still potable and it’s still drinkable. But over there you have to be very careful. Our water came out of a well just outside the camp and it was pumped and purified and served to you. That’s diversify a little. Let’s get back to the beer. We had

three beers. We had VB [Victoria Bitter] in green cans. We had Fosters…no, something out of Sydney. I’ll think of it in a minute, and XXXX, and of the three beers, XXXX was the worst. It never travelled and the cans were actually rusty from the climate, whereas the

VB and the Sydney beer…so the XXXX cans actually had rust on the outside. They were rusty by the time you got them. But the other’s travelled well so you tended to drink the other state’s beer. Of course you’d never admit it. There was beer until you misbehaved and you weren’t allowed to have any more. That was the biggest punishment you could get was to have the beer turned off.

Then all sorts of things used to go on. The boys used to play up a fair bit if the beer got turned off.

No, generally not. Not when you were back in the base. But there was none outside though. It was a sedative. It was a way to get away from the reality. You weren’t

drunk all the time. I mean you still had a job to do the next day. There was no forgiveness if you couldn’t stand up and do your job. Not even for my 21st birthday. I got told I still had to work even though I was as sick as a dog with a hangover. It was there…as much as you wanted I suppose you could say at the time. And

I still can’t think of that New South Wales beer. It was one of the regular ones.

In each company was a boozer and it was just more or less a tin shed and a concrete floor and some chairs. It was done there and you weren’t allowed to take it away from there. Or you weren’t allowed to get caught taking it away from there. The 11th Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not get caught!’

A bit of bad attitude. Slackness in work detail. General grumpiness. Most of it came from work not being done and a bad attitude.

Of course, we’re Australian.

Under the floor of the tent we had a sand pit and I build what you could call a sand esky. So we would hide stuff down in there. We did have Alan Bridge mix us up Old Spice, metho, some boot polish…we used to drink that when things were on the dry. It wasn’t bad, but you had to be drunk to drink it, so it didn’t matter.

You were too drunk to care. But basically there was generally not a lot of drinking that went on in the lines. You had to…you respected what you got and you were also responsible for being aware of where you were.

And you were responsible for your fellow man too, for that matter.

We never saw the Americans. I would have seen more Americans than the average fellow from my battalion because I travelled with the job that I did. There would have been the odd trade when they did come in contact with them. There were Americans outside the Nui Dat base in an

artillery unit. Whether D Company who were out there at the time had much trade with them, I don’t know. You must understand that each company is an individual thing in itself even though we were in the same battalion.

Although…it’s like a hand. All the fingers are part of the hand and they all work together but they are all still individual fingers, and that’s what a battalion is. It’s all these individual companies. Like a hand it still open and closes collectively.

Oh wonderful. A tent. A tent top with sandbag walls.

And the lucky ones had a timber floor. That was it.

Yep. We were one of the lucky ones. I think most of the boys by that stage…we had replaced 7 Battalion and gradually…I think 5 Battalion founded the base when they went through the plantation to clear it and then they decided that would be the base for the Australians at Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy Province.

And gradually that base had been built up by the time we arrived. The fellows who you will talk to if you get the opportunity in 1 Battalion on the first tour which was ’65, ’66 were directly housed with the Americans and they would be able to give you a lot more about what it was like to work with the Americans. But Australia by that stage had its own province to control

and be responsible for the field of operations throughout that area. And really, there weren’t a lot of Americans to be found other than at the major centres. The air support came from America and supplies came from America, but generally we were self sufficient and responsible for our area.

Three of us. Three or four depending on who was coming or going at the time. It’s a thing that the Australian Army does. Two men aren’t allowed to be in the tent together, in case they go a bit like that. So there has to be a minimum of three. From memory there was four of us. Some of this is a bit vague. I remember Jim was across from me and

Bob was there. I’m pretty sure it was only three. Only three in our tent.

Seeing how you’re a metric girl, I would probably say about four by four metres.

You have a bit there, but you’re not exactly carrying too much. Everything you had, you

had to carry. So you didn’t take too much with you. You took a change of civilian clothing and apart from that everything else was supplied. You might have a photograph but generally, no. It was pretty bare. People don’t realise how little you need to survive. And you learn that very quickly.

You need meals and shelter. Shelter is a plastic sheet and a meal is what you find to eat. It’s what sustains life. And if you talk to anybody who’s been through the misery of war, particularly the civilian population and you will be surprised at how little you need to survive. One set of clothes. So long as you’ve got shelter to get out of the elements.

And something to eat. And that sustains life. It’s not great, but you eat. That’s the way life is for the entire world and there’s a lot of countries where people barely subsist on just exactly what I spoke of. Nothing more. No riches.

Very little. I had a photograph of Judy.

I don’t know. I could look at that photo and I might see something in that photo, but generally there wasn’t room for it for a starter. There wasn’t a need for it. The army supplied you with what you needed to supply. The odd fellow had the odd thing or two, but nothing too much. You don’t need it and it’s too damn cumbersome to move around for a start. And remember you could be made to move at a minute’s notice. So really, there was nothing. You never sat on another person’s bed. That was the only area…unless you were invited of course. That was the only area that belonged to you. Every soldier will tell you the same thing. Yes, we used to sit on other people’s beds but you would never sit there without being aware of being invited. It was just not a done thing.

Yeah, Tet had erupted, that was about late February sometime. The biggest part of Tet was in Saigon itself, so we didn’t get to see it. The biggest area of Tet was Saigon and a place further up…although the whole country was inflamed more than normal, Saigon and a couple of American bases were the worst hit.

That where they mounted their main attacks, up near the Cu Chi Tunnels. Although it erupted right across the country, I don’t believe the Australian area was that influenced by it. There was quite a lot of bombardment down at a place called Baria which is the village outside the base. You will often see pictures where there was a big concrete building…it was the only

substantial building in the whole of the area…when I say the area I’m talking about a thirty mile radius, and it was mortared and the gun ships came in and rocketed it and there were a lot of people killed there. A lot of our fellows…one of the battalions walked into a minefield there, and that was probably

the biggest area for Tet that we would have been effected by. It was mostly Saigon. They were trying to show that they could get Saigon.

Lesser numbers, more active in what you’re doing, focused on what you’re doing. There’s no rodeos, there’s no bunching up, there’s no smoking.

The Americans work on the superiority of numbers. We work on stealth. The Americans work on a percentage of loss, we work on a percentage of none. We are there to win, not to lose or have loses. The Americans have a grandiose idea

of how things should be run, whereas we as a small nation and a small military force work on entirely different attitudes and we always work within the range of artillery, never outside of artillery. It’s just a totally different attitude. We can’t afford those types of tactics and we don’t use them.

We were more attuned to guerrilla warfare because of our training. Our training and our belief about war fare was akin to that type of warfare and that’s why our losses were so few and the Americans were so high. They just keep pouring men in, and pouring men in until the objective is achieved. Whereas we aren’t scared to pull back and get you later on.

We might walk around the side of the building and clobber you with a bit of wood.

I was machine gun. I usually carried the machine gun. I was very good with weapons, so I always copped the machine gun. A battalion is made up of companies and platoons and each platoon is then made up of sections. Each section was allocated so many types of firearms.

Rocket grenade launches and machine guns. And it just depended on the type of operations of the company and where they were operating from and the formation which they would use. There were many and varied and it depended on the density of the jungle and open plains. And of course the more the ground is open the wider the spacing because as the old saying goes, spread out because one hand grenade can get the lot of you.

It was true, so you never bunched up. The Americans have this attitude where we’re big and mighty and there’s a lot of us, so we’re going through right up the middle, it doesn’t matter. Instead of having to think about it and come around and knock on the back door, they went through the front door all the time.

Good. It was real good. I ripped my hand open in a ambush one night. The gun was firing and it ripped all the skin across my hand,

I never thought anything of it and about twenty five years later I was working on a car and I tore my hand again and that night I had a bunch of nightmares. It lies dormant, and what’s happening, and this is probably why it’s becoming of such focus here in Australia, as you get older, the idea of getting on with life and leaving the past where it belongs, it’s harder to suppress and as you get older

you can’t…as the saying goes, we’re six foot tall and bullet proof when we’re twenty but when you get to fifty you just can’t fight it internally any more, and this is when things start to happen. And this is why you see so many men are now falling over because of what has happened, mixed in with probably chemical poisoning. So it’s a two fold exercise.

Yes, that can happen. Barry Thomas had that exact experience. They got hit and he said the best thing that happened was the bloody thing didn’t work and so they stopped firing at me and turned their fire away form us. He survived but the fellas around him were killed. It can do one of two things. It’s like tracers. Tracers are a two way street. You can see where it’s going, well within reason, but you can always see where it’s coming from too.

So machine gun link was one in four or five with a tracer. So it was fairly good point to aim for in the dark because it was just a big white line leaving you and arriving at them. So anyone further away from it as a nice aiming point to come back to.

No, phosphorous just burns white. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen phosphorous burn any other colour. The colour that you see on the tip of the bullet is to indicate that there is more inside of it. It could be incendiary or tracer or HE [high explosive] or whatever it is, depending on the colour of the tip. So tracer is tracer and as far as I know it’s white.

When you first see it, it’s very pretty, but then when you realise what it is, it’s not.

I had no problem with it. When John Gorton came to visit the battalion, one of the armourers made a complaint that they were old and worn out and dilapidated and there was quite a hoo har about it. And all of the machine guns from the battalion were collected and tested

to satisfy John Gorton that what was being suggested to him about the dilapidated equipment wasn’t true. But I’ve seen an M60 blow the gas plug at the bottom. There’s been a flame that long coming out of the bottom and it still kept on running. And that’s with four or five men standing…they did a test on it, with link and their arms spread…I think there were five fellas with link and it just kept on rattling.

They were a very…they fired in a cone shape. Not like a Bren gun, that fires a very accurate fire. The cone is purely for advancing infantry as in multiple targets. That’s why it fires in a cone shape. It’s not like firing a rifle. It does spread itself around, if you like it or not.

You become very skilled with them. You could get away at least three and that would be about the smallest number you would get. If you got excited you might forget to let go and you ran out very quickly. I think the weaponry for the time was adequate. I feel the AR16 was underpowered in its

bullet mass. It was only 55 grains and I think that was a little bit underpowered. The AK47 had a 30 calibre round which was more adequate in penetrating jungle as the M16 deflects fairly easy. Horses for courses. It’s what you get. If you want to carry something light, then you carry that. You can criticise it, but it’s what you’re issued with.

Today they have the Steyr. It’s moved up to a 62 grain projectile with a tungsten tip in it the same as the 50 calibre had. It had a great rate of penetration as far as the bullet was concerned.

No, you usually get

whatever rations…you have to be self sufficient. The fellows in the companies who got stuck into the big long range patrols could better answer that. But what I've heard they were given no compensation. I know during training there was no compensation for it. You carried what was necessary and what was allocated. The

number two carried extra linking as well as his own firearm. You could never have enough, but then you could have too much and not move too.

No because I had varied patrols. I would have different people from time to time. I knew what I was doing and I felt safe and that’s why I always carried it. When I say I felt safe, I felt as safe as you could because I knew how

to use it. I proved during my training that for some reason fire arms were very natural to me. I train a lot of people with fire arms. I remember they had a thing called an F1 which was the great piece of shit I had ever seen. I hadn’t seen one of them since corps training and I was sent to Canungra years later and they produced

one of these from under a blanket and I nearly got it back together again with a gas mask on. And I could fire that single shot or bursts. It was just something I was able to do, and to this day I can still do it.

I carried a fully automatic SLR which was unheard of. My job was…I used to escort the boss everywhere he went.

It was necessary for me to have the fire power without the bulk. The armourer converted my SLR to full automatic, so that every time we travelled and we got shot at a few times, I at least had the fire power with us because there was only two of us in the vehicle and we would travel into a lot of areas

where those sorts of things were needed in those days. I found with the SLR it was a very accurate weapon except on automatic. The first three rounds were on the target and the rest were – it was just too light. But having the convenience of it was damn good to know in case you needed it. The magazines emptied pretty damn fast, once you hit that and you could over cook them if you weren’t careful.

No that was the AR [air receiver], mine was a SLR. The AR was a support weapon usually kept on the base. It was a heavier barrel and a detachable barrel. The SLR were made fully automatic and you only needed a couple of items to be moved to make it into a fully automatic weapon. But they were inaccurate.

One good shot is worth ten missed shots. That was the theory of it.

No, fortunately. I’m very pleased to say I didn’t. Once they get red hot you have to have asbestos gloves to pull them off and then you hope to Christ the bloody thing is going to work again. Theory is a wonderful thing until you put it into practice.

There were always arcs of fire and you were responsible for a certain arc of fire from where ever you were positioned around the perimeter of the base. That extended right around Nui Dat. It was the responsibility of the occupying group to be responsible for that area. We didn’t know, I only found that out later on, but they used to

fly over Nui Dat and photograph and pick up anything that had changed on the ground. And one night, I can’t remember when it happened, the artillery just absolutely went berserk one night. It woke us up. It was really unusual and it was heavy firing and it went on for a long time. We found out the next day that the Bird Dog [aircraft] had picked up a rocket launching base being dug.

It was only a couple of kilometres off the base. They watched them day after day and every night they would come in and dig it and then try and cover it up. And every night they would be back and dig it until it was just at the point of completion and then they opened the artillery up and blew it. So we were very close to being hit. These are the things you don’t know. The general people just don’t know.

Yes. That does happen. Yeah that can happen. The point of exhaustion takes over and the body says I don’t care, and you go into a deep sleep. But that’s very frightening. It happened to me and it frightens you because you think, “My God if something happens!” And here I am non compos mentis [incompetent, legally insane] type of thing.

But it does. Exhaustion plays a big part in it because you’re 100% adrenaline the whole time. Your ears are awake type of thing. You can hear a cat walk across soft tissue.

Yes, regularly. It might be your turn next so you never worried about it.

If it got too bad they would give them something, but normally the answer would be no. Everything is kept in side. Men are people who keep things inside. You weren’t looked down upon but it was something you didn’t do. You didn’t let yourself fall apart because it didn’t help. It didn’t cure anything. It didn’t help the people around you.

You tried your best never to let it happen.

There was a thing called R&C [rest in country], which was rest and convalescence in Vung Tau. You went down there for two or three days, and that was when it was available. In other words, depending on the work activities.

They would ship them down a company at a time. Of course the boys really ran amok when they got down there. And then R&R of course was a week and you were allocated to nominate where you would like to go. I went to Taipei. Different fellows came home and had a lot of difficulty coming back. It was a rule that if you went back to Australia you brought back a dozen fresh eggs

on the plane with you when you came back. “Hey, someone’s got eggs, you beauty!” Internally there was always the volleyball and a good fight. That usually got rid of a lot of pent up emotion.

Not a lot, and next day it was completely forgotten.

Everybody really understands the strain they were under and if someone went troppo and chopped up their mattress with a bayonet like one bloke did, they you just turn the mattress over. What the hell! As I said, it could be you next time.

That wasn’t too bad actually. A bit

clinical but it wasn’t too bad. I was fairly impressed with Graham Kennedy’s performance in that. It wasn’t too bad and it’s been a long time since I’ve since it. As I’ve said before, you can’t put reality on a make believe stage. It just doesn’t fit, and everyone

perceives something differently. It just doesn’t matter what it is that you and look at together, you will see something different to me. It wasn’t too bad.

Sheer bad luck, I think. I was very good with weapons and they were looking for someone and I was asked to go and have a talk to him and he said alright. Obviously

he had been through a number of people and looked at different abilities, particularly in the weapons area, so I was lucky enough to get the job, because it withdrew me from a lot of the real bad stuff.

Yes, it was indirectly his batman, yes.

That was only a minor part of it. Batman cum driver cum storeman cum dogs body come you name it, I did the lot. Where ever he had to go I had to be with him. If we got in the shit, it was my job to get out of it.

But in the meantime…that was only a very minor part, the batman side of it. There was loading helicopters and sorting deceased estates. There were a lot of things to do.

Yes. It was a job. Someone had to do it. It was a job. I wasn’t dissatisfied with it. I still got to be active outside the base.

I missed going away with the main body. Everybody gets a job and if you’re allocated that job then you do it. How can I put it, they don’t ask you if you like it or not. It’s the job you’re given and you do it, and you try and do it to the best of your ability. It’s a job that has to be done and it supports the rest of the fellas.

There was a white box that would come down…if someone was killed, there was a white box that would come down, a white timber box painted with their name on and their artefacts in it. And it was basically to look and be sure that something that shouldn’t be returned to the family would be in the box. Yes, it was very distressing.

There were a couple of highlights. There was one fellow’s gear that came down…there had always been this weird noise… no one could ever work out what this noise was. It was a strange noise and when we went through his gear we found he had purloined, for want of a better word, a big brass fire hose nozzle that we used to have at Holsworthy barracks. And when he got drunk he used to go out and play it like a trumpet. He’d hide behind the trees and play it and everyone would say, “What’s that bloody noise?”

That’s what it was. When their gear came back it had to be sorted and burnt and there was a number of times when we were going through that it was really what you didn’t want to be doing. You’d throw it in the pit to burn it and there would be grenades in it and they go off and the boss be up and there would be shrapnel flying around.

No, but there was a lot of arses kicked. Ammunition going off. It didn’t happen all the time, but every now and again it would happen.

No. No. In those sort of circumstances you would find out of a matter of respect that that wouldn’t be done. The senior officer of the group might look through the stuff, but take it? No. This business about the watch was always a joke.

That was a bit of levity to get over tense moments.

No, we were supplied. There were plenty of supplies. There wasn’t that need. No.

I can’t answer that. I don’t know. I only saw the boxes when they were shipped out with personal effects in it.

I don’t believe that’s true. I’ve never heard of it. The Americans fold a flag and hand it to the family. I think that’s a good idea, and I’d like to see that come into Australia actually. I’m very bitter towards the government who buried men overseas. I believe if you serve for Australia you should be brought home to Australia to be buried, whether you’re cremated or buried, it doesn’t matter.

A number of fellows were buried overseas and I just totally disagree with that. If it was good enough for the government to send you, it was good enough to bring them home. And I can understand some families may say, I don’t want to go through it again. We’ve had the shock and we’re over the shock and all that type of thing, but I still believe everybody should be returned. That’s just a personal belief of mine and I feel very strongly about it.

Yes, there was always a company service when it was possible. One of the fellows who was with us, Harry White, he was killed and I think he’s buried in the War Memorial Cemetery up in Singapore. But I still believe he should have come home.

The same as everybody. Everybody has their own way of grieving.

It differed from person to person. Some want to fight some want to cry. Some go completely numb. Don’t want to talk. Some do want to talk. It’s individual…grieving is an individual thing. It can manifest itself in many ways. The worst way it can manifest is for it to be bottled and deal with it at an inappropriate time. That does happen, even today in our normal society.

I saw that regularly as a police officer, where families would do the most unusual things when they were advised that a loved one had died, particularly in a road accident. The reactions of people are so vast and so different. I can answer other than to say that.

That’s right. You get on with it and later on you think about it and it’s something that comes out, usually when you’ve been drinking. One thing about alcohol, it was a release. In that it could release the demon in you and that was the only thing that was available. There was no psychologist or psychiatrist holding your hand.

You would talk about it…if you were closely working with a person, you might talk about it more than the people in the next company over. You always knew these fellas. The fellas I were with, a lot of them were killed.

The only reason I’m alive today is because I was shipped to this other area. I think there were two or three who went back for a second tour and were killed on the second tour. The section I had been in was virtually decimated. I think there’s only one of the original fellas left alive somewhere in Australia. I don’t know where he is.

Yes I went to Vung Tau. Yeah, we had a few good times down there.

I’ll tell you a story about R&C. I had become good friends with some of the SAS fellas because I had to travel up and interchange with them, and so a couple of them knew me and we got to Vung Tau this night. We usually all hung around together, but somehow I got separated and ended up with

these pair of bloody rogues. And say said, “We know this joint. It’s great. We’ll go there.” We were half full of stew of course. We went up this big flight of concrete stairs. They went up about two stories at least. There was no railing so you had to be careful you didn’t fall over the edge. We got up inside and this place was thumping like a sock full of cane toads. It was going. Anyway, Otis Redding was singing, “Sitting on the dock of the bay…” It’s indelibly printed on my mind.

And we walked in. It was just the three of us. We got to the middle of the dance floor. It was very dark around the periphery of the dance floor and all of a sudden I realised there was no noise, except for Otis singing Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. It was a black bar. I thought, oh no, we are dead. Nobody spoke and it was either turn and run and

be killed before you got to the door, or keep going. Anyway we got to the bar. I think Speedy said, “Give us three fucking beers.” And they heard the accent and the place gradually went back to what it was doing and I thought…and I said, “You bastards. You knew this was like this.” “Yeah, but it’s a great bar isn’t it!”

The Americans were segregated. They were cohesive in their unit, but black and white were still segregated. And it was very noticeable in the bars or any of the off the base type areas. There was segregation and it was not the thing that a white person would do, to walk into a black bar. You just didn’t do that in those days.

I must have died about three times between the middle of the dance floor and the bar. I stood at the bar and there was a big Negro fella standing there talking to me. He was as high as a kite on marijuana. I was looking to make sure I could get to the door in time. I don’t know where KJ went. He went somewhere. Speedy sat down and played cards and they dealt from the bottom of the deck and up their sleeve. They let him win a dollar.

They let him lose a dollar. It was just a very polite way of saying, thank you very much, but we really don’t want you to be here. And eventually we got the message. We had a few more drinks and then…the reason there was no rail going down the stairs…everybody someone was thrown out they would grab what ever rail was left to stop themselves going over the side. So that was R&C. We went to the Badcoe Club [Peter Badcoe Club]. When I went back in ’99, I went to what was left of the Badcoe Club and

there is only a swimming pool. I took a tile, and got chased by the Vietnamese for stealing a tile off the edge of the swimming pool. It’s a complete hole in the ground now. I brought that back to Australia as a memento. That was in ’99. Then last year I took it too the Pandanus which is the

Vietnamese Veterans Day up in the Gulf of Carpentaria and I put it on the memorial up there. It’s just a plain white tile from the swimming pool of the Peter Badcoe Club. I was happy to find a home for it. I felt it was the right place to put it. So we were allowed to wander around as groups with fellas. You’d sort of stagger in and out of bars

and run amok and make a fool of yourself. You had to back inside the base at a certain time. The curfew was about eleven o’clock. But you could get into a lot of trouble between now and then. Wherever you were secured that’s where you went back to. I think we had about three days of that. Down at what they called the Back Beach, which was barbed wire and mined in certain areas…

And today is …Vung Tau today is the Surfers Paradise of Saigon. There a big four-laned highway going down there. It’s where all the hotels are and it’s where all the people go for their holidays from Saigon. So that was the Badcoe Club, which was right on the water. You were allowed to go up town and try and keep out of as much trouble as you could.

Eventually you got poured back onto the trucks and got sent back to the base.

Yes…by the way the North Vietnamese who were fighting us would take R&C there as well, but nobody did any shooting around town type of thing. It wasn’t the appropriate place. I’m sure there was the odd occasion things did happen. Yes, the bar girls were there.

Asia is, and the entire part of Asia it’s a way of life. It’s not a sin. There were prostitutes there. If you wanted to avail yourself of that type of thing then it was there and it was entirely up to you. It wasn’t compulsory, put it that way. I had my 21st birthday in Vung Tau. That was a bit of a turn out. They sent me down to…we had been in the country for about three weeks and I turned 21.

They poured us all into a short wheel based Land Rover. There were about five of us I think and the idea was to get me as drunk as they possibly could and then bring me back, which they did in an open vehicle in the stinking hot sun. We got into a shoot up on the way back which wasn’t really a shoot up, but we didn’t really know. We got back to the base and that night

they gave me a bottle of champagne and I drank that. Nobody else would drink it, because men don’t drink those sorts of things. I had the worst nightmares I’ve ever had and the next day I was so sick I thought, “I hope I never have to be 21 again!” So that was my 21st birthday.

We were travelling back along…it’s like very marshy area where the road was put through.

There was a firefight going on up ahead and we pulled up and flew out of the vehicle because it was on for young and old. Eventually, when all the firing died down and we tried to find out what we were shooting at, these fools had been trying to shoot at a bird about three hundred yards out on a post and we thought…because the direction of fire is where everything is happening. So that’s when a shoot up isn’t a shoot up.

It was my 21st birthday present. By the way, we ended up with no ammunition to drive the rest of the distance back. It was something that I’ve learnt. You never fire the last magazine until you know you have to.

Because our rations were brought from secure sources, there was very little food poisoning. You learnt, you just didn’t eat locally type of thing. I lived in Singapore for two years and I ate off the streets there and never got sick once. But over there,

with the heat, most of the food goes off and of course, because they’re poor people they still process it, and if you’re silly enough to buy it you’re going to end up sick. There was Hepatitis C [Hepatitis A] and all sorts of stomach ailments, but the doctors, the company medics were prepared for it. They had the usual Lomotil and all that sort of stuff.

And ice…you never drank out of a glass. Of there what they would do, they’d put the ice in the glass and then pour the beer in. The glass has been washed in dirty water. The ice has been made with dirty water but the beer was hot and coming out of a can and it was as clean as you can get type of thing. So that was another way you could easily catch it. So you could end up with stomach wogs pretty easy.

No, you drank it out of a bloody dirty glass and took the chance. So you did end up pretty crook some times. That was part and parcel of it. Glass over there and even today, particularly up in Hanoi in ’99 I noticed, glass was worth more than the contents. It’s very hard to get and very rare. In Hanoi we would go down to the local shop and drink in the local shop.

And no matter how much money you offered them they wouldn’t let you take the bottles away. So you can imagine going back thirty odd years, glass was just so crucial. So if you got a bottle you drank it out of the bottle and you took the chance. It didn’t matter.

Right, back to STD and those types of things. The army generally trained you to be aware of these types of things and if you wanted to participate, there were always condoms available. The only one that could catch venereal disease off the toilet seat was the padre. Everyone else would get it the usual way, but he could get it from young ladies via the toilet seat!

Hygiene training is always very big particularly in tropical areas. You were aware of it. You were made well and truly aware of it. You were also made very much aware about young ladies telling you the sad tale about their mother needing an operation, they’re sisters are in wheel chairs and this type of thing, and they’re one of six people. That’s just the Asian way of life.

Although it wasn’t as big as in 1968 when I was there, it’s still there today. All they’ve done is change customers. Those who moved in after we moved out and they became the new customers for the industry. Hygiene in the field is very difficult because

you could go for weeks without a bath, skin rashes and all those types of things were really prevalent. Hopefully one day you’ll talk with one of the medics, probably Sam Brown up there at Palmwood, and he would be able to explain it to you because he’s written a book on it. We were given Paludrine and Dapsone and these

were supposed to be anti malaria drugs. Paludrine has been around for many years and Dapsone…first the government tried to deny that they gave it to us. It started in late ’67 and went through to about mid ’69. There is different types of malaria. The Dapsone was a drug developed for leprosy. It was given to us as guinea pigs. You weren’t asked to take it, you were told to take it.

The long and the short of it is, about five years ago the Australian Government said the findings for the Dapsone had come up, the embargo time had come up and everybody asked to see the findings, and they refused. They said there was nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all but we are not going to release the medical reports for Dapsone. There is obviously

something there that could account for many of the problems that men are suffering today, particularly skin irritation. There are six known side effects to the drug and one of them is serious skin infections and this information is being held by the government and will not be released. I feel one day it will be released then we will see the truth of the matter. We were guinea pigs.

That’s all there was about it. All the men through that period were guinea pigs. And the bulk of the Australian servicemen went through that era and that’s why you are seeing so many people today suffering. And Dapsone has a lot to answer for, and the Australian government has a lot to answer for because they have withheld this information which could be crucial in helping a lot of people.

It was taken…it was just a white tablet taken orally. I was amazed at the number of people who had never heard of it, but you talk to any servicemen of that era and they’ll tell you about it. Too right it was there. And here’s a government saying there is nothing wrong, but we are not going to release the findings. If nothing is wrong, why not release the findings? This is something that the Australian government, both sides, it doesn’t matter which side you vote for

both are guilty of the same thing.

No, you just swallowed it.

No. You wouldn’t have even known you had it. You just took it every day of the week. Some men still caught malaria but they were possibly the ones who spat the tablets out. But there are a lot of men today suffering and

there could be an answer lying in that. But I think we’ll all be long gone before the truth of the matter is released. What else would you like?

Why not, that’s the best part.

What the devil is PCOD?

You will believe in the Easter bunny. There is no such thing. These bugs can lie dormant for long periods within your system. So the best thing…as the girls say, “What is the best oral contraceptive?” The word, no! And that’s the best way of overcoming these problems.

There’s many men I know who brought something home. That’s just part and parcel of behaviour of people when they leave the country. And today it’s endemic in women as well as men. They have a propensity to misbehave as well. And if you behave in that kind of manner, you’re going to catch something sooner or later. The odds are you’re going to get it.

Very little. He visited us sometime during 1968 when he was Prime Minister. He came to our battalion. He visited through the battalion. I remember they ran around like chickens without heads. They were polishing trees and doing all sorts of things. Why I don’t know. He had been an active serviceman during the Second World War. He knew how the military worked. But anyway they spat and polished the place to make it look pretty. He visited a number of areas, not only our battalion but

a number of areas throughout the Nui Dat area. And that’s as much as I can tell you. I know he visited in ’68 because I actually met him, very briefly. Everybody bowed and scraped.

Because he was ex military, he was very down to earth. I think he really understood what was going on. The difference between understanding and doing something about it are two different things though. The government has its agenda,

and the war had its agenda and never the twain shall meet. What could you do, what could you say. They have a party line to follow. The fact is, he did get off his bum and come and visit and I think that speaks for itself.

I don’t think most of the men even knew he was there. I would doubt if very few of the fellas would have even known he was there.

Very few people got to see him. It was the upper brass and a few of the selected lackeys who actually got to meet him. I mean he couldn’t go around and shake hands with 700 people. It wasn’t practical.

They didn’t.

There was no rule. They didn’t. It was as simple as that. If they were brought in at all, they would have been brought in by the upper echelon areas, into secured areas, and then they would depart straight away from that area. As I said, in the time, the whole twelve months I was there I only saw one and he was a high ranking officer and that’s it. And he was being shown very selective areas.

He wasn’t shown anything of note as in operational matters and then he would have been whisked out. So the answer is, there were none. Not during the period I was there. I do believe the last battalion in there may have had some on the base, but it’s not normal for Australians to have civilians intermixed with operations.

No. Very little. I tried to take a photograph of a girl one day and they’re very superstitious…if you take a photograph of them, then you take their soul. It was only the more liberal ones that would allow photographs to be taken. So you had no contact with them at all, other than R&C in Vung Tau.

Again, this is the image that’s been portrayed by media and the American films. It just didn’t happen. Not for us. It didn’t happen.

Loading, unloading,

I often would be given the job of driving between the base and various areas…machinery, particularly Starlight Scopes that they used may be damaged and I would take them across to be repaired. Doing the odds, sods and ancillaries that needed to be done to keep things moving. It could be anything from a visit to the hospital to

loading a helicopter to unloading to …there was no set routine. You were there and you did it. It was my job to do those types of things because I had the vehicle, or the vehicle was made available to me to do these things with. The average person wouldn’t have a vehicle.

I wasn’t in headquarters. I was further down the line.

Headquarters is another area further up in the main battalion area, mostly where the operational areas were planned. We were more along the supply on demand and that type of thing.

Bearing in mind I was only a young soldier and I didn’t have too much to do…I was the slave, not the master. It

was very important that stuff was available and it had to get out there when it was called for. And then it had to be reprogrammed, so it was ready to go again. It was just a continuous flow of equipment going back and forth.

If they don’t get it, they can’t use it and then they would be in a lot of trouble. Without supply,

you can’t function out in the field. It’s just common sense. If you don’t get supplies and materials, then you can’t manufacture, can you? That’s the way it works. And if those men weren’t receiving what they were requiring then there was no way the place could operate. It’s simple as that. You have to realise what it takes to keep a man in the field.

Between clothing, food, shelter, ammunition, all types of resources, compasses being lost, mapping…hell, I could go on and on and on. Everything had to pass through this area. It would be ordered by the clerks…there were clerical staff and they would be ordering the equipment to be supplied. Some of it would go direct and some of it would come down through us. It might go up to the Chinooks [helicopter] and be loaded on them if they had a particular big lift out happening.

There were occasions when we would visit the hospitals and visit people for certain reasons. It would be my job to be down there. As I say, I drove the boss, and he would do the interviews down in the hospital when certain matters arose.

I think

everybody felt the same and it was just a matter of…it was a job and you did it and you hope to God you did it right. You know if you didn’t then things would stop at the other end and you just couldn’t allow that to happen. There was no such thing as you couldn’t do it. You had to do it. There was none of this feeling tired or anything. It just had to be done, and you never thought anything more about it, and I’m sure everybody felt the same.

Yes. We were still doing…sometimes up to four days out depending on where they sent us. We would go for a bit of a swan around the boondocks, setting up ambushes and that type of things. That was still going on. It was all mixed into it. You’re not just one

stand alone little cog. You’re only a cog in a very big machine and it’s important that everybody does their job because if you don’t the place ground to a halt. You only have to do something wrong and the whole machine stops. That’s the best way of explaining it.

Self induced, or accidents? There was the occasional one. I think one of the boys...I’m not sure on this one, but I think one of the boys

got burnt to death in his tent because everybody was drunk and someone threw a smoke grenade into the tent, and the tents would go up in seconds. They were very volatile. He was too drunk to get out of bed and he was barbequed. That was a bit of a disaster for one of the boys. There were a couple of accidental shootings. Actually, they changed it from accidental to unauthorised. They changed it from an AD to a UD, to overcome the legalities of it because

it was suggested if they could have accidents, then they weren’t properly trained. So the military now call it unauthorised rather than accidental. There was a fella shot on my patrol just before we went through wire. One of the rounds went off and got him through the arm. I’m not criticising. It’s just carelessness on the weapons handling part.

These things happened and hopefully nobody’s in the way when it does. But it does and that’s reality of life. That’s just the way things are. We have industrial accidents here in Australia. When they happen of course everybody goes into the ‘I didn’t do it’ type mode and nobody wants to know about it and if there’s an investigation then somebody has to be found guilty.

So you try not to have an accident. Fellas chopped fingers off accidentally with their rings on, but that stopped very early in the peace. Crates fall on people and people get injured it’s just part and parcel of life. It happens every day in your own city. The misbehaviour towards themselves, in other words

deliberately shooting themselves…probably once that I know of, and I was on the investigation of that. That’s a long and sad story. But generally, no. Considering the high risk area you’re in, considering the number of men involved, fatigue and everything else, generally it was very good.

There was an incident and I won’t go into real specific details, it was suggested that one of the fellas shot himself, and I spent a number of trips up and down while they investigated the matter. He shot himself deliberately in the foot. It’s a bit of a long story, no names, no pack drill.

Those things do happen but that was the only incident that I know of where it appeared to be deliberate. The rest of the time it just didn’t happen. We had fellas refused to go out and they were generally taken aside and counselled. If you played up, you got slung into the barbed wire enclosure

and driven down to the strip and slung on a helicopter. So as I said when the army has a war and they invite you, they get very terse if you don’t turn up.

Depending on who does the counselling. If it’s local counselling, you end up with a lot of bruises. If it goes to the administration part where it’s got to be recorded, it’s usually a matter

of them going before a small board of inquiry, your records being recorded that you had committed a misnomer unbecoming of your duties etc. And that’s recorded. There weren’t too many of them, although we did get the Articles of War read to us at one time because we were playing up one time and the boss decided to do this.

I can still remember that…any more than a gathering of three constitutes a meeting towards mutiny, which means you can be shot. Very clearly. So we all behaved ourselves for a few weeks after that. Boys are boys.

I think there was a bit of

…don’t know if I should tell you about this part. We had a particular officer who wasn’t exactly fitting in, and he was reminded of what could happen to him if he didn’t fit in. So the administration didn’t take too kindly towards that type of thing…having an effigy in a noose hanging up outside his tent. Eventually they moved him. Probably the wisest move they ever made.

He was moved to another area because he just couldn’t fit in. It was as simple as that. We had been there for some time and he turned up and he just couldn’t get a grip of it. He fell out with everybody from God down to the last man type of thing. They do happen. They’re the sorts of things the Australian Army tries to hide…it’s personalities, it’s people, it’s stress.

It’s not a criticism. It’s reality. Part of life. You would get that in big offices here in the city.

It certainly has to be documented. I mean to say, a fella has been shot, say.

It’s documented and then they take statements from those involved which can be coerced from you if you’re unwilling to participate, and a decision gets handed down. Just the same as you going screaming down the road and you get pinched by the police and you go to court and pay your fine.

Except in a war zone, a lot of things are brushed aside. Minor things are let go, but discipline is extremely important on a forward base like that, and it’s very important to maintain discipline. So there isn’t too much tolerance of matters that would challenge security or command.

They are just not tolerated and they’re dealt with severely. Anywhere between being sent to gaol or to having your pay stopped, which would be not a pleasant thing. I mean, you’re risking your life there and you would be doing it for nothing. So they had their ways of ensuring your behaviour was appropriate.

We all came through together, came out of Australia together and I had a lot of respect for them. They had a hell of a job to do. I have travelled far and wide talking to a lot of fellas in the different companies and I can’t say there were too many who had problems. The platoon commanders were very well regarded because they lived with the men. They were right there, and those

fellas had the responsibility of their team as well as themselves, and of course pleasing those who had sent them there to perform the duty. Today’s society has lost a lot of personal responsibility and today everyone wants to blame someone else for their own shortcomings. There were no areas of blaming someone else for your shortcomings.

You weren’t given that opportunity, which seems to be the norm today. You were responsible, you knew you were responsible and you did it, that’s all there was to it. It’s not anything that’s hard to do, it’s just that you know it has to be done. If you want to survive and you’re part of it, then you do it.

Brave or stupid. There’s a fine line of difference between them. The occasional thing. When the battalion was hit at Coral, there were a lot of blokes who did a lot of wonderful things. I wasn’t there but I’ve heard of them. People

don’t get up to do things to be brave. They do things because they’ve got to be done. It’s just the way it is. And you don’t go out of your way to commit brave acts. Circumstances are there and you have to live with the circumstances and that’s what creates these acts of valour, and the men

who do them very seldom know they’ve done them. Sam Brown the medic, he’s a good example of it. He was in so much of it. When they asked him did he recall the event that won him the Military Medal, he said yes because everything was just the same, it was just the job that he did. He said he didn’t think any more of it. He said he didn’t like it…that’s the best way of explaining that.

You don’t think about it, you just do it.

Yeah. Everybody’s looking for a hero. I think that everybody who went there was a hero. You never considered…it didn’t ever cross my mind, no. I’ll say no, that’s the easiest way out of that one.

I believe everybody did their job and did it properly and it’s only occasionally that outstanding feats happen, and they happened in circumstances where you really aren’t sitting there as a casual bystander to see the event and to perceive it as it is written later.

Not monotonous, it can become numbing. And you can become robotic and you do things and not consider that you’ve done them. Later on

you go, oh hell, why did I do that, type of thing. You can do that from time to time. That comes with tension, exhaustion and all those types of things. People do incredible things when they get into that state, that physical and mental state and that’s when exceptional things happen.

I think it could happen to anybody.

Oh my God here we go again…moving forward under fire. Sam did it regularly and never thought anything of it. I’ve talked to him a lot about it. Getting somebody that’s hurt moved, even though they’re exposed to fire and this type of thing.

It’s hard to answer but it’s an individual thing and people try to analyse it and sterilise it. It just can’t be put down into one little thing. It’s a moment in time and it happens and it’s only later it’s exposed to be what it is.

I drove off the road one day when they shot at me, scared the shit out of me. The boss wasn’t real impressed either. We went straight down this frigging big drain and I never thought we were going to get out of it. I thought, oh no! Anyway we drove along the drain and eventually got back up at the other end. Then we went like the bat. Sorry what was your question?

What would you do if someone shot at you?

Exactly. That was a hell of a day. First reaction, straight off the bloody road. Don’t think about how you’re going to get out of it, must get off the frigging road. He said to me… “If they don’t get you, I will!”

I was too shit scared. I wasn’t scared of him, I was scared to them. It certainly kept you aware that’s for sure. You laugh about it now but it wasn’t funny at the time though. Bugger of a day that was.

Every time I went part the rotten drain I’d think, oh shit here we go again. I used to turn that Land Rover into a rocket every time I went through that area. What was your question?

Yes…but really, you’re wound the whole time and then the spring snaps. That’s the best way of explaining it. You react. You don’t think, you just react. That’s all there is about it. The night the ambush happened we had had a lot of noise and …

We were awake for a long time trying to work out what was going on in front of us. I eventually lay down on my back beside the machine gun, closed my eyes and the next minute there is this almighty roar and when I looked up, the M16 of the fellow beside me is there, about a foot away on full automatic just hosing

the area, and I was blinded and deafened by the noise. I rolled over and let fly and if there had been any helicopters flying around, I would have got them because I couldn’t see or hear. I was pretty deaf for a day or two. I had to sit in the tent for two days because I just could not hear.

There were blood trails in the morning and we don’t know what it was, but it was someone moving when they shouldn’t have been moving. And you never think about it. You just never, never think about it. It’s just one of those things. All part and parcel of another day and how many more days have I got before I can go home.

Yes. Once you moved into the jungle. They could fire from a position and just duck down and you can’t see a bloody thing. It’s very scary, and vice versa. They can’t see you unless they’re waiting for you in a particular area. The Americans would travel along tracks. If there was a defined track that everybody used then they would walk along it.

This is one of the differences between the Americans and Australians. The Australians would never walk on a track because obviously it would be a place where an ambush would be. It was quite common for our men to walk right up to something before the others knew they were there. And men could also walk right up to men when they knew you were there. It was a two edged sword. Camouflage is a two edged sword. But yes, in those jungle areas everything is the same, particularly after rain.

Everything is wet and glistening and your mind is just racing the whole time. Just racing.

Yes, a number of times we were shot at and we could never find out where it came from. You just go to ground and fire back into the general area where it came from, but most of the time there was nothing there. It wasn’t until the battalion was involved in a couple of really big battles

that we could see what the hell was happening, and they were usually at night. So again you just poke it in the right direction and hope it does some good. It’s not as clinical as it’s made out on television.

I didn’t

go over with a hate. I went over with the belief…this is sort of diverging a little bit, but I went over with the belief that we were doing some good, hopefully doing the right thing by the people. I wouldn’t say I believed in what they were doing towards us. You don’t wind yourself up on hate. If you wound yourself up on hate, then you would rot inside and you’d be no good to anyone. And that is an emotion that effects you here in Australia.

If you have a partner who does the wrong thing by you and you leave the partner and you dwell on hate, it eats you inside. So generally it’s not something that you dwell on. It’s in your subconscious. But it’s not something you openly carry as a badge and if you do it drives you mad. So in answer to your question it never really

crossed my mind too much. I had to get them before they got me. That’s very clinical, I know, but that’s the only answer I can give. You just can’t carry hate. Nobody can. It doesn’t matter if it’s a partnership break up or a war zone. I mean, strange things come out of war. You only have to talk to the old World War Two fellas who captured Germans and gave them cigarettes.

Yes, and I actually see it sometimes today. Some people have got twisted ideas and that’s why I feel they should go back to Vietnam and clear themselves of this, because they’re no good to themselves and they’re no good to anyone else. And you can only survive with that type of thing for a short time, because it kills you internally. It kills you from the inside out.

Everyone talks tough. Everyone’s full of bravado, particularly when you’ve had a few drinks. I don’t think the Australians went over with a hate. They went over to do a job, but definitely not a hate. I mean to say if that was the case, why do so many men return and do things for them. I travelled for North Vietnam and I still found the North Vietnamese people to be a strange bunch of people.

You can still see the attitude of them up there today. Whereas the South Vietnamese are a really beautiful people, very open and friendly. The North Vietnamese are totally the reverse. They have a chip on their shoulders. They’re still Communists and they still think the world owes them a living, they still think they’re wrong done by and they don’t want to work. Whereas the South get off their bums and do everything.

And it’s all forgotten about. Let’s get on with life.

No, not with the Australians, because there wasn’t enough connection between us and the Americans for the supply to spread. The fellow that shot himself that I was involved in the investigation of, we believe drugs were involved but they had come from

a unit of Americans that had been in touch with our group. And that’s the only time I can ever suggest…and I’m only suggesting that was the case, that it was drugs involved. But again, we were an isolated group in an isolated province and we were doing our job. We were responsible for the province and we were a stand alone army, so we didn’t have that interaction and therefore drugs were never a problem.

I don’t think there’s a different answer to that. It would stand out too quickly and be dealt with severely. I can promise you, it would have been dealt with severely. There was not the opportunity. Even if you wanted it, the opportunity wasn’t there.

Stand to. Do we have to? I’ve been there too many times.

Oh. It’s a time in your life that you dread the most actually. Stand to is activated prior to first light.

It is well known that it the best time to attack people, because you are in a transient state of awakeness. If you can strike at that particular time you have the advantage. So to overcome the surprise attack, stand to is called half an hour before first light, and proceeds I think until one hour after full light.

That way there can be no surprise. Everywhere you go in the army, whether it be in active service or training, you have stand to, to accustom you to it and in that period of time your eyes adjust to light. My eyes are very sensitive to light. I can see a lot of things in the dark that people can’t see and I believe my eyes became accustomed to it through stand to.

The worst part is you get woken from a bloody dead sleep and as I said, this is the best time. If you’re going to do anything to anybody then it should be just before first light. You’re at the lowest ebb and the time it takes for you to react in that period is slower than if you were to hit them say in full light. So that’s what stand to is.

Depending

on who was on, they would light the fire to boil the water so everyone could have a hot drink, shave. And stand to can be called at any time, by the way. That’s for an emergency as well. The day? I tried to think about this when we first said we were coming.

Some things are really strange and I can’t recall them. The day would start off with…if you weren’t on stand to, I think…we always rose at first light. I still do today. I’m awake at five thirty. Wake up, clean up, breakfast and the day’s normal work starts what ever it is. If you’re in the field,

everybody stands to of course from the top down because that’s the most vulnerable time, then it would be, make a brew, make something to eat out of the rations and prepare to move. You usually would shave in your coffee mug after you’ve had a drink, and then you’d shave with the rest because what ever water you had you had to carry. There was nobody running along behind you with a wheelbarrow carrying the stuff for you.

So you learnt to go without a lot, too, when you went out.

Usually…the Australian army has a unique ability to stop in the middle of a war for morning tea. We inherited this from the English. ‘Stop the war, it’s morning tea’, and usually a break would be called and everybody would go into a harbour position, secured position and

different ones would be allocated to stand to while the others brewed up and then they would rotate to. Then the normal day, depending on where you were talking about, base or outside, would be, they would have an objective to achieve within that day, be it cover a certain distance, search a certain area. They would keep going there until the shit hit the fan, and from then on

it would be thirty seconds of exhilaration and back to twelve hours of sheer boredom. Does that answer your question?

Only on long operations. They would be cooked back at the base and flown out by helicopter. But there wasn’t a lot of that. On the big operations out there, they would

bring out showers…not too often, though did they get showers. It was often that you could go three weeks without a bath. That’s why foot rot, skin rashes and irritations…the medic would be the best one to describe the results of not bathing particularly in the tropics.

Well it would depend on what rat pack [ration pack] you got. What was in the rat pack was what you got. There was no ‘hold on I’m going to slip down to McDonalds’. There was no opportunity for that. And bare in mind the rations are made on the basis of being enough nutrition to support you for the day. They’re not making you fat.

There is adequate nutrition to sustain you for a day. Emergency rations which is like a chocolate bar. I don’t know if you ever saw one. You could only eat about three bars of it, it just filled you up. These things are prepared in Malaysia by people who are tested in all sorts of conditions. They’re not military, they’re civilians. When I was in Malaysia, I had time to speak with them and if they were testing a

particular type of ration pack, these people would live on them for anything up to two months and then they would weigh them and do all sorts of medical tests and make them work and run.

You can say that again. “You do this for a living, I mean, you do it willingly. What is wrong with you!”

I wish Doug McCullum was alive today and he would give a definite no to that answer. As I say, they shipped Doug up to Townsville, because

he was playing up and complaining so much. Before we were ready to go Doug got bundled onto a plane and he was there at Holsworthy and some how I saw him and I said, “What the hell are you doing here?” And there he was, and he was drafted straight into one of the companies and later on he was moved to BHQ [battalion headquarters]. So that is a complete fallacy.

That’s something they’ve made up in their own minds to justify…no, that’s crap.

I don’t know if you sign…as I said before, when the army has a war and they invite, they get terse if you don’t turn up. So you were invited, so there wasn’t any need. There was an Act of Parliament that said you were going. The army owned you for that period of time and if the army said go, you went, and if you said no, then they found ways of making life very unpleasant.

So I don’t agree with that at all.

And there were fellas in the regular army who didn’t want to go back for a second term. They said, they had done their time, Smokey Dawson who was killed. Harry White. They didn’t want to go back for a second tour but they were professional regular soldiers. The battalion was turned around and they went. They weren’t the type to run away and become political bloody

activists or that type of thing, they were professional soldiers. That was the commitment. But willingly? Were people forced to go? The army has a way of persuading you without showing you…they have a way of persuading you. Let’s leave it at that.

Yes I’ve met people who have said that, but they had different agendas. Whether they had an exaggerated opinion of what was going on I don’t know. I can’t answer why they would be that way inclined. It was a duty that had to be performed and that’s all there is about it.

What pay?

We received it as MP Scrip [MPC: Military Payment Currency]. Scrip money was made like monopoly. I never kept any unfortunately. It was made by the Americans and they changed it every twelve months to stop black marketing. You would draw your pay in scrip by going to the pay master. If pay day came around…I’ve got a pay book inside still. I don’t know if it’s my Vietnam pay book.

But they just dolled it out and you signed the form type of thing. It was monopoly money. And every so often, they would stop and lock the camp down. Nobody came in and nobody came out until it was all collected and new stuff was brought in. And if you had more than you should have had, you had to explain why you did have it.

So that’s what you used. You used scrip money. It covered the Americans as well. It was American military money. The Vietnamese ended up with it and when they did the change over of course it was worthless. Totally worthless. They might as well have thrown it to the wind because it was worth nothing. The American dollar as it is today is still the most valued currency anywhere in the world. But that’s how you got paid and

that’s how you paid for your drinks at the boozer. If you ever went near a PX [American postal exchange] then it was the same. I dare say the brothels and clubs in various areas and some way of transcribing it to American dollars. But I’m sure there would have been some type of arrangement to convert it. But the whole idea of military money is

to stop the black marketing of goods. That’s why they used military scrip.

Oh yeah, we used to come across it. If the Vietnamese saw it of course it was the first thing they’d take and they’d pay you back in peso, which was completely bloody worthless. But they weren’t allowed to be found in possession of military scrip. They were forbidden to have it. It was an internal military payment form.

But as I said, they just locked the country down and the same day everybody just handed over their money and they replaced it with new monopoly money.

No, mine just stayed in my pay book for when I came home. It just stayed there.

Oh yeah, we had Father Tinkler, he was great. He really fitted in with the boys. There was a thing called Everyman’s, which is a …

how can I put it? The Everyman’s was a non denominational church assistance group and they provided a fellow there who had soft drinks and that type of thing. Books to read, paper if you didn’t have any to go and write a letter. The same as the Salvation Army would do. In the old days the Salvation Army did it and that’s

how they were formed. This was called the Everyman, and it covered all denominations and I can’t remember, there was one fellow but what religious denomination he came from I honestly can’t remember. But our general chaplain was a Catholic.

No. The Everyman’s…he could be a Salvo, he could be a Methodist, he could be a Baptist.

He was virtually a missionary. But we had our own chaplain and we still do to this day.

In Vietnam? I don’t think so. I think I was a heathen. I can’t recall. I may have gone to a couple of funeral services. If you were available…

See, it wasn’t like you could say, I think I’ll slip over to the bar and have a couple of beers and then drop by the church type of thing. You very seldom moved out of your allotted area. I would have moved more than anyone problem in the battalion. I was always travelling between various areas because of the work I did.

Meetings, hospitals. If there was some type of security problem, he would go to that. If there was some type of supply problem he would do that. He would go to Vung Tau on numerous occasions, hospital visits. He was travel to a couple of different bases where they were trying to do some wheeling and dealing with the Yanks. Those types of things.

It was a very organised type of thing.

No because I would not be wanting to be involved in what was being said. There was no point in me becoming involved in a thing like that. They were very contentious issues when he went to those types of things. I remember very clearly a trip we did down to Vung Tau and I was some where…I don’t know why we were down there…

I don’t think it was a hospital visit. A little fella came along and he was in a pair of shorts and he had an M16 in his hand. That’s all he had. No hat, no shirt, no nothing. I said, “Where are you from, mate?” And he said, “Mate, mate”. And I said, “What’s wrong with you?” And he kept on, “Mate, mate.” He was obviously an officer who was aggrieved by the fact that I didn’t call him Sir, but he had no rank and I had no reason to call him –

so the boss appeared from somewhere. He had this ability to manifest himself out of smoke sometimes and he yelled, “Where’s your hat!” And he chewed this bloke’s arse and he was gone. I never found out who that fella was. It was just one of those things. But by his reaction, he must have considered I owed him some sort of formality. But that’s just the way we were.

It certainly does. Would you wear a bright shining hat with badges on your shoulder, not bloody likely! The fact that the officers were with us, the wanted to blend in and be seen to be one of us because they were a target otherwise, weren’t they.

It was only the based group people who had this idea of ‘yes sir no sir three bags full sir’. But when you were up where we were there was certainly discipline and respect but it was shown in another way. But it was always there.

No, number of times I would take him to a plane and he would disappear up to Saigon for some reason. That’s how I came to photograph the helicopter that blew up. I delivered him somewhere and he was gone and there was a gun ship loading. Actually I’ve only met one fellow who remembers this particular incident. It had at the refuelling station at the back of Nui Dat Hill. I took a photograph of this gun ship. It was Americans and they spoke

with me for a minute and as I drove away, they ran passed me. I thought, shit that’s funny, isn’t it, and I looked back and the bloody helicopter was on fire and the next minute it exploded and rockets went everywhere. I felt like getting out and running because a Land Rover is not the fastest getaway car you can have. But these Yanks came running passed me and I thought, what’s wrong with them. And about another 30 seconds later…and what had happened was the

refueller had spilt avgas [aviation fuel] and avgas is very volatile and it can burn without you actually seeing it. The heat from the motor ignited it and it went into the fuel tank and up it went. I eventually ran into…sometimes the mind plays tricks and I thought, I’ve made this up. Anyway I ran into a guy called Kevin Aginbar at a Heartsave Programme a couple of years ago.

I said to Kevin, “You were stationed over near the helipad, weren’t you? Do you ever remember this happening?” I mean, by this stage I started to think I had made it up. And he said, “Yeah, did you see it.” And I said, “See it, I bloody near got my head knocked off by it.” The biggest piece left was the tail rotor. The whole thing went up, whoom. The machine gun ammunition went off.

Yes. I had an Yashica. I must have bought it here in Australia. It was a 35 mm. I was probably the only one in the whole place who had a camera. Cameras were very rare. Cameras in our battalion were never carried in the bush. I found later that the other battalions did allow men to carry them which

was contrary to normal protocol. Carrying anything that identifies you other than your dog tags.

He was a really great fella. Yes. Unfortunately he died just after we returned to Australia. His name was Paddy Brennan. He was the RSM [regimental sergeant major] for SAS for many years.

And very well known and very well respected right throughout the entire Australian military. When he became very ill towards the end of the tour he was replaced by another equally decent fellow by the name of Ted Canon. These fellas had been in Korea and the Australia Army and they were professional soldiers and gentlemen at the same time.

Yes, I wrote too many letters. I finished up marrying her. Mail came in

on a regular basis. It was sorted by the postman and thrown onto the helicopter and flown out to the men in the field. I wrote every now and again. I got into trouble, because I didn’t write home. I couldn’t be bothered writing home. I wrote to Judy. That was all I did. So I got into trouble for that, and told to write a letter home. I received… “Come in here and stand to attention, I want to talk to you.” What have I done

this time? My grandmother had died while I was there and the family had written. They wrote to the administration and the administration advised me that my grandmother had died. That was a bit unfortunate. But generally, mail was pretty well

on time. They did have a big strike here during the time we were away in 1968. The Australian sorters went in revolt about pays or something. The used to have stickers… ‘Punch a postie’ to make sure they sorted the mail and sent it through. That was one of the little industrial disputes that got buried very quickly, but it did happen and it did effect us for awhile.

Although they were on strike here in Australia, they did process the Vietnam mail. I believed that to be true.

Not really. I don’t think so. There might have been a suggestion of it.

I didn’t see it because I left Australia…I was only home for about three weeks and I left Australia again. So I really didn’t see it, but I felt the reaction of it when I returned to Australia some years later. People spitting at you and this type of nonsense. I’ve adjusted a few people’s attitudes physically because of their behaviour towards me and I’m quite proud of that.

Good question. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. We might get the occasional newspaper. We were so damn busy we didn’t care. That’s wrong. It’s not that we didn’t care. We just didn’t have time. We used to get the Stars and Stripes. If you were lucky you got to see a Stars and Stripes newspaper. But generally

it was really reliant upon someone receiving a clipping from a newspaper or a whole newspaper which would be like gold. But generally information wasn’t available. We were very isolated.

No. No, definitely not. There were SP ration packs which was a supplementary pack. That had cigarettes in it. None of them would smoke menthol, so I got all the menthol cigarettes out of it. I thought that was a pretty good deal.

I nearly died when I had to buy my own. But no, there was nothing like that.

As a kid we used to pick dumpers off the street and smoke them. But big time? No, not really.

I had had the odd suck or two but generally it wasn’t something I was interested in. But it was a part of the culture. Drinking and cigarettes were part of the Australian culture. There were four cigarettes in a little pack, in the ration pack. They were Pall Mall, Winston, Salem, Camel and Chesterfield. I should have kept a pack of them. There were four in a packet,

a little thin packet and they actually came in the American ration packs. So cigarettes and booze and no women. Two out of three wasn’t bad.

Yes, everybody does. Everybody really becomes very anxious and nervous that you could get killed before you get there. I’m sure everybody used to have the same thing that we had.

It was fourteen days and a wakey. You never counted the last day, because that meant fifteen. So you always called it a wakey. And the day we left, they landed a C130 with oil leaking out of the bloody motors on the runway. We went on and it was just a flat deck. They had big long cargo straps and we sat down probably about fifteen abreast. We put the cargo strap across our lap and we sat on the floor with our knees hooked up.

It came across your groin and they pulled it up tight like cargo and turned around and took off. We didn’t care, so long as we were going home. That’s how we came out of Nui Dat…the advance party back to Australia to prepare to go to Malaysia, because by that time I had signed on for another two years.

Bloody great. What else would it be? Thank God I’m out of here alive.

From there to Saigon, the two hundred yard dash across the tarmac into a Qantas aircraft and we just got off the ground in Saigon due to the amount of weight and fuel that we had on board, because it was a continuous non stop flight. We arrived back here early Friday morning. It was an eight hour flight. I know we left about midnight from Nui Dat, and

then there was about eight hours flying time. I know it was dark when we landed in Australia. About one or two o’clock in the morning.

No, that’s nonsense. As I said earlier, that damn airport had so much traffic. I don’t believe that was the case. The jet would have been on the ground to return us

early in the day. It’s the ability to get off the ground from where you are. I mean it’s not like, your time’s over boys, you can go home. You really have to still wait for the availability of aircraft. I mean things were still really hopping. No I don’t believe that. I think there has been a serious misinterpretation.

I’ve heard that before and it’s puzzled me why it’s been said. It’s nonsense.

It turned into a forty-eight hour day. You wake up in the morning and it took forever. And then there was always the military hurry up and wait. So you got down to the bloody runway and you sat there in the sun for about three hours and eventually this Yank turns up with his cowboy hat and bloody boots and his

C-130 leaking oil out of the motor. We didn’t care, so long as the damn thing flew. He got out and poked it with a stick and oil fell out of the cowling and I thought, oh shit. So long as it can make Saigon, who cares? But I think it was just the delay of aircraft. There were other priorities. I mean, they’re not real worried about sending you home, are they? So this business about arriving back in the dark. It just happened that way. I don’t believe it was done deliberately.

Bearing in mind that Australia has air curfews too and we came in during the air curfew, so that flies in the face of that comment. Australia has curfews on night flying. I don’t know if a lot of people know this. But those curfews would have been broken by our flight coming in. There’s all sorts of political reasons…noise pollution, etc etc.

No, I think that was just the way it worked out. And the delay was at our end. I mean, if you’re a Qantas pilot do you want to be sitting on Saigon runway? And all flights are scheduled. It’s not like ‘you can go home now’. They have schedules and they have to fit into flying times. They have to fit in…I mean, they would have brought a load up that day, turned around and gone back out again because they don’t like staying on the ground too long. So they would have arrived…when did we arrive? Late morning, and we got up there

late afternoon to come home.

Yes, they were great. We landed in Sydney and they walked down the plane with a spray and sprayed the air conditioning and the chief steward said, “Gentleman, Count Malaria is now dead”. They had killed all the insects, because we had left a malaria zone.

That’s what they used to do. They used to fumigate the plane and send it through the air conditioning, so bugs wouldn’t get out the door when they landed.

Yeah. Bearing in mind that your system was fairly well purged of all alcohol, because of the climate, so it didn’t take too many drinks to make you giggly and let you have a sleep on the way home.

You knew you were going home and so long as you could walk away from the landing, it was a good landing.

I had two old fellas get hold of me one say and they told me they were going to Malaysia and Singapore and that it would be a good thing for me to do

and that I should stop and think about it. They knew I had signed on earlier. I wrote to Judy and discussed it with her and I said we could be married and go to Malaysia and then down to Singapore. So it was A, would you like to marry me and B, would you like to go overseas. She said yes, and so I signed on the dotted line for another two years which made me still a National Serviceman. I was a National Serviceman for four years and I did three years overseas service.

Yes.

Yes, in a letter.

I don’t know where the letter is. I should have burnt it. That’s evidence.

Yes. Various people had been on service in Malaysia. We had amahs, which are house servants, accommodation provided. It was quite an incredible experience. That’s why I didn’t get to see…I was only home one week.

I landed Friday night and I took off Saturday morning. That’s the only time I saw Brisbane.

It was great. There was just so much happening. I mean, there was a wedding being prepared and I’m merely a decoration at the wedding. I mean, I had had no part of the wedding. I had to get hold of Robert Stack, my best man.

Bob Stack. We had to go and get drunk together. Obviously you can’t get married without getting drunk. My brother…the family gradually came to see me at home and I didn’t realise it, but my language was rather coarse and my manner of alcohol assumption was rather offending.

To us, it was just a natural way of life. I used a very bad word in front of my mother and my mother-in-law and my wife. When someone said to me, “What do you think of Vietnam?” I told them. So very quickly, people sort of faded away from around me. I didn’t realise because there were no women. We never saw women. There was no reason to change your vocabulary. Where you would adjust your vocabulary for the presence of women,

being so long without being in contact with a female, you certainly became rather coarse in your vocabulary. When my step brother asked me…my semi adopted brother who lived with us, “What do you think of Vietnam?” I replied and used a four letter word starting with C…and I thought I had just answered his question adequately, but I noticed that people just…they were gone.

A number of things…street lights. I dragged Judy across the street one day in front of all the traffic. I wasn’t aware of street lights. There were no street lights. We drove on the left hand side of the road. I can remember driving down the wrong side of the road one time. Not drunk. Just a normal right had driving vehicle and I was used to driving on the other side of the road. I had all of these things to adjust too.

And men who would have come home and gone from that straight into Civilian Street…there was no debriefing. There was no assistance to blend back into society. They just virtually…like when I came back from Malaysia, they just said, “You are due to disembark. Be back here on Friday the 25th to sign the papers, don’t let me see you again.” That’s it. That’s how you got out of the army. I went to Enoggera, handed my papers in,

they told me to come back on the 25th and they didn’t want to see me between now and then. So I signed the papers, got on the bus and came home type of thing.

How can you classify some people? I believe what they are trying to say is that they were not given any form of debriefing or assimilation, and I think the government is well and truly at fault in that.

A lot of men brought home a lot of things that should have been dealt with before they were civilianised. Trauma cases particularly.

Oh yes, definitely. It wasn’t designed that way but that’s just the way it was. Men in those situations swore and nobody really considered it a problem.

If things are going bad and you can’t swear, how do you relieve the situation type thing? It’s a way of relieving tension. I know it may sound crude, but it does work. I can have a damn good swear sometimes, you can get over it and it helps to relieve the tension. Some people will say that that’s not right, but there’s a lot of difference between right and alive too.

And there’s damn sight worse ways for it to come out if it doesn’t manifest itself now. It comes out in much worse scenarios later.

Ask my wife. It took a very long time because we went to…remember I was only back in Australia and then gone again, and she still had stars in her eyes and all that type of thing

and thought I could do no wrong. It took her a while to wake up to seeing and it was my goodness, this is the way he is. Eventually you found you had to come back down to earth. But I went straight back up to Asia and straight back into that culture. It would have taken me a long time…I used to drink heavily.

She never knew…I mean she knew I drank, but she had never seen me drunk and fall through the door and sleep on the floor type of thing. It’s not very impressive to a wife who’s newly married and living in a foreign country. So I think she suffered as big a culture shock as I did. Thankfully it passed away, and I sort of came back to the reality of it. You become very hard and cynical.

Me, cynical? Of course not! But it takes a long time to wind down from those types of things and some people never do. I mean I’ve been in houses where the men’s homes are shrines to Vietnam. I could never see the need for that. Life has to go on and there were too many other things. I was coming up to twenty two years of age.

I had a wife and a future and that type of thing, so you say things have to chance, in me they have to change. So you make those things happen.

Yes. Every time I got bloody scared. Why did I do that? And seeing I had made the commitment I now have to see it through.

After the sand had hit the fan and then cooled down it sort of disappeared again. But yes, there were definitely a few times there. But what is it, the end justifies the means.

Oh yes definitely, the fellow I spoke of, John Goodwin who lives in Newcastle. He did. There was a number of us actually. John was the one who disappeared into

New Guinea to hide from the call up. He signed on. There was myself and John. Can’t remember anyone else, but there would have been a couple more somewhere around the traps. A few of the boys from Charlie Company. Yes there would have been a few.

It wasn’t a rare event.

Yes. Definitely, because once you sign on the dotted line you belong to them. My commitment was already made to go to Malaysia and Singapore, so I didn’t have that fear.

No, because the battalion was programmed to go home, replenish and return to Malaysia.

That was the job they were given, and that was fixed in stone unless something happened and then the stone could be broken. But generally, the answer is no. There were men who wanted to go back though. There were people who would gladly go back. That’s the way they were.

The fact of serving overseas

because I love travel, as I said before, and this time not being shot at. That was a big incentive. Financially it was beneficial. That was how we saved the money and bought the house. The fact that it gave Judy and I two years away from the family which is a very good thing for a young couple to be married, and it pushes you together, or you break apart. It makes or breaks a marriage and fortunately for us it made it.

And generally just the thought of being away. I wasn’t overly wrapped in the idea of playing soldiers again. Every job has its down moment though.

When you’re in a military camp, you’re fairly isolated but I don’t recall the protests being that big or violent. I think that came later. I think it came more when I was away and then I was away for two years. I really saw very little of it. I felt the reaction of it but I didn’t physically see too much of it. It was on the news and that type of thing but when you live up in Malaysia and Singapore, the country you live in supplies the news and it’s very difficult to get too much influence from home. You are in a foreign country. You are a foreigner in another country.

Almost identical to what I was doing in Vietnam. I used to drive a lot from Malacca to Singapore, drive around Singapore, pick ups, deliveries. I was almost a delivery boy, you could say. We were called out during the Malaysian Emergency

when they had difficulties controlling the problems up there. We patrolled the streets through the particular areas where we were. We travelled up through some of the remotest areas of the east coast to a place called Kuala Trengganu on the Thai border. An absolutely incredible place to see. I was fortunate enough to see the Saki who are the aborigines of Malaysia, the true aborigines of Malaysia.

The interpreter I had with me on this particular occasion was a little Chinese fella, and he became very excited. There were village people with bundles of kids and dogs walking alongside the road. They were on the right hand side of the road and he was so excited I couldn’t understand what he was going on about. Later on we got about another mile up the road from this big large group of women and there were the men in their arse grass [grass skirts] and bows and arrows.

They had come down from the hills to trade and they were going into this particular village somewhere along the line there. The men would go in and do the bartering and they would then get up and leave. The women and children would then come in and exchange the goods. They were never seen together in public. The men were never seen to be with the women in public. It was extremely rare to see those people, so I’ve had the good fortune to

see it. It took me a while to tie the bloody interpreter down to speak slow enough so I could understand what the hell it was all about, but that was incredible. I saw a village up there that left…it just packed up holus bolus because where the exercise was going through they were throwing training equipment which sounded like explosives and machine guns and the villages in that area had thought the war had started again, and

so they just packed up – dogs, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, kids, anything, and they left. I had to go away with the interpreter and find what they called the ranger who came back. He then explained that it was merely an army exercise and these things happened during the training of the army. He showed them the types of explosives that they were letting off, that they were assimilated. They

discussed with them at length that there was no problem, but they still stayed for about two days in this small area and eventually they returned. I took the ranger back in the camp there a couple of times to make sure everything had settled down. So it was a unique experience.

It was a different type of situation. There was more civil unrest and not directed towards us. It was purely ethnic problems within Malaysia at the time. We didn’t consider it was a problem. The Malaysian Army were misbehaving, because there was a curfew and they would set fire to houses and houses would suddenly catch alight,

and then the people who were trying to get away from the fire were breaking the curfew and were attacked by the army. So that’s why the army were put away and we were brought out. So now it didn’t cross my mind that it would be another conflict. It was something that was purely within the confines of that country. It didn’t affect the world at all.

No, because there wasn’t the military might that was in Vietnam. There weren’t the problems. The problem was, as I said, an ethnic problem and not a war problem. It wasn’t a military problem.

They said to me, here’s the paper, sign on. And I said, “Where am I going?” and they said, “Australia.” So I said, “Yes, I’m going to Australia but not in the army.” If they had given me another overseas posting, I would have signed on again. The army out of Australia is nothing like the army inside Australia.

Totally different. It’s as different as chalk and cheese. Supply, command, everything changes to a more realistic footing. You’re not playing…and I’m not downgrading the Australian Army by any means, but active service is so much different to training in Australia.

We arrived back in Australia. The usual euphoria of returning. Then it was time to get on with life, finding a job and doing the things that other National Servicemen would have done when they got out of the army. I still held National Service rights, so I was immediately employable by the previous company that I had been with. Although at that time I was living in

Sydney, they found me a position here in Brisbane. I got on with buying this land and building the house because we had the money to do that with. And then we proceeded with a normal life that civilian people live.

Oh yes. They were there until 1973. I think it was ’73 when the last ones came out.

Any person who served in the military in an overseas posting was granted the sum of…it sounds ridiculous nowadays but in those days it was a lot of money. It was $8000 at three and a quarter percent, and that was the loan to be paid back. I think we paid $35 per month,

that was to pay the loan off. This area is known as a war service area. This block of land was…this portion of the suburb, was an American air base during the Second World War. The men were housed here in tents…the pilots and air crew and so forth. They flew out of Archerfield aerodrome and flew the bombers up to New Guinea and bomb the Japanese. So this land was held in reserve and opened in 1967.

No, it had just opened up when I came back in ’69. So it was probably coming onto the market in early ’68. There were three blocks of land left in the suburb, so I was fortunate enough to choose and buy this. I had to build a house of a certain value. I had to do it within eighteen months of signing to accept the documents of title to the land.

I have the original document there which is the Torrens Title which is now…it has no legal binding. It’s just an historical document. Our names are on it, showing 1971, when we took possession of the land and built the house, and now here we are. Two children who have grown into adults and life goes on.

No, 8000 dollars.

The house and land cost just under $15,000. Today, it’s around $440,000. I couldn’t afford to buy it today if I had to. The block of land was $1,300 and the balance was the house. Bear in mind that at that time the average wage was about $40 a week.

So $8000 and $40 really works out to be a lot of money at that time.

I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. It was discounted. It was discounted for returned servicemen. You could have a block of land here, or you could go and buy a block of land and put the money towards that.

But I chose this block, because I came from this area originally.

Everybody. Everybody was. The original settlers of this area had to be returned servicemen, army, navy, air force. There’s only a few of us left. We’ve been here for thirty five years, I think it is.

There’s a few of us, the originals.

No, not really, because these people had moved on. I was the last here and they had by then moved on. I’m a variety, being a Vietnam veteran. There’s mostly elderly people. A lot of them have died and moved away. There’s only a few of us who are Vietnam veterans. Kevin down the back, and a few of the boys down the

back who have now moved away of course. They being originals, and a few small nucleus of us were Vietnam veterans. Being in the area was really no help. I can remember the first week back at work, it came Wednesday afternoon, I got up and started to leave and the boss said, “Where are you going?” and I said, “It’s Wednesday afternoon, we go to sport.”

And that’s a reaction.

Putting up with the attitude of civilians. They really didn’t appreciate what they had here in Australia.

Always complaining about what they had and what they could have and so on. I had just seen

three years of countries that could barely feed themselves and to me they just didn’t realise how lucky they were. And a lot of people in Australia today still don’t realise how lucky they are, and even though I travelled a lot, I still appreciate that Australia is probably one of the best countries in the world. It would be the best in my opinion, but I’m prejudiced I must admit. There are many things we take for granted…women’s rights for instance.

There are so many countries in the world today where women have no rights. To see people complaining about, oh, I can’t get this or that. I’ve seen people living on absolutely nothing; houses made of tin cans. They took the beer cans, flattened them out, stitched them together to make walls for their houses. And they were clean and proud and happy. Then to come back and see the average attitude of Australians towards the

government and towards Australia in general. It was pretty disconcerting. You have to bear in mind though that they haven’t had the experiences I’ve had, and I had to be fairly tolerant and find a silent tongue on many occasions. Not be vocal about those types of things. Is that challenging?

Yes, very challenging, and it still is today. I can sometimes speak my mind and I get quite annoyed with people who just want to complain and find reasons to complain instead of getting up and helping themselves.

Work attitudes, particularly work attitudes. People really didn’t have the commitment to work that we had had. The anti-war…indirectly anti Australian soldier sentiments.

I had to be very careful about how I behaved with that sort of thing.

In the RSLs [Returned and Services Leagues]. The older fellas considered it wasn’t a declared war, so we hadn’t been to a war.

And there were a few of them who came very close to being disfigured by a comment.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but it didn’t happen that way.

There were a group of old stodgies at the local RSL and eventually I didn’t go at all. They had this attitude that it wasn’t a war and we were in the war and you weren’t. Not all of them. But it certainly came out from some of them, and it came very close to them being physically injured. That’s why I stopped going that.

It’s very hard

to explain a thing like that. It makes me very angry. Even today, it makes me very angry. Sanctimonious bastards as far as I’m concerned. That’s the only way I can explain it.

I dare say. I always wanted to be in the police and never found time for it. But I certainly had leanings towards that quasi regimentation attitude. I expected to find more people of my leaning towards attitudes in society

within the police. And I did find them, and it was a great help.

No, they ran out of places to send me and I promised Judy we’d make a home, so I had that commitment to my family, and the army, as much as it was a great time, you couldn’t compare three years of overseas to the military in Australia.

It’s just so different. It would be a bit hard to swallow, or for me it was and it was time to move on. And I chose the police.

Yeah, most of them were scattered to the wind because our battalion was a southern battalion so most of the boys were down south. I and a few others were the odd ones out who were up here.

The men were made up from right across the length and breadth of Australia, but the majority came from southern states, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales. But yes, I kept in touch. Today when the phone rang when you first turned up, it was a friend of mine, Barry. So we still get together from time to time. We used to have sandbag parties which was a reunion and all the boys would come from all over Australia. We

would all meet out at Barry’s place and we’d all get together and tell lies and get drunk and fall over. The sandbag party was a work party in Vietnam. If you got sent on a sandbag party in Vietnam, then it was filling and loading sandbags for a bunker. So we always called it the sandbag party but we were too old to fill sandbags, so we drank. They were great parties and we had them

for a number of years. Different ones faded away and died, and life too. Life’s a never changing thing and you must be prepared to move with it.

Pussy cats. Pussy cats. I absolutely breezed through the…discipline is a self motivated thing and it applies to everybody,

and it’s what level of discipline are you compared to commit yourself to. And with these types of organisations, semi military or military, really it’s the inner person. It’s the person within yourself. You can make it hard for yourself or you can fall in line. If you’re out of step, they’ll beat you back into step. That’s the answer to it.

Yes, but they hadn’t served overseas. There were a couple of ex-army fellas.

No. But I did meet some later on. Doug who I took back to Vietnam in ’99. There were a few of us scattered around. There’s a fairly strong contingent here in Queensland of ex-veterans who are still serving in the police. There is an element of them.

There’s just so much. Just so much. I was sent to the emergency squad, quasi SWAT team. I did a lot of training with them weapon wise. I went to Canungra. The VIP escort duties. There are so many diverse areas within the Queensland

Police you can serve in. You can serve in many areas and they’re all unique but still the same thing. There’s a very strong brotherhood although people don’t like the word, but they do have to stick together for the sake of society. Hitler…this is a very interesting point. Hitler never destroyed the police force of the countries that he conquered. And the reason he didn’t do that, is because once you do that you destroy society, the

balance of society because society needs to have some form of discipline otherwise we have anarchy. Hitler never destroyed those police forces. Probably the only one he might have done it to was Poland. Therefore you need something to hold society together.

So it was a natural choice, I feel, for me to go there.

Yes, very strongly. There wasn’t the camaraderie, there wasn’t the commitment, there wasn’t the villainry. People were more focused on themselves and their own needs rather than society or the needs of other people.

I’m not criticising. I’m just saying that’s what I saw and that’s what I felt, so therefore the police was a natural progression for me.

Yes, there’s a guilt complex, yes. That’s very true.

Oh it’s very hard. Why am I here and so healthy when there’s so many dead and injured? This is a reaction… I see the psychiatrist and speak with him on these types of things. It’s a normal human function. It’s not only with military but with all members of society, husband and wife in a serious accident, one of them is killed and the partner feels

grieved that they didn’t die as well. And it’s very hard to come to terms with it. You feel like you haven’t done enough. I think a lot of men suffer from that. I know I do. I suffer from that at time. But you’ve got to realise that that’s what God chose and that’s the way it was directed. And if that’s what he’s chosen and said, then that’s the way it is. You just have to make yourself aware of it

otherwise you’re not going to be any good to yourself or anybody else. But yes, it does effect you. I think every man feels that. I think every man who’s been in Vietnam feels that. I could have done more, I should have done more. You question yourself from time to time. Sometimes you take yourself out from within yourself and beat yourself. There’s no need for that, because it’s just a human emotion.

It does develop in later years, yes. First of all you’re so glad to be home and there’s so much to be done in getting your life back on track again, fitting back into society. Becoming part of society. There’s just so much to be done. But as you get older you start to reflect upon these things and it’s then that it strikes you the most.

I used to feel guilty, quite guilty about it. I used to question myself, why, how and then I found that why and how don’t matter, it’s just the way it was. God has a path we all travel down, he’s selected it and that’s all there is to it.

I don’t know what it’s like not to have the rotten thing.

It can come out in so many and varied ways. Could it be avoided I don’t know. My father-in-law who’s in the RSL nursing home, he suffers from it, and they came home heroes whereas we came home villains. Society welcomed them home, we were criticised. And all of

this plays a part in hiding yourself. I hid myself for many years and this here is why I’m doing it now, to show that I’m prepared to stand up and say what we did was right at the time, and I believed in what we did and the sacrifice in some people’s minds was unjustified. But we were asked to do a job and we did it, and I don’t feel society has a right to criticise us.

So PTSD comes into play when you punish yourself, because of other people’s attitudes or beliefs and you have a bad habit of taking them on and trying to justify it to yourself. Then as you get older your body starts to weaken and you can’t resist these things, and PDST takes over from there. It manifests itself usually around the fifty-year-old mark when the body reaches a certain

age bracket. Forty five is sort of the quoted period and most men seem to start to fall down after that. You can’t cope with the stresses you’ve been through any more. Is it part of the chemicals we were given? Is it the life that we led? Are we weak in character? There’s just so many emotions and so many questions. But

you can’t beat yourself. You can’t take yourself out and beat yourself. I used to but I’ve stopped doing it now. PTSD is a very real thing. Some people don’t believe in it. My nerves are completely shot. I have extreme problems with noise, even though I go to a gun range. It’s strange, isn’t it? When I had an occasion to shoot in an event with rifles

a few months ago, I had the worst group of nightmares which I haven’t had for a long time. With the rifle noise and the calling out for targets, that night I was in sheer horrors. Most of it stopped when I came back from Vietnam. It took a while. But Vietnam in ’99 and then again in 2000 stopped the insane dreams that I would come up with.

Situations that I had never been in. That put a closure to a lot of it. But I don’t sleep in of a morning because that’s when the dream period starts…around about the four o’clock to six o’clock mark. So I get out of bed at five thirty and I avoid those types of nightmares. That’s how my life cycle is played. But I’m very tired. Emotionally it wears you down. So you find things and you get up and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

You get off your arse and do something, and that’s the best therapy you can have, get up and do something.

Yes they do have it.

My father-in-law had it. My wife first pointed it out to me. His was exactly the same as mine.

No, he’s now starting to go into dementia. But when you first come back and you’re ten feet tall and bullet proof and you’ve got too much living to do and there’s no time for this. There’s no time to be sick. You’ve got too much to catch up on. You’ve got a family to raise

and support and houses to build and lives to lead. Later the body slows down and can’t cope and that’s all there is about it.

No,

never. The only time I spoke with anyone was when I was with the fellas I was with and then we’d all get drunk and laugh. It was just like old times. My life will tell you now, she didn’t know the first thing about it. There’s very few mementos in this house today that would even suggest

…the Australian flag and there’s a statement from the government thanking me for my service. They’re the only items on display that I have. It was the fact that it was the era of protest and belittlement and downgrading or whatever words you want to use towards us returned servicemen, which caused you to put it in the closet. If that hadn’t have happened I daresay there would be less psychiatric problems today. At the same time, I’ve said to you before, there are men who dwell on it and make a living out of it.

I think it was a time in your life, like other people have times in their lives, where things happen. Whether they were beyond your control is irrelevant. So you should live and deal with it and move on because the world will move on without you. And you will sit there crying on your own. How’s it go? Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone. That’s a good motto.

No. No, we talk about all the times we got into trouble and talk about the things we got up too. The mind only brings back bad events when you’re tired or ill or that type of thing. PTSD has a bad habit of bringing it back more than it needs to be brought back.

But we’re here to live. We’re not here to be morbid. Every now and again one of the boys will come out with some thing that happened but you might even say, “Bullshit Barry, that didn’t happen.” But then there would be a half-baked argument about it.

But those occasions are rare. We’ve had thirty years of life since all this. And even when we were in Vietnam, we didn’t dwell on the misery. We found the best things in life. That’s how you survived. You get on with the best things in life. The mind suppresses bad events for everyone and they only manifest themselves

in times of …but you don’t go around pricking the conscious deliberately to feel sorry for yourself or to dwell on it. Even on Anzac Day…I never used to go to Anzac Days. It was only in later years that I started to go. Even then the fellas don’t talk about what happened. There’s other things to talk about.

You don’t need that in your life. That was yesterday, let’s talk about tomorrow.

No. I’m in the TPI [totally and permanently incapacitated] Association. No, there was a lot of infighting with a particular group and I was too ill to tolerate that type of thing, so I didn’t really follow it. I don’t knee it. I’ve got my life and the family.

I’m a bit of a mixture. I’ve got plenty years of police service as well, so I’ve got two schools I can play in. Two hats on the coffin when I go.

Only those living in the southern states and everybody was dispersed. It wasn’t anything deliberate, it was just the way life turned out.

Oh yes. There’s fellas I stay in touch with. Lenny Raygash in Sydney. But we don’t dwell in each other’s pocket. If Len is coming through here they stay with us and we stay with them. Every now and again if he feels like sticking it up a Queenslander, he rings me about the football.

But a lot of the boys I haven’t seen in many years and I don’t know where they are. They’ve moved on and found other lives. There’s a few of us who are veterans but not necessarily from within my own group because there’s not many here in Queensland. Barry, I keep in touch with, and there is a nucleus of us who at the minute you can pick up the phone and say

“”How about coming up, because…”

That’s very true.

Similar people, yes. I think anybody who’s been through stressful time, they have an

unspoken kinship of that. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to say a damn thing. A good friend of mine was in the SAS. When we’re together, nothing has to be said. On very rare occasions, something might come out, but it’s not something we dwell on.

Yes, I went back in April ’99 and then I didn’t get it right the first time, typical grunt. Then I took my son with me in September 2000. So I did it twice. I wanted to see the people. I wanted to know what it was all about. I wanted

to see why we were there. I wanted to have a lot of questions answered. At that time I was having a lot of emotional problems dealing with the loss of employment, being put on a TPI pension, and I just wanted some answers. So I got up and I made a decision and eventually I took two fellas with me. We travelled back into Saigon.

Doug showed us all through Saigon which I had never seen. We then hired a vehicle and drove down to Vung Tau, Nui Dat and did the circuit down there. We went around the base. I was the only one of the three that had been at the base. The others had been based in other areas of Vietnam. We travelled extensively around the base and looked at it and took photographs.

It settled a lot of things in my mind. It helped me tremendously to come to terms with it all. We then drove back to Saigon. That settlement of my mind came at a later date of course. It didn’t happen immediately. We then drove the entire length of South Vietnam up through Phan Rang and all those areas. We visited the My Lai Massacre which happened in March 1968 while I was there.

It became public knowledge in later years. We went into the ancient capital of Hue which was the Imperial Capital many years ago. We looked through the Citadel and where a tremendous amount of fighting took place. From there

we flew…much to the boy’s disgust to Hanoi, because I believed we should. I wanted to see why and I wanted to see Hanoi which was reputed to be the centre of evil. We visited Ho Chi Minh’s tomb and saw him in a glass coffin. Incredible stories can be told just through that few hours visit there. That was just incredible. We

visited the Hanoi Hilton and saw where the airmen had been imprisoned and the conditions they were living under. We travelled around various areas of Hanoi, and then we flew back from Hanoi to Bangkok and up to Chiang Mai for some R&R before coming home. We had to really cool down a bit because we were pretty wound up. So we had a few days up in Chiang Mai getting drunk and falling over. Then we

came home.

Well, I’ve known these fellas a long time, but I wasn’t with them at the time, but yes, we all reacted differently. We were moved in some way within ourselves. We’ve all agreed that it was the greatest thing we ever did.

I know it’s difficult for some men to contemplate it, but I think it would be the best thing they could do because it puts things in their perspective. It closes the door to that era because when we all left Vietnam the war was still going. That war was still going and it played in my head every night for 30 years. And it wasn’t until I went back and saw the country at peace

that I could come to terms with it. It’s finished. It’s no longer a thing of discussion. No longer a point of issue. It’s finished, stopped. It took some time and it’s made a definite change in my life. I’ve become very peaceful….

peaceful, placid. I’m certainly not as bad as I was. There’s nothing they can do to overcome it totally. It will never go away. PTSD is deficiency within the body structure to create a chemical that balances the nervous system. It’s not a mental disorder, it’s a physical disorder. There’s no way of synthesising the chemical and the best thing they can do is give you sedatives and give you a sedentary style life

so you’re not under pressure. It’s just the ordinary pressures and things that bring you undone. You get out of bed in the morning with PTSD and you’re like a thermometer. If there’s a ratio of 1 to 100 the average person gets out of bed at 40 and someone cuts him off and it goes up to 45 and then he comes home and by the time he gets home it’s probably up at

about the 70 mark. It comes back down after he goes to bed and in the morning he starts at 40 again. But a person suffering from PTSD, he gets out of bed at 60 and every time he goes somewhere and something bumps it up, there’s no ability for it to come back down again and it stays there and no matter what he does, it stays there until something pops and then allows it to come back down. And that’s

a very crude way of describing it. They start on a higher level and they don’t have the tolerance. But going back, I could see that the war was over, and it helped me tremendously and I’m very happy I did it. I went back again in September 2000. I took my son.

He’s lived with a kook like me for long enough, so I took him…so he could see, if not understand, at least see the culture difference and he’s travelled extensively since then through Asia.

Oh, I would say a good six months. It took a long six months. The first three months for sheer hell. I questioned myself as to why I did it and whether I should have done it because I think it affected me more. I can remember speaking to the psychiatrist and it was very interesting. I said to him one time, “I think those drugs you’re giving me are causing me to have a high.” He asked me to explain it to him. So I told him and he said,

“No, that’s the way normal people are. In other words, wound all the time.” You’re like a spring that’s ready to snap all the time. But it wasn’t the drugs that was causing it…it was like I was high. He said, I had come down internally. You’ve found a way of lowering your anxiety without drugs. But it’s still always there. Ask my wife.

Yes, out there on that verandah one night when I was off my head. I was standing out on the verandah about three o’clock in the morning. I was suffering so much, thinking, “What the hell,” and “Why the hell,”

and I thought, “Damn it, I’m going to go back and see what it is and I’m going to shout at the devil within me and get rid of him, and if it doesn’t work, at least I gave it my best shot.”

I did. I spoke to him about how he felt about it and he said he had never had a patient who had done it. And I asked him what was going to happen to me, and he said he didn’t know. He said it could make me worse or it could make me better, or I could still be the bloody same.

But now I’m the greatest advocate of fellas returning to put a closed door to that chapter of your life. It was a very tumultuous time and it’s time to put it to bed for good. The only way you can go back. The conscious mind says yes it stopped in ’75, but it’s still…the subconscious is saying, no no you’re not going to lull me into that.

The subconscious and the conscious are fighting and until you go back and see it with your own eyes and the reality of it, then the subconscious says I have to accept it. That’s how I explain it.

Yes it was quite dramatic actually. I actually went into what they call the People’s Palace in Saigon when I went back. I went

through and listened to their one sided rhetoric of their version of everything. I saw the tank that pushed down the gate. Saw the jet that dropped a bomb on Saigon. There’s a monument there. Went to

one of the war museums, where they have all the weapons and so forth on display, tanks and things. We did the same thing up in Hanoi. Hanoi is a far bigger museum. It’s quite a big museum. It was interesting to see the other side. I was shocked at the My Lai episode.

I’ve got no other words for it. I was shocked at that. I can understand how it happened and why it happened. Let history be the judge of that.

There was a little girl in Kuong My, a town we stopped in

which is…My Lai is an area, it’s like a suburb. As soon as we said we were Australians she was in to us. She was the only one who could speak English in this little hotel we stayed in, and she abused us. We never said we were servicemen. The kids are given a very twisted view of everything. The Japanese rewrote history and the Vietnamese are doing exactly the same.

There’s a couple of things I’d like to put on record here. Two things that shocked me deeply during the trips back to Vietnam. There’s no old people any more. The reason why is in 1973 when the North Vietnamese crossed over the DMZ [demilitarised zone] and started to take South Vietnam, they committed atrocities by finding

people who were in the military and saying to them, or people who hadn’t been in the military and saying to them, “Whose side are you on?” “Of course, we’re on your side.” “Well then, here’s a gun, kill your parents to prove it.” And there’s a generation of people gone from South Vietnam. It’s a sheer shock. I know this to be true, because I’ve spoken to a number of people

there and I said “Why is it that you survived?” And they said, “We didn’t have any children,” and they were able to escape the purge. That was purge number one. And in 1975 they committed ethnic cleansing right through Vietnam from top to bottom and they deported anybody of cross origin. That’s true because when I was in Vung Tau, arranging the air tickets, I ran into a young girl of about 25 years of age. She was a Negro Vietnamese and

told me the story. She was detained with her mother and deported because they wanted to ethnically cleanse any cross-cultured person from Vietnam. She told me the story of how she was just bundled onto any plane that would take them and they eventually arrived in New York because she was a Negress. She’s half Negress of course, and that’s never ever been

brought out anywhere that I know of. Ethnic cleansing and the loss of this entire generation are two things that have been well and truly covered up. But if you travel long enough and speak with enough people and you’re in the right areas to talk with people…first of all there are no old people and everywhere there is old people. There, there are none. And this girl telling me about ethnic cleansing in Vietnam. They were two

things that shocked me. But it’s now history.

It was something that was coming and it was well publicised that it was coming so it wasn’t actually a shock at the time. It was something you could see was becoming inevitable because the Americans had pulled out and there were signs that the Americans were pulling out and

you knew it was going to happen. So it wasn’t a dramatic shock. It was something we were prepared for.

In ’68? No. We Australians operated under a very secure net and it was only mostly the Americans who had the television cameras stuck up their nose right where the stuff was flying. That’s why there is not much recorded history of the Australians.

We weren’t trying to be secretive. It was just the manner of operations whereas the Americans were all up front and everything had to be on television. We didn’t work that way. So no, I didn’t – correspondents of any type. And I think if you asked all the men who went to Vietnam, I would say 99% of them would say no.

At first I was not very pleased with the idea. I didn’t believe that they should just be willy nilly coming here, but I could well and truly understand why the poor devils did.

There were a lot left behind and who worked for the allies during the campaign there. I now agree and I have a Vietnamese friend and she was one of the ones who was able to come out here. I now believe that it was right but in everything that’s done that way there’s always an element of people who don’t deserve it.

Now of course we’ve got the constant problem where people know they can reach Australia and it’s become a problem for us to maintain security of our border.

I have no...I never went to Vietnam with a hatred or a despise of the Vietnamese and most of the fellas will tell you the same thing.

We had no animosity towards them. Some fellas who have some really twisted ideas about this, they’re the ones who really need to return. They’re the ones who need to stop and think about why we were there. We were there to save these people from being invaded. That’s the reason we were there. We weren’t there to fight them, we were there to protect them. It sounds very moralistic at the time, but it’s the truth of the matter.

It didn’t bother me and one of the reasons why it didn’t bother me was remember I travelled within three weeks back to live in Asia. I mean, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan. I had no problem mixing with Asians and to this day, I don’t have that problem.

Yes. It wound back. I remember driving out of Terendak Camp up there up near Malacca on the west coast of where we were based. And the smell and the fact I had no rifle with me, I became a piece of jelly. I just started to shake. I had to turn around and go back. I got about two or three kilometres outside the base and

I absolutely fell apart. I went back and broke down and sobbed. They gave me the day off and then it was a matter of ‘you have to do it’. You have to face this fear. Then eventually I felt no problem with driving all over Malaysia with the smell and the people. But it was a lot to come to terms with.

You’re joking. The who? No, unfortunately. Nobody wanted to accept this insidious disease. Nobody wanted to be accepting of it because they could then be responsible and it might cost a dollar. I’m not blaming the army for this, I’m blaming the government. No, of course not. Nobody wanted to know.

It took a multitude of people coming up from the doctors saying the same thing. For a lot it wasn’t accepted and probably there’s doctors who don’t accept it today. That’s their bad luck. It’s a reality.

They must know because my father-in-law is an example. How many men from the Second World War suffered from PTSD? But they came home victors and we came home villains. They came home to a society who wanted them, we came home to a society who rejected us. They were told to get on with their

life and they did and there was no such thing as doctors in those days and there certainly wasn’t psychiatrists. They’re the wacky little bunch who sit down there and play with dolls. It’s only the fact that the world has turned and technology and medicine had improved so much that today they can diagnose things like this.

They can diagnose cancer and differentiate between them. The world is more accepting of these types of things because we know there are things there but we can’t necessarily clinically put a name to them or put a cure to them. The whole rejection of it was that we don’t want to be held accountable. We don’t want to held responsible.

Yes,

I have read a lot more than I would normally. I never read and I never had anything to do with Vietnam after I left it unless I was confronted by it by news or whatever. But I’ve done a lot of study now and I’ve looked at how the war started and what progressed and the reasons behind it. When I travelled back through Vietnam in 1999,

I saw the Morris Major that the Buddhist Monk was driven in to the centre of Saigon who incinerated himself. I actually visited that temple and spoke with the holy men there. They’re all young men now, and I was quite surprised that I remember that event, but I can remember that event very clearly and so I’ve travelled extensively and read extensively

on the whole Vietnam issue and I feel I can discuss the issue quite clearly with any one, knowledgeably too.

That place over there. That’s what it means to me now. It doesn’t hold the fear that it did. As I said, the visit in ‘99 was the best thing I ever did. It put closure to it. It

was a period I went through and it was a period that was very stressful but it’s closed and now I’ve filed that away. I can take out the book and look at it. Unless there’s something that reacts, like that rifle range shoot…there are some things so I can’t say it’s gone. But generally I can sit here in front of this camera talk to you about it and sometimes it’s been

pretty stressful during the day to discuss it, but the more you discuss it, the more you confront it and the better it is.

Oh yes there were many things. Until I went back in ’99, there were many things. It would actually come into your mind for no reason at all.

I would think, “Why am I beating myself up with this? Let’s get rid of that.” There possibly was, but if possible I avoided them. If you have a nasty reaction to something you avoid it don’t you. If something triggered the problem, I avoided the problem by not confronting the trigger that caused it.

I’m not so fearful of confronting those types of things.

A little bit of flying, not a great deal, no. Depending on the operations that were happening we might be air lifted out and the battalion was taken down and they delivered fellas to helicopters, and delivered equipment to helicopters.

I flew a number of times in them. I think I’ve flown more in them back in Australia than I did in Vietnam. There is a distinctive sound about them. It’s a whoka-whoka-whoka. Once you know it, you can hear it long before any one else knows it’s coming.

No, it always goes to Vietnam.

That’s what you heard. You heard it all over Vietnam. And it’s a noise that you immediately associate with Vietnam. There’s very few of them flying today. There’s one at Archerfield that comes over every now and again and then your mind starts to wander a bit and play games. You have to give yourself a shake and get on with it.

Just a sound. A sound that conjures up memories of when I was a young fella. Conjures up memories of things that happened and things that shouldn’t have happened. And it doesn’t disturb me but it makes me reflect.

Coming home. Weird as it may sound, Vietnam, it was an incredible time for a young person. There were good times and bad times. Without a doubt that was the biggest influence in my life was the time I spent in Vietnam and it’s something that will never die. I’m pleased to be able to

put some of it hopefully to use for someone one day. Maybe they can use these tapes to cure insomnia.

The fact that I did it. I’m proud I did it and I’m proud of the other fellas who did it too. I have no problems with it at all and now that the public and particularly the younger generations

are coming to realise what we did and what we suffered and how we’ve suffered since we returned, they’re becoming far more tolerant than the older generation and it’s good to see that the younger generation are now asking questions and not criticising and not holding judgement of what we did. They’re realising that we were given a job to do. Whether it was a good job or a bad job,

whether you agreed with or not. They’re coming more to terms with the fact that we are part of Australia’s history. We have a right to be treated equally like everybody else does.

The Battle of Long Tan was one of the most horrendous battles that the Australians ever fought.

The men that fought it, D Company 6RAR suffered extensively. The phenomenal odds that were against them, that was a battalion against a company. You’re talking 200 men against 1000. The artillery played a big part in it. I think there has to be a pinnacle of that, that you shouldn’t criticise that people recognise Vietnam for that one battle.

It’s unfortunate because there were many big battles. Our battalion fought in Coral which was a tremendous battle. Other battalions have suffered equally. But history has a funny way of picking on things and they’ve chosen Long Tan to be the focal point and so be it. I have no problem with that. I certain understand that if Long Tan had gone the other way, the Australian base would have been wiped out. The battalions weren’t available at the time

that that battalion formed to attack and if they knew what was inside they would have gone straight through that base and there would have been an upheaval that you would never have heard the end of because a lot of Australians would have been died because there were people in there who really couldn’t defend themselves, engineers and all the allied services that support the infantry battalions.

Yes, I think it’s a moment that can be seen as part of Vietnam. Not necessarily the focal point but it has been chosen that way.

Yes, I was interacting with 9 quite a lot.

Bloody great guys. They were better than the cowboy Americans. The Australians would go in areas where the Americans wouldn’t. There were only a few of them but they did a marvellous role and I don’t think they get enough recognition.

I’ve never heard anyone criticise it. I’ve spoken with a lot of people and people are either pro or negative and I can’t see any point in dwelling on the negatives. Everybody makes mistakes. The

last fella who made a mistake got nailed on a cross at Easter, so who are we? We’re mere mortals.

I’ve gone in the last few years, with the old fella up the road here.

It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of something that should be displayed so that people can see it does happen, it has happened, it could happen again.

By the crowds, I’ve noticed in the marches…I’ve seen the crowds swelling during the years I’ve marched. More people are becoming aware of it, more people are wanting to know more. They’re more informed. And when the population turns out to a parade like that, it’s obvious they’re interested and so it’s a healthy thing that the Australian society has turned around to support the servicemen.

It makes you damn proud to be a serviceman when you see the crowd.

How much beer it’s going to cost. No seriously…what do I think about? A lot of things go through your mind about Vietnam of course. You see of the fellas who didn’t come back. There’s many emotion that passes through on an Anzac Day.

No I think more than anything, I’m proud to have served my country and I’m happy to be there now and to stand up and be counted as one who did.

That was in Sydney. I went to Sydney for that. I thought that was a good turning point for us to be recognised until up until then everything had been thrown against it.

To be accepted by a city the size of Sydney made me damn proud. Those who had a political agenda or some other agenda to beat us were starting to fall by the way side. And it was damn good.

It was damn good to be in that march. Every one of us who were there felt the same way.

Well, Long Tan Day and Vietnam Veterans’ Day are the same day, so why not? As far as I’m concerned, why not? We recognise Gallipoli for the First World War and I don’t think there’s too much other than New Guinea for the Second World War. War

needs something to define its event, so why not Long Tan. Never has so few given so much …I can’t remember how Sir Winston Churchill said it…his statement about how so many owe so much to so few. Well I reverse that and say how so many owe so much to so few relates to Long Tan day because it was, it was just a company against a battalion. It was incredible how they survived. It was just incredible and that was just a short few months before I went to Vietnam.

So I was well aware of where it happened.

Hi kids!

Be proud to be Australian. Don’t shirk your responsibilities. Everybody should be responsible to be an Australian citizen and be proud of it. And that’s the message I’d give my grand children.

I’d like to thank you two for your tolerance of me, putting up with me and I’m very pleased for the archive to be doing this. I think it’s very important and long overdue but they’re certainly making amends for their inactivity. It’s not their fault because the culture was that way, but now the culture has turned and I hope they get everyone who has every visited Vietnam as a serviceman. I know that’s not possible but it’s a wish. And I thank you.

It bonded us as a father and son more than had ever been done before. He grew up with a father who was very regimented and very strict and I think he saw a different side of me, and we’ve had a better relationship since we visited Vietnam together.

That’s a photograph of us in Saigon. It’s a photograph I treasure dearly, us laughing in Saigon. It brought him to the realisation of what he had to live with, a father who was an ex-serviceman. He obviously had questions he wanted to ask and questions he wouldn’t ask. And that trip put in his mind questions and answers that he wasn’t prepared to ask.

Great, one of the best things that ever happened. My wife was very critical. She wanted to go but I didn’t want her there. I had no hesitation of taking Shaun with me.

The father and son relationship I think was well and truly cemented there.

I started to

feel that we had been badly treated as returned servicemen and I felt that I had a right to be there, and the old fella up the road who’s now about 83, he asked me would I go. I hummed and harred on it and eventually I said, “Yes, why not?” And that’s when I started going.

I have here a photo of the three of us who travelled back in April 1999. And there’s a quote at the bottom which I came across when I was in Vietnam and it says, “For those who fought for it, freedom has a flavour that the protected will never know.” I believe that. I think that’s a very true saying. And only men who have served there can understand the feeling of freedom.

Australia’s freedom has never been taken away yet, but we’ve seen their freedom, the South Vietnamese’s freedom taken away. So there it is.