Australians at War Film Archive

My name is Brian Patrick Woods, I was born on the tenth of the tweflth of ’47 in Hamilton in Newcastle. I lived in a little town between Newcastle and Maitland called Beresfield. My mother and father,

brother and sister and myself. Me mother died in 1957 and me father died in 1972. Me sister lives out at Harrisville and me brother lives up at Tully and I live here at Wynnum. I’m not married, me brother’s married, he’s got grandchildren. Me sister’s married, has no children.

I’m retired now, I’m a TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] pensioner. I’ve been a TPI for four years. I find hobbies to do I play golf, I play bowls, I have a boat to go fishing. I am a director of the sub-branch of the RSL [Returned and Services League] and I’m a director of the RSL Club. I find these are fulfilling times for me just at the moment because it’s keeping me mind occupied. It’s keeping me occupied

and it’s something to do. It’s, it was a first when I first retired it was very boring, very, you feel like you’re a nobody, you feel that you can’t contribute any think and you just sort of get yourself lost in your own sympathy. Your own little world of ‘woe am I.’ And it’s, to have these little hobbies now is a great thing for me,

I find now that I’m pretty content. All I need is a wife. I joined the army, do you want me to go to the army? I was on the railway, I worked on the farms first off. When I left home, I run away from home when I was fourteen. Actually I didn’t run away from home when I was fourteen, I run away. Okay, when I was a kid I can remember going to school

when me mother was alive, very, very young at Beresfield, it was a primary school. I can remember right up to the day, well I can remember the day my mother died. I was playing marbles with a friend of mine up at his place, Brian Hughes was his name and my next door neighbour Dawn Smart, she came up and got me. And I was ten years old at the time.

And she was crying and she said, “You’ve got to come home. It’s very sad.” I said, “What is it?” She said, “I can’t tell you.” So anyway I raced home and there they are all, because Mum had died you see. So all the relations had come. Dad was, it changed Dad’s life, he turned an alcoholic from it because he couldn’t handle it. He worked on the railway, he was a shift worker and he’d

just started to build a house for Mum and us when she died. And that knocked him about.

I think it was cancer. Nobody ever tells you, you ask relations and they keep it a secret. I think it was cancer because I do know that it was only a year or so before that she’d had her tubes tied and since then she’d been sick so I think it was cancer in that respect.

We moved into the house. It was a hard life, it was because Dad couldn’t handle it he was drunk all the time. I was the eldest in the family, done the housekeeping, the ironing, the cooking, the lunch packing, the everything.

He was a worker, he liked his drink. He was a railway worker,

he was a hard worker up until that time. He, we wasn’t rich, we were very poor. He wasn’t getting much money. He was a six day, seven days a week worker, he was a fitter and turner’s mate I believe at Broadmeadow yards. We didn’t have much, it was back in them days of course you’ve got to remember that the men were the rulers in respect of, “I’ll be home at seven o’clock,

I finish at five, I’m going to the hotel to have a few beers. Tea had better be on the table when I get home.” But there was never that much money to spare on other things. I can’t remember I didn’t get a pair of long pants until I was about eight year old. That’s the first long pants I had and that was jeans. It was a good life. My mother was a

half-caste aboriginal, my grandmother was a full aboriginal, because that means I’m quarter-caste. She had a hard life, some of the neighbours used to treat her really bad where we lived because she had the aboriginal heritage in her. But it wasn’t, we had our friends, we had our times, we used to make billy-carts and shanghais, we had our gangs, we had our cubby houses

out in the bush and out fishing holes with craw-chees and cray-bobs and whatever. We had our bicycles and so forth. Much the same as the kids today except not as modern. We had to repair them ourself, they just buy the parts today or get a new bike. But we sort of made our own fun and we had lots of fun but you’ve got to remember back then there wasn’t as much traffic on the road, there wasn’t as much

yahoos about as there is today. There was no curb and guttering, there was no bitumen roads. You know we used to build dams when it rained, we used to build dams on the side of the road and flood half the road with these dams, we used to out of clay. But it was just a simple, simple life. Up until 1962, the fourth of April. I was walking

down to a friend’s place about six o’clock at night, Terry Gorn was his name, and I got hit and killed by a car. And they left me for dead and they found me I think it was about two hours later I believe. I’d died twice from loss of blood, me heart stopped from loss of blood. I went into Maitland Hospital; I was there for quite a while. They put me in the old men’s ward because I was so bad

and they didn’t expect me to live, that they didn’t want to show me to the younger kids. But I survived, I had a coma, I was in a coma loss of memory. For months and months I went back every third day to get all me dressings fixed and wounds peeled and that. Then I left home probably about fifteen and a half I think it was,

and I went to Wee Waa, a little country town.

No, not a thing. No it was a little Morris Major Elite that hit me. And it was a good friend of me father’s, his name was Wells, Herbie Wells I think it was. Herb, something like that. It cut him up because he thought he’d hit a dog and he didn’t worry about it. Left a perfect imprint

of me bum on the bonnet of his car but. It really cut him about the poor bugger and he died I believe from that stress of it, from the worry of it. Many years later.

I knew him, I knew him.

I knew him beforehand. Yeah I’d met him. I met him beforehand and after. I knew him beforehand and I met him after that. There was great sorrow and sympathy but I was only a kid,

that was the year that Sputnik, I think I was going down to Terry’s place to watch a cowboy show, Sugarfoot. That was the movie – serial. Sugarfoot I think they called it. I don’t remember getting hit, I don’t remember waking up in hospital. But I do remember weeks, weeks later coming to. And there was a nice, in the old men’s ward where I was,

they were all dying and they were all groaning and moaning, loss of memory. But there was this lady in the canteen right opposite the dorm where I was, and she cared that much for me. She used to bring me lollies [candy] and comic books and magazines, it was great, it was terrific, she really looked after me. I didn’t see, I can’t remember me Dad coming up much.

A couple of times he did he was drunk. Friends come up, relations come up, you know the normal holiday visit. But when I came out I was very sick and sorry, very skinny, I had to go to after I got better after me wounds healed and that, I had to go to the American Health Studio in Newcastle.

I think back then it cost twenty-eight pound for twelve months session to try and put some beef back on me body doing exercises, and things I can remember about it was all the footballers used to go there. And I felt so great, all the footballers, here I was this little skinny skeleton and these footballers were there. Newcastle, Beresfield footballers,

a great bloke I’d always had respect for Peter Monaghan, he used to go there. Tony Monaghan he used to go, Gary Crouch, all them. They were the idols of the, and I felt good about it. I got over it and I got sick of the housework and sick of the abuse, sick of the beltings, the hidings, the punch-ups, so I packed up one day and went west.

I ended up out at a little place called Wee Waa, hitchhiked, couldn’t afford to go by train. And the first job I got there was building silos, cement silos and luckily the foreman there was a fellow from my home town called Spinks, I think it was Murray Spinks, I might be wrong on that but Spinks it was, and I got the job.

And here I was, skinny little fella, fifteen year old, three hundred foot up in the air, shovelling concrete into silos. Eating pies. And that lasted for about four weeks until we finished the job. And we stayed in a boarding house, she was a very religious woman, beautiful little rooms, three to a room. I think it was about seven pound a week.

Something like that it was, it wasn’t much. Well it was when you didn’t have the money.

I think I was getting paid about twelve shillings an hour on the silos. And they supplied lunch, smokos and lunch. Smoko was a can of coke and one pie, lunch was a can of coke and two pies and the afternoon smoko or the, because I worked from 6pm

until 6am, all night work, and the three o’clock smoko was just a quick look around, that was it. And then you slept all day because you couldn’t do anything during the day because you had to work all night. And I was lucky enough to get a job on a couple of cotton farms. Didn’t know a thing about tractors or cotton or anything and here

I was a young kid, had to live out on the farm, no cooks, nothing. And I got this job with Bill Knight, Carving Siding [?], just past Moree North out towards Burren Junction. About 28 mile out of Wee Waa I think it was. Ten thousand acres it was of cotton, wheat, sorghum, rape, sheep, cattle,

young vealers it was extraordinary. I’d never seen anything like a farm, just a little dairy farm, this thing was huge. So I had to learn from scratch. First off I started chipping weeds out of cotton and I lived in a tent on the farm. Yeah the old tent. Fire buckets in winter. Used to get lambs as little, when their mother would die the crows would pick their eyes out, so you go

and get this little lamb and you’d bottle feed it and he’d sleep in bed at night to keep you warm. Nearly a New Zealander ain’t I? Anyway, used to get them in the winter to keep warm and we had a fire bucket and I had two dogs: Midnight and Daylight, they used to sleep on the foot of the bed. Used to have to put sheets of canvas under your mat to stop the cold coming up through it was that cold out there.

And I learnt all the cotton - the working: the dozers, the graders, the tractors, the wheels were taller than me on these tractors. All the machinery. A big Challenger Four Fowlers, cable blade operated huge big land planes. I think it was a hundred and thirty foot long or a hundred and thirty-four foot long,

thirteen and a half foot wide land plane on the back of a dozer and you’d pull it along to level the ground out so you could plant cotton and irrigate it. And you’d work six hours – two shifts a day from 6am to 6pm or 6pm to 6am on the machinery, seven days a week. No breaks. You had to beg, borrow and steal to get a,

we had to do our shopping, I had to do me shopping on Thursday night, that was pay night. I couldn’t do it during the day because I was either working or sleeping. If I wasn’t working I’d go into town, if I was working I’d go through the town the day and miss me sleep. Boss had two old left (UNCLEAR) utes [utility trucks] and he used to drive into town and get them and at that age I started to buy some alcohol too

see. Drive into town, do me shopping, go get a carton of beer and bring it back to camp with me and all this see. And as time went on I become old enough to get me license. And I used to drive the tractors into town pulling huge, big cotton trailers full of cotton into town into the cotton gin in Wee Waa. Now when I went to get me license the sergeant said to me, he said, “Woodie, what do you want?” I said, “Come to get me license.”

He said, “What for?” I said, “Me car.” He said, “Your car?” he said, “You’ve been driving ever since I’ve known you.” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “And you haven’t had a license?” I said, “No.” He said, “Here.” Just wrote it out and give it to me. But this is the way it was it was good times back then, everybody worked with everybody not like now. But I worked there I think for about three years and

I left there and went into Narrabri.

Very first home, what do you mean?

It was a rented home, it was rented off Pitmans in Beresfield. It was 111 Addison Rd, Beresfield. It was an old house, it was a fire stove.

Seeing Dad worked on the railway we lived about a quarter of a mile from the railway line but it was all paddock. Behind that house now in Beresfield is the first of the Steggles big factories, the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK farms. Anyhow, when we run out of coal he’d get the trains, this is steam trains then and as they come past they’d blow three times. Dad’d say, “Alright, get the buckets, down you go and get the coal.”

He’d organised it with the drivers to drop off bits of coal. We used to sleep on the veranda. It was a built in veranda like gauzed in and then it had drop weather sheets, blinds sort of thing. We used to sleep on there. A big yard, the old push mower, the old cut throat worked all day push mower.

We didn’t ever have a vehicle, Dad never had a car. Everywhere we’d go we had to walk or ride a pushbike.

No, no he used to catch a train to work. He used to walk down to the railway station and catch a train to work. Beresfield had a coal mine, at the end of our street actually it was. But it

closed when I was a very young kid. I can’t remember exactly but I do remember it working because a bloke, not next door but two doors down from us, Mr Banback, he worked there at the coal mines. Mostly everybody did at that end of the street, the Byrons, the Wellses, Bridges all them worked

at the coal mine at that stage. But it wasn’t a big one it was just a, I don’t know how do you say, mini coal mine. I don’t know if there’s such a thing but it wasn’t a big operation it was just a small town.

Well we used to have a lot of, back in them times everything was delivered mostly. You know you’d order, the greengrocer would come around in his old truck or his

horse and cart, the baker would come around in the horse and cart, the ice man would come around in an old truck and deliver ice for the fridge because you never had the electric fridge then. And this is only going back in the ’50s, this is not you know. Had the greengrocer, the ice man, Mr Muncaster used to deliver wood

or coal if you needed it. You had the fruito and you could order your groceries if need be. You could order them. They’d come around and take your orders, go away and come back the next day with them. But we used to shop at Beresfield, they had little shopping centres there. There wasn’t many, well there was a lot of corner stores, you used to do a lot of shopping at corner stores because

it’s not like today, the corner store was your life saver. Whereas now it’s the big self-service stores. And you’d become friends, you could book up, you didn’t buy it already packed you’d go down and you’d get a bag of sugar and they’d scoop it out of the big barrel, a bag of flour they’d scoop it out of the barrel. Or things like that, potatoes and it wasn’t like anything. There was no sliced bread then you had to buy just

a loaf of bread. It was lollies, you’d go there and they’d give you a bag of lollies for nothing. There were probably only three or four lollies in it buy jeez you get them today doing that. It was something different, there was a lot of care, there was a lot of personal stuff in them days. It was a lot of friendship not like now, they don’t want to know you. You go in a shop now they don’t want to know you. You get

in, get out, spend your money as much as you can.

In Beresfield there was the newsagent, Williams shop up the road. There was a dry cleaners, a post office, two hardware stores. Later on there became a, this was after we moved to 18 Irving St

where Dad built that house. Mind you it was only half the house. They had a furniture shop, they had clothes shop, they had a butcher shop. That’s right, the butcher shop and the little corner store and the hardware store are all owned by

I can’t think, the same name as the famous Australian lady who swam the English Channel many times. And I always thought that she was…

No not Moroney, the one before that. Many times. I’ll think of it in a minute. But there wasn’t much we didn’t even, Taro had a hotel, we had a wine saloon. Tullochs,

Tullochs Wine Saloon in Beresfield.

Well it only serves wine. It’s got, it’s like a miniature hotel and you walk in, it’s wine. They serve all, you know like sherry or brandy or Muscat or port or rum,

all out of the kegs and you could do it. And Dad used to get, after Mum had died, he used to give us ten shillings, how do I say it, ten shillings and ten pence. Ten shillings, eleven shillings sorry eleven shillings, and that would buy a flagon of sweet sherry. And we’d take the flagon up with us and they’d fill it up

at the back of it. Now we’re under age and they’d fill it up for us, cork it and off we’d go, take it back to him. And he used to get one shilling on an empty bottle see. And they had the biggest, biggest bird aviary in the back of their shop. Because the house, their house was at the back of the wine saloon

and you could go there and you’d sit there for hours watching all these birds. Cockatoos, galahs, lyrebirds, peacocks, everything it was terrific for a kid. And they used to have because there was no Sunday drinking then. A lot of drinkers used to go up and sit in the backyard of this Tulloch’s Wine Saloon and you could go up there and it was great, it was something different for a little

city come country town if you know what I mean. And it was a little brick place, low set, it had a little lounge room with a piano, pianola in it. You can press the pedals and it plays itself you know? And a little bar which would be no longer than probably about eight foot, the bar. But it was a wine saloon that’s all.

I think if you asked they could serve you bottled beer, they didn’t have any keg beer on tap. But that’s the wine saloon yeah. We didn’t have much there, we had our little dams we used to go swimming in, our swamps we’d go bird nesting, pinch all the red bill eggs. Build our own canoes out of corrugated iron. Pinch all the bitumen on the roads that had bitumen. On hot days used to go and

pinch the bitumen off the road to use to seal the bow and the stern of our little canoe so you wouldn’t sink.

Believe it or not I learnt to swim in the swimming pool at Grafton. We used to go up there, that’s where Mum’s parents or my relations, a lot of my relations on her side come from and while I was up there they sent me to the Grafton

Swimming Pool to learn to swim. And that’s where I learnt to swim, otherwise I couldn’t swim before that. And I was only young then, Mum was still alive then, I think I was about seven or eight. The old Grafton Pool, gee that’s a long time ago. I’ve never been a great swimmer, I’ve never been a big swimmer, I’m not a surfer. I’ve got an agreement with sharks if they don’t come on the

land I don’t go into their water you know. So that’s what happens. But used to do a lot of fishing down the Hunter River. Used to fish near the Oak factory, used to jag for mullet because of the blow-pipes there. The afternoon and morning when they clean the vats out in the milk factory, the Oak factory, it’d come into the Hunter River and you’d get all the mullet, jag and then you’d sell them to the shops that were around. And just up

from there there’s a big, who’d have thought it, cold filling container depot for the boats. And just past that there was a little creek and we used to go there and jag and fish for conger eel for the eel and you’d sell them to the Greeks for ten shillings, not ten shillings for ten pence, a shilling sorry not ten pence, a shilling an eel. And you’d catch these things, they’d bite your hand

off the bloody things and they used to cook it, they loved them, they’d sell them. Love them.

Nup. Come on, no. Oh the fish, some of the fish we took home and we’d eat. Catch and eat but not the eels. Could never eat a eel. They reckon they’re beautiful but I tasted one once and I didn’t like it. I think it’s all here rather than in the taste. But we used to

we used to make our own fun. With kites, you’d make kites, you’d make box kites, you’d make billy carts. I made a full push bike from the dump. I’d go to the dump and find parts for push bikes that people threw away and I’d make, I made a it was a Malvern Star, it was a Speedwell, it was a bit of everything you know but it finally got there. It went. Slow up hill but it was awfully fast down hill.

But it was, that was the life, that was the times then, that was what used to happen and you were never short of, the days was not long enough back when you were a kid then, they were never long enough. We never had roller skates, we had roller skating rinks. We had one in Newcastle that I can remember and it was a long way away, it was right out at Belmont if I remember rightly and that was a matter of catching trains and buses

and by the time you got up there you were so tired you wanted to come home anyway.

Newcastle yeah, it was by train. Trains used to run I think every hour, something like that into Newcastle, from Maitland, Newcastle blah, blah, vice versa you know.

Not until I got older. Not very often. Up until I was probably, just

before I left home I’d go into Newcastle at night and go to the theatre. Terry Gorn, Gavin Lawrence, Steven Saul, Brian Walker, Henry Wilcosci, Brian Hughes, all of us used to go into the pictures there. This was the big thing, you’d catch the 5.45 or something like that train in, you’d get there just in time for the movie to start. You’d go in, you’d come out, get the 11.30 train home and that was a big night out.

That was a whopper. But that was life, you were happy to do that. I can remember when I was a kid, if I’d done all me housework on a Saturday morning, that was clean the house, mop the floors, dust, wash, hang the washing out, that was the first thing on the job, that was a big job washing. It wasn’t like today just throw it in the machine, back then we had the chip heater, the old

chug, chug, chug, chug, that’s where you got the hot water. You put it in the stone, you had a clip on washing machine that used to go in the big cement sinks and it had the agitator in the. So you’d clip it on one of them and put in there, you’d wash it and then you’d run it through the ringer into the next tub which had water in it and then you’d put it in the blue water and then you’d run it through again, the ringer, then you’d hang it out. Now, after I’d

done me housework, I had to get the washing off the line, then do the ironing and once that was finished I could have an afternoon down at the matinee, down at the picture theatre at Taro. I can’t remember the first people who had it but the second was Haywards, I can remember that. And we used to go down and it started I think, I think

around about 1.30, 2 o’clock, something like that it was. And the first used to have Batman the serial on. God you couldn’t miss Batman, “pows” and “bang”. It was good, you’d be home again at half past five and that was your life. That was, not like now. No TV. I can remember when TV first came. Ours was the first black and white TV.

I can’t remember the shows, I think one of the first shows I do remember fondly was “The Honeymooners.” Yeah that’s about as much as I can remember then after that of course they had the cowboy shows and the things. But we never had a TV then, I had to go to somebody else’s place.

Mum? Mum was a very hard worker, she put up with a lot. She suffered a lot. I think Dad was a little bit of a romantic in he didn’t like being tied down. I think he still had that, wanted that freedom if you know what I mean. I was first child.

I think I was the ‘had to’ child. I think I was the ‘had to marry.’ And I think that’s why sometimes, probably why he resented me a little bit and this is why he picked on me a little bit. But I don’t know, I don’t know. Maybe it might’ve been just a bit. I don’t know. It’s one of those things that you’ll never ever know probably, that

you think about, you put two and two together but sometimes it doesn’t add up. Sometimes it does. I think that he met Mum on a holiday, they had that night together, I was created, Mum chased him to marry her and that was it. But she, Mum was a long way from her family. Mum was a Grafton girl, she, all her

family still live at Grafton. All her brothers and sisters still live at Grafton. I think once you live in Grafton, it’s like Wynnum, once you’re born in Wynnum you never leave Wynnum, when you’re born in Grafton you never leave Grafton. And when you do nothing’s ever the same and I think maybe that’s what the problem is. But she was a hard worker from what I can remember. Now you’ve got to remember I was only a child.

We used to have fun, we used to go on picnics, we used to go railway picnics, we used to go to shows when they had them in town, the little Bullen’s Circus things that come into town and things like that. I don’t really remember a great deal of things we do but I do remember Mum some nights I’d hear her crying and just little things.

God. Everything was cooked and cooked. Like all them old days you’d get potatoes they’d be so soggy. You’d get cabbage that’d taste like cardboard, yuk. And everything, the meat was never tender it was tough, you’d need an axe to cut the meat. I remember all this really keenly. And used to get

this, our big food was breakfast, Weet Bix. God how I hate Weet Bix. We used to get Weet Bix and milk. The thing was it was fresh milk, you had the cream on top of the milk. You used to get it in a jug, a pot, a container. But it was like back then we had no oriental food,

we had no Asian food, no European food, we just had Irish, English overcooked vegetables. Yuk. And they were so cooked they were tasteless. “Come on, I’ve cooked youse a meal and you’ll love it.” Yuk. And but she was good, she was only taught, she only cooked the way she was taught and that was everything was cooked and cooked and cooked and well cooked and steam cooked on the big

coal stove we had. And that was it.

Because I was the eldest. I gradually learnt to cook from Dad, he showed me how to. We didn’t have a great range, see I slept and me brother slept in the same room

as me Dad. We had a double bed and me brother and meself slept together. Dad slept in the single bed near the door. Me sister Lynette, she slept in the other spare room because she was a girl, she had her own room. We only, beside that we had a lounge room, a kitchen and a bathroom and that was it. And the laundry was in the bathroom, same as the chip heater. The toilet was outside. It was, it wasn’t a big house

that he built, it was only small. And I mean there wasn’t that much money around. Pays wasn’t big pays. Dad, his brother Uncle Reg, Uncle Jack his other brother and his brother-in-law which is my Uncle Bill, Billy Osborne, they all built the house together. It was slow but the finally got it done but before they finished Mum

passed on see.

Well it was a new adventure for Dad I believe. I think that this was something that he finally got to, it’s like everybody with your first house, how excited are you? And it still happens today, you rent and you rent and you rent and you finally get enough money to put down as a deposit, well they had to build their own

to get the house. And it was big stuff. But the thing is it never, ever, ever got finished. When Mum died, see we never had any plumbing done. No drainage, all the drain from the taps, from the sinks, the bathtub and from the laundry used to just flow onto the ground under the house. It was

absolutely putrid. But we didn’t know any, I didn’t know any better then. Then we ended up putting guttering off houses out to the front street. Well health authorities wasn’t as strict as now, that would not have been allowed today, you would not have got away with it. We had nothing then.

I don’t know, actually I never ever thought about it. I do know, well I can never ever remember Dad coming up to see me grandmother at Grafton, we were always

when Mum was alive, with her put on the train and that was it. Because Dad was working too mind you. Probably was a little bit, probably was a little bit of stigma on his part, like in resentment. I don’t know, it’s just that he never mixed with her family and that is a fact. There probably was a little bit of resentment there that

he married into that sort of background. Because my grandfather, my mother’s father, he was a German. Or his father was German, his father I think was a wheel hand and we’re related somewhere along the line to the Schultz, not Schultz, Schaeffer family in Grafton. But my grandmother she was an aboriginal,

married my grandfather he was German, or he was Williams – changed it, because wheel hand means Williams apparently in German. I don’t know, it could’ve been. I don’t remember him ever saying anything but then again I never spent much time with him, so I avoided him like the plague.

No not a thing, she never even talked about. Never, we never knew for years. My brother and sister only up until just recently always thought she was New Zealand, Maori. Never knew she was aboriginal. Nothing’s never ever, it’s always been kept hush, hush, why I don’t know but it has. It was a thing that you never

ever talked about. It was, my cousin she was a nurse, an old peoples home nurse and she and I don’t know if it was Nanna or somebody was in hospital, in Grafton and she went to see them and in the same ward was Nanna’s sister and she said, “You’d never pick it.” like she was as black as. My Nanna

wasn’t black she was just tannish but this sister was black, deep aboriginal. And she was surprised, she learned then what actually was. So yeah, it was kept hush, hush. Nobody ever talked about it and every time I’d say I was related to Johnny or Earl or Rex Williams, they’d say, “Oh the black clan?” And I’d say, “Oh no, you’ve got it wrong, it must be somebody else.”

And this is, I never ever knew that to meself until I was, probably ten years or so at the most. So it’s just recently come out.

Strange as it seems, my brother and sister is dark haired, dark eyes and a

sort of little bit of olive complexion. I am the only blonde haired, blue eyed, fair skin in the family. Even Mum and Dad are not that, so I don’t know where I, how come, throwback or what I don’t know. Any milkmen out there want me? But I don’t know, it’s just a, it’s

all me cousins have that darker complexion, dark hair most of them, not all of them. Dennis Freeman, Robert Freeman, Sandra, Wendy, they’re all fair. No it’s just the odd one here and there. I don’t know how come in my family I’m fair haired

and blue eyed, don’t know what happened.

Yes. I was sick of being, Dad used to come home drunk and if things wasn’t right he’d plough into me. Me brother and me sister can tell you one night I was in the bath tub

and I come home and he just whopped me. I had bleeding ears, nose, the water in the tub was just red. I don’t know what for but that was, so I got sick of that and when I was still going to high school at Maitland, this is before I was hit by the car. I think I was only about thirteen. Two other boys, I can’t even remember their names now and meself decided that we

wanted to do a Christopher Columbus and do a bit of adventure touring so we run away from home. We hitch-hiked the back way on the New England Highway up through Tamworth, Armidale, Grafton, then we decided that was long enough so we come back through Coffs Harbour. We got to Bulahdelah and we were broke. We were so hungry, we were so

so hungry. We got to a farmhouse, we decided we’d go in there and see if we could do some odd jobs to get some money to buy some food and low and behold there was nobody there but there was a big WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK pen at the back. So we decided that WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK wouldn’t be bad. So one of us climbed the fence to get the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and instead of wringing their necks we just screwed them, threw them over and the old WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK run off and all this. Next door farmer seen us

and reported us to the police, which they come and got us. And took us back to the Bulahdelah police station and rang our parents up individually. Well they couldn’t ring mine up because he didn’t have a phone but they rang one of me uncles up. And yeah, it was a hard life in that way after Mum died, yeah it was pretty, it was a different life. I think everybody might, one time or

another have a bit of a hard time but this was just continuous, endless harassment from Dad.

I don’t know. The only thing I did know, I had to get away, get out.

Probably after I got hit by the car, that might’ve changed me mind in a lot of things, in a lot of ways and lot of, and embarrassment of it too was humiliating. We never had anything you know we were just poor people and I think in one way he was teaching us how to live but he couldn’t give us money you know. And I s’pose that’s one way that we survived,

that he did teach us, that he did force us out young to go our own way. And I think, well it was a good way of learning, it was a hard way of learning, it was a bad way of learning but we survived. Me sister’s comfortable, me brother’s comfortable and I’m comfortable. So we haven’t done too bad from the way we learnt

and I think maybe, maybe in the long run that’s what he was trying to show us. It’s a hard way of doing it but I s’pose it’s the only way he knew. But we all went our own way, we all had a hard time one way or another but we learnt, we learnt cleanliness, health, survival, how to look after oneself

and how to sort of keep yourself going, lift up. I think that’s what it was, I don’t know.

Wasn’t much at school. I’m not very good at school. Arithmetic I’m all right, English, I can say all the words but I can’t spell a lot of them.

Just an average school, average student. I’m good with me hands, me memory’s not much good now. But no, I can’t even remember good times at school. The only good times I can remember is when I used to whop them. They were the good times. I never had much time at school.

No. No, no I didn’t know a lot about any think. There wasn’t a great deal of our family or any of me relations that went to war. Uncle Jacky he was in the army when Darwin got bombed but he was a medical officer, a field medical whatever that is, a stretcher bearer.

He passed on a few years ago now. Dad was never in the army, nobody was. Uncle, I don’t know if Uncle Bill was. But nobody I’ve ever sort of talked to in our family was anything to do with overseas combat. One man I had a lot of respect for, he’s dead now, was a friend of mine his father, Mr Saul,

he captured a Japanese, I s’pose this goes back, one of those Japanese samurai swords or whatever they are. And I’ve always sort of had that in my mind. That was something brave, that was, but that’s about it, no army, no military, no – I don’t even think, I can’t even remember as a kid being interested in war movies.

I used to like cowboy movies, Indian movies but that was about it, science fiction. But I can’t even remember going out of me way to watch a war movie.

No. No I don’t even know why it happened, when I joined the army. I didn’t join, I was a volunteer – ‘Nasho’ [National Serviceman].

Unbeknown to a lot of people, when I got me national service call up and they sent a letter out first stating ‘would you like to go in the army’ and that. I wrote a little letter stating that I’d love to go in the army if I could, but I did not want to join until I found out what it was like. Like I’d do me national service. And probably, this is why now on me certificate of service, I’ve become a regular soldier instead of a

national serviceman. I don’t know, they won’t give me a national service badge because they said that ‘no, I was a regular soldier.’ Whether this has something to do with the letter I wrote in and said that I wanted to join, but only doing national service time, I don’t know.

Who’d I look up to? I think

probably a lot of the elder fellas in my town. The football players, the cricket players, I don’t know. There’s not many people that I, well all my relations, they’ve all had something. Whether that was a little bit of jealousy or I looked up to them. Uncle Bert, Uncle Bert was always a big

he was the non-alcoholic, non-smoking, non-swearing, Mr Muscles, Bondi lifesaver, everything that you’d imagine you’d want to be. Probably looked up to him a little bit.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I knew a few of them.

Some of them come from me home town at Beresfield and yeah, I idolised them. I probably did a little bit. I tried to be the same. I played football but I just wasn’t fast enough, or big enough or strong enough. Or smart enough in the game itself but yeah I

probably, I looked at them, I sort of, I still do. Yeah.

A bit of everything, aboriginals, foreigners, I do believe there was a lot of people come from Long Bay Gaol that were given a one way ticket once they got out. Drifters,

seasonal workers, no-hopers, runaways, stowaways, whatever they were all there, different people. It was a community, it was a farming area of a lot of different unqualified required workers. Chippers, gin workers, cotton pickers, tractor drivers,

truck drivers, just a whole lot of different and they were screaming for workers, they always required workers, always. It was some place that you’d go in and disappear and nobody’d ever know that you were there or gone even. You were just one of them.

Oh yeah, Wee Waa was very busy

very, very busy little town. I mean the population of Wee Waa I can’t remember the whole, but I say twelve hundred which might’ve been over-exaggerating I think, might’ve been probably about three hundred but in a busy period, in the chipping time and in the season, it would swell to something like three or four thousand. It was huge, it was a big, it was a busy, busy town. It was busy in respect of that you could

always get work, always work when you wanted it if you wanted to work. There was always something to do, there was always farmers looking. It was American owned see, this is what it was. American owned farm owners, Americanised, American run and American knowledge, it was all in,

because it was one of the first areas to grow cotton in Australia. It was huge, it was big, it was exciting it was everything. It was rough, it was tough, you didn’t give cheek if you couldn’t look after yourself. You flowed along and you behaved because if you

didn’t behave they dealt with you. It was good, it was exciting, it was thrilling it was probably loneliness too. It was very lonely because you were out there in the middle of nowhere on a tractor for twelve hours, nobody to talk to, can’t hear a radio. We didn’t have cabins and heaters and air conditioning like they have now, it was just a bare tractor with a seat. In the middle of winter you had to have gloves,

long johns, jeans, overalls, two pairs of socks, flying boots. You had balaclavas with these fur-lined hats, scarves, overcoats and you’re sitting on a tractor and God knows you could hardly move. But it was cold and it was bitter and it was big money. See back then, I was only fifteen and a half, sixteen and I was

getting ten shillings an hour. That was big money, big money. Ten shillings an hour, you worked twelve hours a day, that was six pound. Seven days a week was forty-two pound a week, that was a lot of money.

Well I was spending it, I don’t know what on, survival. But I did save

and worst luck I didn’t believe in banks. And I saved and I saved and I think I had, I don’t think I know what I had, I had 242 pounds saved and I kept it of all places, like the cowboys did, under your mattress. And I befriended a young fella on the farm and I was living in the tent then, I still had the tent. And he was an ab, I shouldn’t say that I s’pose, aboriginal

kid and I taught him how to operate tractors, and here I am mind you, sixteen year old teaching somebody how to drive tractors. And we were planting at that time and I taught him how to operate the planter and how to fill it and how to clean it and all this and he was with us for a few months. And I as you might say, took him under me wing. Anyway one day he come down, I was way down the middle of the

paddock and he come down and he said, “I’m leaving.” I said, “You are?” And he said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’ll say hooray now, I’m going.” I said, “Well hang on a minute and I’ll ring, get on.” we used to carry two way radios, “I’ll get on to Bill and I’ll tell him that I’m going to run you into town.” He said, “No, I’m right, I’ve got somebody picking me up.” So I worked all day. That night I got in, had a shower, went to get dressed, me clothes are gone.

Me jeans, me shirts, pair of boots, and me two hundred and forty-two pound. So whether I can say it was him or not I don’t know but they went so that was a learning process. It broke me up, it was a learning process but it happens,

it’s another thing in the mind. You learn from it. So yeah, it was a different life out there, totally different, different life. It was mud, it was insects, it was snakes, it was scorpions it was everything. It was hard work, it was hard blokes, it was hard everything but you survived from it and done your own washing,

you done your own cooking, you done your own sleeping and you done your own work. But there was always somebody there to give you a hand if you asked them you know what I mean? It was a learning life, it was a learning period, it was a learning time. And I think that had a lot to do with my time in the army,

that hard, that survival, yeah that survival part of it I think had a lot to do with it because I lived bush. I learnt to shake me shoes before I put them on, I learnt to turn the light on before you stepped inside. I learnt to, when you lifted the dunny seat don’t sit straight down, shake it first because there’s always something under there. And I think that’s

where you learn, that’s how you learn and you don’t forget things like that. You don’t, it just stays with you, it’s one of those things. And I think toughness, not toughness but rough living, rough areas, survival stays with you all the time in that respect. And this is how a lot of young people, a lot of young people

went out there at my age from cities, and from other towns to work in that because you didn’t need an apprenticeship. You went straight on the good money. You didn’t need a learner’s license, all you needed was that willpower, that toughness to stay with it. That twelve hours a day, rain, shine,

hail, it’s you just had to stay with it. And I think, every child I think should learn something in that respect whether what you’re going to be, what you’re going to, is how to survive, how to get on without buying something new to replace it. How to fix it, how to mend it and that’s what I did in the bush, they taught me and I love it, I loved it. When I moved

to the city it took me years to get over wanting to go back bush. It’s like a sailor I think, once he comes on the land takes him years to get over not wanting to go back to the ocean. I was the same going back to the bush.

Yeah, didn’t like it. I’m not a, I love animals. We used to

we had Bill MacElvane, Bill Hector, Simon Townsend, Jimmy the Welshman can’t think of his name now, Jim and meself. We used to go out and we’d, off the boss we’d get a old four toother once a week,

to kill. That’s a sheep. So we’d kill it and cut it and you’d get sick of lamb so we used to go and kill a roo, a young kangaroo every now and again, every couple of weeks. Eat it, kill it, get a young pig. I had a pet pig on the farm I caught as a sucker and ran, I’ve got photos here of it somewhere and I reared it up and I just, I think I went about seven or eight months without a day off and I said to the boss, “Can I have a weekend off?” And

I went away for the weekend and when I come back they’d killed me pig. Yeah. Then they complained it was too fat, too much fat on it to eat. But that’s what we used to do, we used to kill our own stuff. Rabbits yeah. Ducks, plenty of ducks used to kill a lot of ducks.

Shotguns and rifles yeah. I didn’t own one, we used to use the bosses or one of the workers.

Yeah it was just for survival, used to make our own bread, dampers. Still do that every now and again, I’ve got an old camp oven in the cupboard there that I use every now and again to make a damper when I get sort of bush sick if you know what I mean. But yeah, it was so I learnt out there, we had aboriginals on the farm, they used to do the chipping, and they taught me a lot.

You know I killed these ducks one day and they said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to pluck them and eat them, what do you think I’m going to do?” They showed me how to roll them and cook them on an open fire. Roll them in clay and mud and don’t skin them, don’t pluck them, don’t gut them, just wrap them in mud and throw them on the fire. When it dries you break it open and all the feathers come out with the mud. Then you break them open and the stomach’s just a little bitty

little ball. So survival see, you learn. Back then the farms didn’t require huts, they didn’t require to supply the workers, the workers had to supply their own virtually.

Not very often.

Now and again in the wet season when it rained and you couldn’t work if it rained too much, you’d manage with a bit of luck to get into Wee Waa and some nights they’d have in the church hall, they’d have a movie on. The Municipal Hall sorry, not the church hall. The Municipal Hall they’d have a movie on because they didn’t have a movie theatre there see. And they’d have a movie on and you’d o and watch it but no, not a real lot we didn’t even have TV.

We had a radio I think, I can’t remember but we didn’t have TV, we never had nothing. You were so tired at night, you’d get back to camp, by the time you got the hot water system going, had a shower, cooked your tea, had a kerosene fridge, that was it. That was, you were too tired to do anything, you went to bed.

You’d do your washing, your washing was usually done in the bottom of the shower while you were having a shower. You’d stamp on it and wring it out and hang it up and that was all right for the next day if it’d dry and if not you wore something else. But everything was basic, everything was, you didn’t have time you just didn’t have time to sit around. You needed that spare time to do your laundry or your cooking or your catching up, then you’d go to bed

and you had to have at least eight to nine hours sleep because you were so tired. And then when you got up you used to get up an hour before you went to work, that’d take you that time to get dressed, cook, eat something, pack your bit of lunch to take with you because you used to have lunch on the tractor as you were going along. You didn’t stop for lunch, or on the dozer, you didn’t stop you just kept going. And all your time was taken up caring for yourself or looking after yourself.

It was just, and your facilities like you had to clean your mess up, you couldn’t leave it messy because it attracted ants, snakes, lizards, sand goannas, things like that and you didn’t want them in your camp because if you didn’t have everything locked away they’d surely eat it, they’d find it and eat it and ruin it.

Well it happened one, we were doing flood irrigation and we’d just opened up new paddocks of cotton, we’d ploughed them up, we’d worked them over, we’d cultivated them and we’d planted them and we were irrigating them. And all these new irrigation channels wasn’t seasoned.

And one bank broke and it started to flood everywhere. Now this was a combination of you just couldn’t shut a gate because this water is allowed for that paddock, that water is allowed for that paddock and so forth. You couldn’t go and shut the main pump off because there was so much water there that it wouldn’t have done any good. And it was very late at night and early in the morning

and I’m trying to do all this sandbagging. I worked for thirty-six hours straight, no sleep, no food, trying to get this irrigation system back into order and it just wiped out probably forty acres of paddock, of plant with this flooding. And I was tired and the boss come up and at payday I thought well that’s thirty-six hours you know, that’s

eighteen pound, that’s a lot of money and when I got me pay it was very low. And I said to the boss, to Bill I said, “Where’s me, all me pay.” “Oh.” he said, “we’ve decided now that we’ll put you on a permanent wage.” So all that work that I’d done was for nothing. It wasn’t for nothing but I thought that they would’ve at least paid me that and then said we’ll put you on a permanent wage.

And I just said, “Well, I’m sorry.” I packed me gear up and just walked off the farm, never went back. That was the turning point. That was probably a good point, it was probably a way that showed me life, there was other things in me life to do besides working on a farm and that was the change of it. Yeah and from there I went to Narrabri.

I had an aunty lived there, she owned a boarding house, Aunty Madge. Her husband died, Uncle Jack, he died many many, I hardly knew him and she owned a boarding house there and I got talking to her and I sort of liked it there so I got a flat and I got a job as a, on the baker’s cart.

Can you believe it, delivering. But I had a bad problem, I couldn’t remember in what sequence the deliveries went or who they went to. And I used to leave bread to people that didn’t even want bread. I used to do streets that didn’t even have us. And then I was sending the bills to people the original, that never got bread, they were getting bills. And Mr Miller, who was the

Lord Mayor who was the Water Board Director, who was every think in the town, decided to take me off that and put me on to just delivering bread to the finer establishments like that bowls clubs, the golf clubs, the hotels, the cafes, the airport and the railway station. That was a lot easier. And that’s how I met my

wife to be, she worked in a shop, one of the shops that I delivered bread to. That’s how yeah, that’s how it come about. And in this time I was still attending court over my accident. And I got called to go to court in Maitland

and this is how come I left the bread run, to tend court over the final hearing of my accident against Mr Wells, Herbie Wells. Herbie Wells I think, yeah Herbie Wells. And I went down and got, it was settled out of court virtually because the solicitor we had worked for the same firm as the solicitor he had.

So it was a…

And anyway somehow it was settled between the solicitors and Dad because this was a friend of Dad’s. Two thousand pound but he paid all the hospital costs which two thousand pound then went into a Trust, Solicitor’s Trust,

which I never seen until I was twenty-one. And that’s how it came about. Why I came back to Narrabri I worked on farms for a little while at Ascot. Big farm Ascot, owned by American big conglomerate of Americans. And then I got a job, my lady friend,

girlfriend then which is Elizabeth, Beth Adams, her brother-in-law, sister’s husband Les Apps, asked me did I want a job on the railway. And I said, “Yeah, right-o.” So he got me a job as junior porter on Narrabri West Railway Station.

I used to deliver bread to a self-service,

a little shop owned by Mrs Hughes. Mrs Hughes owned the picture theatres in Narrabri and a little self-service shop between the two rivers at Narrabri, the creek and the river. And I used to deliver bread in there and got talking to her and talking to her and just become friendly and that’s how it happened. It was one of those

because she was, mind you she was too young at the time to go taking out or taking to the pictures and I think I took her to the theatre. I’m not sure what happened but I think I took her to the theatre one night and we become girlfriend and boyfriend. And I think I was about, I think I was eighteen then, seventeen or eighteen.

Well you have girlfriends when you’re going to school, you have girlfriends when you’re, you know. But first serious I think yeah. Since I’d left school and that yeah.

No, hardly ever. Hardly ever wrote to them,

hardly ever went to see them, hardly ever talked to them at all no. Just never, never went back. Like I’d go back occasionally and nothing had ever changed. Nothing had ever, it was still the same so I didn’t, I had my life and they had theirs.

In a certain way I was. I liked her mother and father they were old bushies, they were nice people. I, they accepted me in a lot of ways. I was still the young one, the new one in the family sort of thing. When I took job on I lived in an old hotel that turned into

Narrabri West Hotel that turned into units. They closed down and went into units and I had a unit there. And the railway station, Narrabri West was just a hundred metres down the road. I worked, I shift worked, I done all that and that’s when I got called up for national service, when I was doing that. And it was, I don’t know

seven or eight months on the job and then me national service come in. Notification sorry, I had to fill out a notification that I was available, which I sent in with a little letter stating that I wouldn’t mind. Because I’d never, mind you I’d never ever, ever heard of Vietnam. I didn’t even know where the hell it was. I’d never heard, I wouldn’t know,

I would not have known what a Vietnamese would’ve looked like. So I was doing something that I’d never ever heard of before, I’d never seen, I was going there, if they’d accept me. Silly me put in for infantry instead of doing something bright like going into engineers or transport or something like that with a future, because who wants an old rifleman?

No jobs for them any more. Who wants an old grenade thrower? Can’t get them jobs any more unless you stay in the army.

Me little, yeah little Karen. Yeah she was a very, I don’t remember much about her but Mum was in hospital I think and Dad, she had croak, crouck what do you call it? Croup I think it was and I believe

you’re not supposed to give them milk or something like that and Dad give her milk. This is what I was told, and she passed on anyway. But yeah she was the last in the family. There was me, then Lynette, then Wayne and then Karen, yeah.

Get what?

Normal things,

measles, things like that normal kids stuff. No I was, never had a broken bone until I started me own business up and then I broke every bone. Never even got a broken bone when I was hit by the car, no broken bones just no skin left on me body and no blood left in me body.

No. Oh since me accident yeah, I’ve never had any sense of smell or taste, that’s the only down point. I can’t smell a thing. And as for that you tell by me nose because I’ll be the one standing in a bar and somebody will pass wind and I’m smiling because I can’t smell it, so I get punched in the mouth for it. And that’s the problem. Taste, well

I cook, I love cooking, I do a lot of cooking and I can’t, I can’t taste it real well but I go by, I follow recipes but I put my own stuff in. And meat, if I have meat and I can’t smell it and it’s sticky, I throw it out, dog gets it. That’s why dog’s so big.

But I don’t over buy, I freeze most of me stuff down so it doesn’t matter, like everything’s frozen. It’s, that’s the only hassle, me memory that’s just old age, like I’m only fifty-six, I’m nearly fifty-seven. But I don’t know why me memory it’s probably because I gave up work. I don’t need to use me brain that much any more. I’ve started to find now that I’ve got to sing happy birthday to meself to remember me name.

That’s a problem. But other than that no everything’s, except for me temper and me drinking and me living alone and all that, yeah.

Very first job I had when I, and this was after I got hit by the car. When I come out of hospital I was still wearing bandages and Dad then got me a job,

I sat on the back of an ice-cream truck ringing the bell. Can you bloody imagine it? Ringing a bell on the back of an ice-cream truck, that was me first job. And I can’t even remember what I got paid for it, it didn’t last too long. I know I ate a lot of ice-creams. We used to do the Maitland area, around Maitland. The man would pick me up and we’d do, work all day ringing bells.

Me left arm was very skinny but you should’ve seen how big me right arm was from ringing that bell. And then he dropped me off one afternoon, I think I only lasted a week or so, that was all. He couldn’t really afford me neither because it’s not big money in ice-creams. Then it wasn’t. Me second job, I was on a dairy farm just out of Beresfield at Woodbury. Used to go out there about, leave

home about three o’clock in the morning. Have to ride about three and a half, four mile on a pushbike, do the dairy farm, get there milk the cows, round the cows up, bring them in, all of that. I was only young then, I was probably just touching fifteen then. Me third job was at the Oak Factory, me uncle got that because he was one of the head men there, Bill Osborne, Uncle Bill and Aunty Kaira,

they both worked there. I worked there for twelve months but the ridicule I got from there was, ‘you’re related to the boss’ and all this and it was pretty heavy. It was one of those things I think everybody suffers, so I’d had enough and after that I left home and went north, headed up to, back to Wee Waa.

Up to Wee Waa.

None. None, you’d only find out when you went into town on a Thursday night to do your shopping, to pick your groceries up. You’d only find out then. Never had a clue. I didn’t even know Vietnam was, we were at war, well what you call war, conflict. I didn’t even know that.

Nup, not a thing.

Letter from them, ‘what the hell’s this?’ Yeah. That was when I moved, left the farm and went to Narrabri and I got it in Narrabri yeah. “What the hell’s this?” And they told me, “Oh, right-o we’re at war, okay.” And that was it. Didn’t know a thing. Never heard. “Where’s Vietnam?” “Oh, way overseas.” “How the hell do we get over there?” Didn’t have a clue.

Strange isn’t it? Still into hotting up cars then, didn’t know a thing about it. Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia. “Where the hell’s all these?” Taiwan, “What’s that? Sounds like a fish.” But yeah, but that’s how away from it all you were, you didn’t care, you didn’t know, you didn’t worry.

But when I did get called up, I was proud. I was scared, scared, really scared. And I went to, I had to catch a train from Narrabri to Singleton and a sergeant, an officer would be there to meet us. Unbeknown to me there was a number of people on the train that were going to the same thing. When we got to Singleton

it was like we’re F-Troop [Television show]. I suffered acne, things like that. Other people did, over weight, pigeon-toed, so forth etc. And they put us through all the medicals and that and typical, first day there you do all the paperwork, second day you get supplied all the uniforms which none of them ever fitted. None of them, like you’re four foot eight

inches tall they give you something to fit a six foot bloke. Unbelievable. Anyway we finally got sorted out if I can say that. We never done training at Singleton, we got allocated then. I had to go to Wagga Wagga down at Kapooka which a couple of people did. But while we were at Singleton we had to still do

“Anybody got a motorbike license or ridden a motorbike?” “Yes, me.” Right you can push the lawn mower and all this sort of – never volunteer you find out. Never put your hand up. If anybody’s going to step forward you make sure you step back, all this sort of stuff. But it was a learning procedure too and when we got to Kapooka, it was different.

Why have you got to learn to march when you’re going fighting? Why have you got to learn to iron your clothes when you’re going fighting? Why this? Why that? It didn’t make sense to me. But it did in the end because it’s discipline and that’s what it was. But it was hard that recruit training was very, very hard work. Very, very different, different to what you’re used to. Different to be

barked at all the time, to be humiliated to be – but done you good in the long run so who’s to argue? Once you finished your recruit training you got allocated to what you wanted to be and that was if you were infantry or you were stores, or if you were a chef, or if you were to engineers or to whatever, you got allocated to that. And we had to go to Ingleburn in the infantry.

So we went up there for our corps training at Ingleburn, which was hard work and from there we got selected for Vietnam. And that was…

We were told straight off that you had a very, very good chance of going straight over to Vietnam. “Where

is it? Show us where it is.” When we were shown we still didn’t know. It was a long way away, that’s all we knew. I think some of the worry was how we were going to get home if we were injured and that. That was the big worry because this was all new to you. This was all, it’s not like getting hurt at work and taken straight into hospital in your home town, this was,

forever and away. But we didn’t know any thing, not a thing about Vietnam because you didn’t get trained that in recruit training. Corps training you did when you went to your, we got shown a lot of things which was a surprise. It was certainly new, but what I’ve got to say about the army is

in six months we were fully trained and I couldn’t believe it how trained we were from a little choir boy to this. It was something different, totally absolutely different. Highly strung, very anxious, very skilled, I even got a hundred points for knowing how to roll down a hill with

a rifle, big bloody thrill. But yeah it was different it was, mateship was the thing I found. Very close, very you relied, you had to rely on your mates. It wasn’t just you, you had to rely on them too

in army, in combat. It wasn’t just you who survived but it was your mate next to you too. He helped you, you helped him which I found was very different to me because I was a loner. I lived alone, I cooked alone, I’d done everything alone and this was all new to me. I wasn’t even used to sleeping in a

room with another bloke, this was – and showering? The showers didn’t even have walls, neither did the toilets. This was really different but that was the way it was.

It’d be a couple of months, three months, something like that.

I worked on the railway. I was still

working, I notified the railway what was happening. Well they had, every job, every person had to accept it because this was national service and your job had to be there for you when you came back. This was how it went. Which was good, and promotion had to be there for you as long as you could pass after you come back. If Joe Blogg was under you

or equal to you when you went into National Service, when you come out and Joe Blogg was six steps up the rung, you automatically become six steps up the rung but you had to pass the exams to get to that. You didn’t have to do the years if you know what I mean. Which was good in one respect.

I wondered why they didn’t have enough people in the army. I thought well how come? Why haven’t they got enough people in the army to do this? That’s their job, they should know. But when it was explained that, it’s like everything, how come me? When it was explained to me I

wanted to, I wanted to serve me country. I wanted to do things.

No I don’t, no I don’t. I, probably don’t fight them on your home shores, fight them in their country sort of thing. That’s, I don’ t know, that’s just one of those things that happened, I don’t know why

it come about or why, I didn’t want Communism I s’pose. I hate getting into this commenting but I didn’t want them coming to our country and ruining us. Keep them out.

Not a real lot, not a real lot. I know that they were the baddies and we were the goodies, that’s about it. Keep the baddies out. And it was a thing that

well we were only kids. It was like a lot of blokes that since then I’ve learnt, a lot of fellows in the Second World War, the Korean War, Malayan War all young and not many of them knew any think about it until they went in the army. Because you never, “Oh yeah, there’s a fight over there, who cares.” The army can handle it, it’s their worry. And you don’t sit down and study it. If it’s on TV or it’s on the radio, “Vietnam is suffering…” who cares,

where’s another channel. And that’s how it was.

Only when I got this letter from the – I thought ‘Hey, this is not bad, going in the army. I never thought of that before, never thought about going in. This is different.’ So that was it.

That was my main think, it was something different, it was something new, it was something adventurous, ‘you beauty.’ It was somebody’s going to cook for you, ‘Cook for me! All right you’ve got me.’ But I never knew what it was going to end up like. And the thing is it was great imagining, ‘you get a rifle, keep it and you shoot it.’ But you forget these buggers shoot back.

And that was the scary part, that was the worst part. You don’t realise and I don’t think a lot of people realise it, the full commitment, what it involves. What it takes to get there.

Nup, not a soul.

Oh yeah she knew.

I just told her I was going in if I got called up.

She didn’t know I wrote the letter, I didn’t tell her anything about that. We wasn’t, we only got engaged after I’d gone in. She didn’t know anything about that at all. She didn’t fully understand it I don’t think and neither did I. It was excitement, it was adventure, it was one of those things, an Errol Flynn thing. One of those.

And I was all for it, I was all for, “Good on you son, you’re going to fight for Australia. Keep the enemy out.” And then the old fellows all talked and this was, “oh right.” And poor old Aunt Parker up the road at Narrabri she used to be married to an American serviceman. She only seen him for a little while and he went back to service and she never ever seen him again. He got killed or disappeared in action

don’t know, and she was so proud about it and this builds you up a little bit more, “Good on you.” And that’s where it started from. And I’d never heard or seen or smelled or knew even how to spell Vietnam. I didn’t know what Viet Cong was, “What’s Viet Cong? Sounds like an ape.” And you didn’t know, nobody, not a real lot or many people knew

because back then, you’ve got to remember back in sixty, when did I get called up? ’68? ’68 yeah, not many people knew about what was going to happen, what was happening. Because what was our first incident was sixty – we went there in ’65, the first big incident was ’66 and I mean this was only two years later, not a lot was sort of

happening you know what I mean.

It was pretty bad, I even knew that. We shouldn’t be there it’s not our war, we shouldn’t be all this. And I think that’s maybe what got me wanting to go in, wanting to see what was happening, wanting to do these things that the public was saying ‘no you shouldn’t do.’

Because I wanted to know why. Everybody was saying ‘we shouldn’t be there, it’s not our war, it’s not our thing.’ “Why? How come we’re there in the first place if it’s got nothing to do with us?” Then I got told ‘it’s only a doorstep away from Australia and if they get into Australia, we’re – hey keep them out.’ And this is where the whole thing changed for me. I couldn’t comprehend what they were complaining about when it was a war,

when it was the army, when it was us. Why, what was the up-cry about. Why were people saying no? I didn’t know. And I still didn’t know up until even after I went in the army why. But when I come back they were still complaining and I thought ‘hey what’s going on?’ Because when I come back it affected me for me life, the treatment that I got and I’ll never understand that neither. Why?

Rejection, why? It wasn’t my fault, why blame me. And most of the people today I think pull away from it when you bring it up. “It wasn’t me, I wasn’t one of the protesters.” But most of them were you know that. But it was a new chapter in life, it was a

whole new chapter, a whole new excitement, a whole new adventure and even today you see young blokes who want to get into that adventure, excitement, even if you’re going to be shot at, even if you’re going to be – your life’s going to be threatened, to be taken away from you. You still want to be in it and that’s the way things are. For me it was a new thing, different.

Just me shaving gear and one change of clothes. That’s all I needed. One underwear, singlet, socks, shoes, change of clothes, the clothes I was wearing, a change of clothes, me utensils shaving, toothbrush, blah blah, that was it.

No it was a training centre, it was just that us that went in,

not all of us but a number of us when they check you out, they give you a medical when you get in there.

Well pretty much full on because they check the final details like flat-foot, I had acne, I’d suffered when I was a kid, I had boils, at one point I had I think eight or nine boils on my back when I was a kid, all at once. Bad skin, big pores in me skin, even today I still suffer black-head, pimples blah, blah, blah.

Because you were going to the tropics and cysts and all this sort of stuff was very common over there, skin disease and they didn’t want that to happen so they had to check you out. And that’s why they kept us there, putting us through this final medical, they said they could clear me up from this

skin disease that I had. Which in the long run they did, I didn’t suffer bad, I get rashes all the time now and that but so does a lot of other people. And this, they sorted this out, a lot of the fellows didn’t get in they were sent home again, but a lot of us were kept in.

Yes, most. Yeah all the people I was with were national servicemen yeah. It’s

there were regulars there at Singleton, I think they were in a different area to us. We were in little huts and that. But Singleton was a training camp but they’d already started their training, if you can understand we were in, once they sorted us out, we were in between that group. So Kapooka was just starting off so they sent us all down there.

Yeah, well they had the old Kapooka and this was the new Kapooka and this was a new start in new enlistment if you know what I mean, call up. So that’s why they sent us down to there.

Yeah, new brick buildings yeah. In the winter, cold as hell. Bloody hell it was cold. Every morning you’d have to race out at

sheet call they used to call it. You had to rip the bottom sheet off your bed and race out, whatever you had on, in the freezing cold in the parade ground. In your pyjamas or nothing, oh, you had the sheet wrapped around you and this was to make sure that you were out of bed one, two that you’d make your bed, wouldn’t just pull it up. You had to remake your bed. And this was in the training, it was training.

I don’t really remember a lot about Singleton because we didn’t do that much there, we didn’t do any training, alls we did was

Yeah admin, a bit of medical, a few medical, a bit of work, yard work, fitting in, they had to fit us in somewhere and that’s what they did yeah. When we got to Kapooka, that was the start of it, the haircuts, the pulling in the gear, the selection of what

rank you go to, what company you go, what so forth.

No, haven’t got a clue. Can’t remember that no. I remember I was in infantry, I was on the second floor, but it was all the same, the whole lot of the buildings was the same, it was just, it’s written up on there, one of the photos I’ve got there in the front, I can’t remember what it is, ‘A’ or something like that it was. But

it was hard, it was very hard. It was go, go, go for three months, it was just non-stop. The food was horrible but if you didn’t eat it you didn’t survive. The strictness was really, really, inspections all the time. I mean everything was folded neatly, packed neatly, stacked neatly, your bed had to be

tight so you’d drop a coin on it and it’d bounce. Your pillow had not to have a wrinkle in it. Your socks and everything was polished, folded, ironed neatly. Your beret put properly, your hat, oh God it was tedious work but it was there, you had to be doing it. The toilets, the showers, the hallway, all had to be cleaned every morning, every morning they had

to be cleaned. Everything. I just joined the army to be doing what I was doing beforehand, cleaning everything. It was a surprise to me. I thought God strife, I’ll go over to Vietnam with a scrubbing brush! But it wasn’t so. But it was necessary, it was hard, it was great to finish there and it was great to know where you was going.

And we went like I said to Ingleburn and it was hard work at Ingleburn.

Well this is where they get your fitness it. It’s marching, it’s running, it’s uphill, it’s downhill, it’s rolling, it’s how to handle weapons, it’s how to all this. The basic training is to get you familiarised with and healthy for your next step.

And your main thing was your precision you know with your marching and with your dress regulations, with your style, with your stiff back and it’s just to get you in to the required shape and the required knowledge until you got to your corps training.

It took a little while to get to know each other because we were all from all over Australia.

And different nationalities too. You familiarised yourself with your room mate first. There was two to a room and you had to, and it was hard because you didn’t know which way his personality or his behaviour was to yours. So you had to try and

familiarise yourself with that, match in with it. It worked out pretty good, you wasn’t going to spend the rest of your life with him, let’s put it that way. So it was just a thing. We had one bloke used to comb his hair down every night before he went to bed and put a bit of sticky tape across. I don’t know why but that’s what he did. And all these things so everybody had their own little quirks,

you had to get used to that which was a little bit hard in one respect. Especially when they wasn’t related to you, it wasn’t your brother or your cousin it was a complete stranger. But you did, you fitted in. You had to.

Marching to the meal room. No, it was all, I enjoyed the gymnastics,

PT, physical training that was good. After a while the rest of it just become hum drum it was repeated and repeated and the same again. Every day was ‘oh not another run up the hill’ or ‘march on the parade ground’ or ‘weapon inspection,’ but it was all necessary in one way or another.

I wasn’t much physical, I wasn’t, the course training over the courses because I wasn’t very tall I was a little bit short, that was probably the hardest part for me and the great, the climbing

up the ropes and that because I wasn’t very big I was only small. I think when I went in the army I wasn’t even nine stone, I think about eight stone, eight and a half stone. I was only a bit over nine when I got out, that’s why they put me forward scout because nobody could shoot that low. But no, it was good, it was I s’pose at the time when you look back on it you could say,

“Yeah I hated then and I hated that.” at the time and I can remember now in respect, the only thing I didn’t agree with was getting up so bloody early. In the winter time and all that army underwear was just so rough and coarse. But that was it, that was all army.

There was a few complainers yeah. A few people that were not happy with the way things went. I think there was some of them just thought that you get a rifle and put in a uniform and get sent straight over, they didn’t know that all this training was [important], as an officer said to me, he said, “You’ll make it because you’re a survivor, you’ve

learnt, whereas the others they’re not because they’ve lived at home all their life, they’ve never had to fend for themselves.” whereas I was at a very young age they’d never ever done it. They’d never done ironing, they’d never made their bed, they’d never done their washing. And where in the army you had to do that, you had to do all that, you had to learn to iron and you had to learn to starch things, you had to learn to get the creases right and

this officer said, “You’ll survive because you’ve done it, you’ll survive you’ll know how to live this.” Whether it helped me? Well, I suppose it did help me, I’m still doing it today, I’m still surviving. I don’t know, some of them were not very happy about it yeah, some of them were really, really wanting to get out every day of the week. They just wouldn’t cooperate, they wouldn’t

and they, some of them tried very hard to get out.

Yeah a couple did, political things. One, another brother in the army or in the services in the navy or in the air force, sick mothers, sick fathers, so forth. A few of them got out yeah.

Hated them. Why couldn’t they do what we were doing? What was their great stand, why did they? What was different to them? What was different about them? There’s no difference, why should I do his job, he can get in and do it himself. Bugger him. But they never come in, we never ever seen any of them. A couple of blokes I know that did

get away from the army like sort of AWOL [Absent Without Leave] served a bit of time in lock up but come out and they served with us, they were good, there was nothing different about them. I think it was just at the time they couldn’t handle the pressure or some of the films they showed you or some of the training we got scared them a bit, I don’t know. Just one of those things.

No, nobody did. Everybody got into trouble

one way or another. One way, it was just one of those things that you naturally, any servicemen do, drinking after hours or sneaking out or doing things like this. The only thing we never got caught for was we short sheeted the sergeant’s bed one night and that was many years ago but that was rather fun and he was rather upset about that but no, I think everybody does

their little stint.

You just have to do a bit of cleaning, do the hallway or at Kapooka, “Alright, you played up, you done that, you can clean the hallway for a week.” things like that. That’s all it was it wasn’t great stuff because you were only in recruit training then, it wasn’t like at Ingleburn you get guard duty on the gates or every weekend

for a month cancelled, things like that, it was just basic training. It was, you were learning.

Yeah regularly. I’d go home, I wouldn’t go from Wagga because it was too far but we trained all weekends anyway. We’d ring up, I’d ring her up or send her letters, photos most of the time and all that sort of stuff.

It was hard. I’d just bought a new car and I’d left it with her. She had the car and everything, she’d learned, she didn’t have a license then so she learnt to drive in the car and that which was good. But it was yeah it was sort of lonely without her, without seeing her every night. But then again you talked to her when you got time.

I bought a new Datsun 1000 back in 1967 I think it was, or ’68 early ’68. Yeah it was only brand new, only a little small thing.

I can’t remember I think $1300, $1400 something like that it wasn’t much. It might’ve been 3,000 but

I do know it was taken out of me pay the money, even when I was in Vietnam it was still taken out of me pay. To pay for it. It was, I used to, when I got to Ingleburn and we’d do our training, we’d train Monday to Friday and I’d jump in the car, oh I got my car back then, I’d jump in the car and drive up to Narrabri. Leave Friday night and then leave Sunday night up there and drive back to Ingleburn.

Had a friend, Peter Margets, he lived at Maitland so I used to drive through along the Putty Road, go down to Maitland drop him off then whiz back to Narrabri. Yeah that was, and then he’d get his own way back to Ingleburn army camp. That was the other thing we used to do yeah. But every weekend used to drive up to see her.

We had a parade ground yeah training, we marched out, I can’t remember much about it but it was pretty big. It was one of those, ‘thank you you’ve passed your first test, good on you boys,’ and now you’re allocated to Ingleburn or your battalion, some got battalions, others got whatever they put

in for.

No, not down in Kapooka no it was too far.

They were hard, they were cruel, but they had a job to do. At the time I didn’t think that I hated them. They were so, so well I think cruel is the word but they had no other way, they had to train you. And the training was ‘put up with it

or not, it’s bad luck you’ve got to take it.’ But they got it through to you what you had to do, what they required at your best. And that’s why. Sometimes it didn’t make sense what they instructed you to do. Sometimes it didn’t matter why, but you had to do it and that was it. I remember one instructor I told him, “I’ll knock you down

with this butt of the rifle.” I said, “and I’ll show you what you taught me.” He said, “Do it.” He was a sergeant, he said, “Do it.” Anyway I had a go and I raised the rifle he said, “Now you’ve got it up, don’t finish.” He said, “Keep going in what you’re doing.” And I didn’t and I still wonder today what would’ve happened to me if I’d done it. I think it’d have been in plaster for a while. I think he would’ve

shown me the right and the wrong way. But they had a tough job the poor buggers and they were taken out of combat positions to train. They were just, I never realised that in the first spot but later in life I have, but they were taken out of combat duties because they ere either wounded or past their prime.

Probably some of them had, some had served in Korea, some had served in Malaya at that time. They’d all done service and they were regular soldiers, they wasn’t national service, they were regular. They were sort of career soldiers, that was their whole job, that was all they ever done in their life and they were

probably doing the last part of their service as instructors, which was hard. But they wanted to show you, or teach you what they’d learnt. And that’s why they were probably, “Do it right or I’ll get upset.”

Well it always is. A happy camp is a good camp. You always tried to get on with everybody and the mateship yeah it’s an Australian tradition. It’s always, “Sure it’ll be alright mate, I’ll help. You’re right mate I’m behind you. Tread where I tread mate, it’s safe for you.” And that’s the way it’s always been, it always will be.

It’s always, this is where it all comes down to, you don’t rely on yourself you’ve got your mates to help you and you’ve got to help them. So each one’s got to help each other and this is where the mateship comes in. It’s a tradition, it’s a thing that always happens and it’s trained into you it’s taught. You’re taught that, you live together, you fight together, you don’t sleep, you sleep in the same hut but yeah, it’s

a thing that you’ve got to have. It’s there with the Australian soldier. And the mateship, you don’t forget it goes years and years and years after you finish the army you’re still mates, you’re still friends. That’s why you have reunions which we still have today. 9 RAR [9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment], we have reunions now of course we dropped it down from five years to four years because we’re all getting older. And so we have it

every four years now and this year I’ve got me Delta Company [D Company] reunion at Southport in October. You see so that’s still mateship, a reunion to see your old mates. A lot of them still write to each other, ring up and talk to each other and all that, it’s still there, yeah the mateship.

When you first started off in recruit training, see I forget most of the people I trained with. Peter Margetts I remember because we were from the same area, Roger Curslack’s another one I remember but a lot of them, if I see their photos I can remember but I can’t remember their names. It was

just too much, it was go, go, go, go, go. At the time you remember Bill, Bob, Ron, Paul, John but as time goes by you’re – but some of them you do remember. It is a mateship in respect of training and doing your thing together but then you part, you go your own way. It’s not that you’ve forgotten them, well you’ve forgotten their names but you still remember them.

And the mateship’s there yeah, but it’s not like when you’re in Vietnam in the corps, in the regiment.

In certain respects there was yeah. There always is, there’s always that standover, that ‘I am’ that sometimes you just buckle under, say nothing, stay

away from them that sort of thing. Sometimes a group of blokes get in and take him aside and sort of encourage him to be a little bit nicer to people. It always happens, doesn’t matter where you are even in schools today it happens. So it’s one of those things again that you get the bloke that’s unsteady, a bully, that’s always been a bully,

always and wants to carry it on but they pull it into line, he comes into line very quickly.

Well apparently they have a fair bit on your history. And apparently

they look at these things and if you show an outstanding ability in one thing they’ll go and have a look at your background and see what you’ve done. And this is what, it surprised me when he said it, I still remember him saying it, I would survive because I have that survival instinct, I’ve got that experience behind me. Always remember that. And apparently they’ve got it all written there, it’s there for them. So I don’t know it amazed me when he told me that

but in the other respect, you can see that a lot of them that come into the call up, into the camp come in with Mum and Dad and all this, then some of us went in with no parents, nobody and I s’pose they look at it that way too.

A refuge?

Getting away from it?

Oh yeah in that respect I s’pose. Yeah, the army was a all expenses paid, clothes supplied, bed supplied, food supplied and they

even pay you for doing it. There was people that looked at it that way. I looked at it as adventure, something different, something new. Maybe I could’ve got a career out of it you don’t know. When I come back from Vietnam I did think about staying in the army and I did suggest to Elizabeth

at the time, because we got married when I was in the army, after I come back from Vietnam, about rejoining, reenlisting because we could go to Malaya, her with me and have a three year service over there, but she wouldn’t be in it. And that’s why I come out. Which really hurt me but anyway that’s another, she didn’t know that, I didn’t let her know that but it did, I wanted to stay in. Wanted to very much

stay in, I felt it was a good career. And the idea of me going over to Malaya, to Butterworth, which was told to me, I quite enjoyed that idea but not to be. She knew a lot of things about the army but

didn’t know a lot if you know what I mean. The army was a different, it was a rush, it was a tumble service then it was go, go, go, go, go because they needed all the recruits they could get in that short period. It’s not like now it’s just a flow along, back then it was very, very busy, busy time. And I quite enjoyed it I did.

I enjoyed it because I enjoyed the comradeship, the mateship, the friendship and this was when I’d finished all me training, I knew what was going on and I did like it. I would’ve quite willingly stayed in there as a career soldier but as it turns out things had to change. I tried to change with them but it didn’t work anyway.

After the recruit training you were sent your corps, three months. And you were sent to corps training which was infantry for me, some went signals, some went engineers, some went combat engineers, some went to transport, so forth, etc.

Yes. Worse luck yeah, I didn’t know at the time. Soon as you mention rifle, grenade, they automatically said, “You’re infantry.” If you mentioned tractor or bulldozer or truck they’d say, “Engineers.” But I made the mistake of saying infantry. They wanted infantrymen more than anything. They wanted foot

soldiers. They wanted replacements all the time because there was so many getting wounded and so many killed and so many getting discharged and they wanted replacements of infantry mostly all the time. So that was it, soon as you mentioned, they give you a selection of three right, and you had to fill this form: What do you want to be? And I put down

infantry and then transport and then say engineers. You mentioned infantry, that’s where you go. So that was the main problem yeah, you had to know what to do. Nobody knew. Nobody was told, you just, and that’s why there’s so many infantrymen, because of that. Nobody told them, don’t mention it, just select it. Just if you did mention it you’re in, if you didn’t mention it

well you might not go in but they might try to change your mind about it, to go into infantry.

Well, nobody enjoys it, it’s hard work it’s really hard work and it’s sometimes so boring, but the only thing you can look at is when it’s finished. It’s

you’ve got somewhere to go in life, somewhere to go other than, it’s just training, training, training and that’s what it is. Corps training, you’re trained to know what you’re going to, what you’re fighting, what you’re going to fight, how to fight them, how to survive, how to kill, how to all that. And you do your rifle range and you do your grenades and you do your all this see, and you learn your tactics

and manoeuvres and that’s corps training. It’s, it was tough and when it was finished it was a relief. But you had different recruit training you had your weekends off most of the time in corps training, and then after corps training when you get allocated to go to Vietnam you had to do your

jungle training and that was up at Kapooka and that was bloody hard. It as really, really hard training Kapooka and it’s run, run, run all the time, it’s night fighting, night training, crawling, grenade throwing, it’s jungle training. And apparently it was the same jungle training they used in New Guinea in the Second World War, we were trained that way.

So that was a bit of an experience in that respect. But you had three, you had before we got to see Vietnam you had three lots of training, you had recruit, corps and then Canungra. And then we went to Vietnam after Canungra. Canungra was only a matter of I think three weeks, three or four weeks training up there, heavy, heavy training. It as really hard

work. We had Americans there and they couldn’t, they reckoned it was the hardest they’d ever done and that’s the way the army is, gets you fit. And by the time you come to the end of that you’re so keyed, you’re so anxious, you’re so ‘get me there now I’m ready,’ attitude that you don’t care about anything you just, “Get me, go, I want to go to war, I want to get there.”

That’s what it’s all about, that’s how the training was.

I had no, well the skills was unused by me at the time but they were the survival, the tactics, the manoeuvres against the enemy and how the enemy

is thought to fight, thought to operate, what to look for and what to expect from the enemy in this is what they knew over the time that they’d already been in Vietnam. And we were trained these things. It is very similar to when you get over there, what you find. Except

it’s live bullets shot at you over there, that’s the only difference, and live booby traps and live landmines. The jungle is a lot thicker over there, there enemy is a lot harder to see over there, so is the booby traps so is the landmines. But it was training to get you keyed to get you skilled to get you acclimatised for that

sort of manoeuvre, that sort of conditions know what I mean? It was, you become it’s like swimming, they teach you to swim first and then you swim and then they teach you more manoeuvres, more strokes, better strokes well this is the same in the army. Better movements, better advancement, better qualities, what to expect, better, how to fight.

How to manoeuvre yourself in the jungle, in the hot, in the heat, in the moisture and so forth.

Oh darling I forget now. Well the digging and the moving and the quietness. Never follow a track, always go over a hill don’t go around it, try not to disturb the foliage too much as you’re

advancing. Be quiet, it’s just normal procedure. Protect yourself from nature like leeches, ticks, so forth, snakes, so forth etc. The enemy is what to look for, what to try, no broken branches, leaves, footprints.

The manoeuvres of the enemy, what they’re expected to do.

They had underground tunnels, they had snipers, they had bunkers, they had kitchens that you walk on and you don’t even notice that they’re there until you’re on to them. We were trained to look for that. To know what to look for, to know what to expect, to know which way to advance under fire,

protect and fire, to crawl and fire. That’s all this in the jungle was pretty hard going in respect of the foliage was so thick, every shot you fired if you hit a leaf it would deflect in some other way than the way you wanted it to go. How to advance on this and how to manoeuvre yourself not too far away so you could see your own men.

Not get too far ahead of them or too far behind them. But it was all in the training of survival, in the training of advancement with your company, with your section and protecting fire in the jungle. It’s a number of things that

they could show you but never come to you until you was actually in the combat if you know what I mean. What to expect, what to, how to survive it. I’m getting lost here in a minute. How to sort of be an army, how to be an advancement army in the jungles. Can we turn this off a minute because I’m getting

lost here.

Because I don’t remember a lot of that.

We went by bus from Kapooka to Ingleburn, one big bus load of us. We got allocated to Ingleburn, we didn’t get allocated to, we went as replacements for

battalions already in Vietnam. We didn’t go to battalions that were here in Australia. I was allocated to 9 RAR in Vietnam, I think that was February-March, something like that it was, in ’69.

Over to them yeah. Had to go through corps training and then I was allocated over there which a number of us were.

And we went over I think it was March we went in Vietnam yeah, early March.

9 RAR, yeah 9 RAR is a very famous battalion, it fought in the deserts of the Second World War and in Vietnam, it was over in Cambodia I think or Burma and then it went to, they brought it back and sent it to Papua New Guinea.

It had a very famous reputation and then they took the colours away, they closed 9 RAR down but they reopened 9 RAR for Vietnam. 9 RAR has now handed its colours back in, they’re shown down Singleton I think it is, they’re at now the colours and it can be recalled any time 9 RAR, it’s a very famous battalion.

I didn’t know all this until after I went to it. Just to be allocated any battalion was good enough but I wanted one that was going to be there for the year, which was 9 RAR. I think 4 RAR was also there, they were coming home in the middle of the year which was I think August they were coming back to Australia. Peter Margetts got into 4 RAR and he was

only there, I don’t think he was there for even three months and then he come back.

Very protesting, they thought we shouldn’t have been in Vietnam. They thought we should’ve been just out of there at all cost. Had nothing to do with us. America called on us or we volunteered, whichever way they wanted

to look at it at that stage. There was a lot of hurt, hate, there was a lot of hate to the servicemen, not only army, navy and air force. There was a lot of hate towards them because we were over there. Because the stories that they’d got we were all killing women and children. It was a political war,

it was a corrupt war, it was one of these things that the public believed the propaganda that they got and they believed it instead of going right into it and studying it.

None. I didn’t care. I didn’t care one thing about it. They didn’t worry me and I wouldn’t worry them if they didn’t worry me.

I didn’t want to know them. But it did after I came back, it had a lot of affect on me. But at that time I didn’t care about it. They were just all rabble raisers, druggos, pot smoking flower head wearers, all of this they were nothing.

Yeah got a week’s leave before I went.

I flew back to Narrabri, done our things, said ‘hooray’ to everybody, it was just like going on a holiday. Well, what do you say? It was just like doing your country well, ‘see youse later,’ rah, rah, rah.

Not that I remember no. There was probably a lot of backchat.

Because there was a few people from Narrabri that went and a couple got killed in Vietnam. But it was pretty sedate, not many people knew, not many people really cared. Not many people knew about Vietnam, it was surprising to see. It was mainly city people and uni students, all this that protested all the time because they were going to get called up see. But

it was a country people were different, it really didn’t worry them too much. They didn’t sort of get too involved in all this protesting. And besides that, how are they going to protest? What do you do? Most country towns are all related anyhow. So it was one of those things that you go there, say ‘hooray,’ hop on a plane back down to the army and went overseas.

Flew overseas, went over by plane.

Yeah, we were engaged before I left, went overseas. It was hard parting, it was hard that way. It wasn’t long enough, it was only a week before we - were together before I went overseas it was only a week. It wasn’t very much.

But too long lingering you get the idea in your head ‘I won’t go,’ so probably a week was enough anyway.

I was excited, I was very excited, I was so excited it was, I was vibrating. I was so trained too I was vibrating. I was anxious to get over there, I was very, very anxious.

If they would’ve rang me up half way through the week’s leave, I would’ve run down to Sydney. But this is the way your trained see, this is what happens, you get so highly trained, so anxious about every thing, it’s how do I say it. You’re so skilled, you want to show your skills, you want to use them, and this is

what was happening. This is how we were, we were really, really trained to that perfection that we had to get over and do something.

No, none. I was alright I was going to survive. Everything was fine. I was trained right I knew that. No, I can’t

remember any no, I think everything was settled right in my head. I knew what I was doing.

No, nobody. Oh me Aunty Ester and Uncle Bert in Sydney, they took me and put me on the plane. They said ‘Hooray.’ That was about it, but that was relations just saying ‘hooray’ you know, see you later.

No nothing. No nobody.

Yes. I forgot I said that yeah. Poor old Aunt Parker in Narrabri. On the Wednesday, the middle of the week she said, “I want you.” this was Tuesday, she said, “I want you to come up tomorrow, Wednesday about eleven o’clock.” she said, “The minister comes

and sees me.” and she said, “I want you to come up.” I said, “All right.” So I went up and she give me this cross and she said, “I’ve had it blessed and I want you to wear it at all times, never take it off.” And at that house we put it on me dog tags. She said, “I want you to never ever take it off until you come back home.” Which I didn’t. Had a lot of superstition about it, a lot of beliefs about it and a lot of feelings that happened

that makes me wonder today how much that cross was involved with it. How I survived when I should’ve been dead, many a time I should’ve been dead and yet it never happened. And this little cross, what it had to do with that. Whether it was in the head or the cross you know. Or whether it was just pure luck. Very weird.

Very weird indeed. A number of times when I was forward scout, one of the bunkers I walked up on, I didn’t see it actually I walked straight into it, when I hit the ground when I was warned of it, hit the ground, got up to it, there was a live cigarette still burning on the lip of the bunker. so there was obviously somebody there with must’ve been weapons and didn’t shoot me, I wonder why. I was so easy a target

I was right in front of it. Another one was a landmine I didn’t tread on. It was just an endless number of things that happened, why quicksand that I walked into. It was on a river bank, I think bombs had exploded and the hole, the crater they create turns into a mud sludge and then all the leaves and that fall on it. You can’t tell if it’s hard ground or not, I walked into it and nearly drowned in that.

And different things that have happened, whether it was the cross or what it was that makes you think. But when I come back home from Vietnam, and I got to Elizabeth’s place, her mother’s place, I had a shower and took the cross off, it was never to be found again. Never ever found it again, just disappeared, with me dog tags.

Never ever found them, never put them anywhere, took them off, put them on the vanity unit and for some strange reason I locked the bathroom door, when I hopped out of the shower and I got dressed, I went to get them they were gone. Pulled the vanity unit apart, the pipes, the shower pipes, the bathtub pipes, never ever found them. Don’t know what happened. Never found to this day.

So how much belief’s there I don’t know. How much spirits are there I don’t know. How much, whatever I don’t know what it is but it’s never been found today, me dog tags or the cross.

It was blessed by her to keep me safe, she said that. That’s the only superstition. It was blessed by the minister, she said, “It’s been blessed

to protect you, wear it and never take it off.” Which I never did, in Vietnam never took it off. And a lot of weird, strange things happened that I should be dead many a time, but it never happened. Whether it was this cross or what I don’t know.

Very, it broke me up. Nobody’d ever done anything like that for me,

in that respect. So it did touch me. Well it must’ve done because I never took it off, it was always there. I taped it. What you did was you had your dog tags and you used to tape them so they wouldn’t rattle and that’s what I did. So it was never ever taken off, it was never ever, and the superstition was ‘hah, this’ll never work.’ But it

must’ve been there with me because I never took it off. The day I took it off was the day I come back to Australia, the day it disappeared.

Everybody, I think one way or another a lot of people carried some good luck charm, whether it might be a ring or a watch or a four-leaf clover or whatever it might have been, everybody carried something. Well not everybody but a lot of them did, yeah.

I think that goes with a lot of things, a lot of wars, a lot of happenings, a lot of events even, favourite underwear, favourite socks, favourite hat, favourite sunglasses, superstition. In Vietnam I think there was a lot of things that did happen like that. I think you had to have that little bit of a belief, that little bit of security

if you know what I mean. I don’t think only Vietnam I think every war has that little bit of good luck charm with it, belief. Wear your old socks or carry an old hankie or wear an old necklace whatever it might be. And I think it goes to that stage where it was probably just my belief that done it and it was just my good luck that these people never

shot me.

No that’s all, only the cross. No, I had a backpack that was heavy enough without carrying good luck charms. No it was with me all them months I was over there, nine months I think it was, it never come off.

But soon as I come home and took it off I never ever found it again. And it was all in a matter of half an hour that it, whatever happened to it and nobody could get in the bathroom and there was no cracks in the floor, never fell down behind the vanity unit, where the hell did it go? Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Never ever found to this day, never ever found, the cross or the dog tags. Makes you wonder.

To Vietnam? No, nothing no only what the army issued us. What can you take? You had to take some clothes, civilian clothes which was strange to me but you went on leave after

every operation you went on a thirty-six hour leave down to Vung Tau, which we didn’t know much about anyway. Where the hell was Vung Tau? And you had civilian clothes to wear but you didn’t need anything la-di-dah just t-shirt, jeans, sandshoes, things like that nothing special. No other, nothing. Camera? Yeah took a camera.

When I was over there I bought a tape recorder. Nothing great no, nothing too personal.

Back to Ingleburn then to, had to catch a plane that night. Plane load of soldiers mind you from Ascot airport. I think it was about

eight thirty, nine o’clock something like that. And it got laid back half an hour if I remember. We all loaded on the plane I think it was a 707, 707, 727. 727 it might’ve been.

Yeah we all did that. Had a look at the last remembrance of Australia sort of thing. Yeah we done

a little bit of a sight-seeing tour there which was an experience. That’s the night we were called ‘kindergarten soldiers.’ Yeah, we were called that because we were only young. Actually, the street girls called us that which was a surprise,

it made me open me eyes actually and we were kindergarten soldiers because we hadn’t been to combat yet, so we were only learners. Yeah it was an experience, made me open me eyes that. That was the night before we were due to go, we went up to say goodbye to Australia.

The girls? That was it, kindergarten soldiers we were. Learners.

“Oh, here’s the kindergarten soldiers.” yeah. I can’t remember much more. I don’t want to remember much more. But it was an experience and we had a night up there, we had a bit of a roam around. I can’t remember anything else.

Yes, very much so. One thing is the diseases that are over there that are very life sentencing. Black Jack [venereal disease] and all this sort of stuff, be very, very wary of it.

Condoms if required, but preferably none at all. They had a little island over there just off the coast of Vietnam they were telling us where they used to send these people that died peacefully with the Black Jack and all that sort of stuff. But never encountered anything like that but just didn’t have. You know, you tried but it wasn’t near as bad as you expected and besides that when you first went over you were

far too scared of it and you were too wary of any sicknesses like that and the heat. You had rashes and you had your tinea and you had your leech bites and you had the insect bites and just too wary, too tired. But eventually it did come around somewhere along the line and it was nice. The girls were nice, they were very attractive, they were half French a lot of them, half French, half Vietnamese because the French

occupied Vietnam before us, well before us. And they left their calling present which was very attractive girls. But it was something different over there, something that you don’t see or expected to see. It was a totally different environment, totally different living, totally different culture. It was a real eye opener and when we first got there, couldn’t believe it. We landed at

Singapore, Saigon sorry. We landed at Singapore on the way over, we had to change our clothes out of the army uniform into civilian shirts because we didn’t have a passport to go to and we had to be Mr Tourist. When we left there we went to Saigon and I expected to hop off the plane under bombardment and rifle fire and half of them weren’t even carrying weapons I couldn’t believe it.

What was happening? From Saigon airport we went by Wallaby [Airlines], the mail plane, the Hercules to Nui Dat, landed there and it was a total different story. Then it was an army camp which we expected was something different but it was just like any army camp except a lot bigger. We were sent

to the acclimatisation zone which was, spent three weeks there getting acclimatised for the weather. It was where I had me first encounter of rifle fire at me. I was up in a sentry box on the high stands, fifteen, sixteen steps up, it was night time and all of a sudden from nowhere, B52 bombers bombed the mountain range, the Long Hais

and scared the hell out of me. The next thing the South Vietnamese started open fire and all I could see was tracer bullets coming at me. And that was me first encounter ever on battleground, I thought. I raced down them steps, I never touched one going down and I’m trying to, I couldn’t get the radio to work and I raced over and woke the first officer up I could find and I think today

he’s even still laughing at it, the way I was crapping meself over this encounter. But Vietnam itself is a lovely, lovely country, a beautiful country. It’s dry in the dry season then it’s very wet. Four o’clock you can set your watch to, every afternoon that’s when the rain starts. You could set your watch to it. You could throw an orange seed down today and go back in a month and there’d be a tree there. That’s how good

a country, beautiful soil, beautiful ground. Very thick, very thick jungle, very thick in density, growth. Vines and cane with these long huge needles on them and it’s just different, it’s something you don’t expect to see, it’s just how do you fight

through that? You spend all your time cutting your way through let alone fighting. But it’s different country it’s beautiful. The people are so old fashioned, so ancient. Water buffalo pulls their carts and their ploughs and water buffalo’s a sacred animal. The wives do all the farm work and the husband squats

around smoking and talking business all day. And the women chew betel nut, ugh betel nut, red lips, yellow teeth, all the teeth are rotted out, yuk. But it seemed so different so. We were told that everyone was a killer, everyone was a… and it wasn’t from what we seen. But it was beautiful country, I couldn’t believe it

you could grow anything. Rubber plantations all around where the French, unbeknown to me Dunlop used to own, I don’t know if they still do but they used to own a lot of plantation there. Dunlop tyres. But it was how do you say, it was a, everything was sold on the streets, open markets in the filth and the mud. The toilets were holes in the ground,

they’d urinate anywhere. It was, hygiene was unheard of over there you know what I mean. But their dress, their clothes, their living was very basic in wooden beds and wooden pillows, huts in the villages, it was nothing like what we expected.

That they were ruthless, cunning, hard to find and it was their country so they knew the ground well, they knew the area. They’d been fighting for hundreds of years so they know how to fight, they were

what they believed then that they had vast cities under the ground but we couldn’t find them. The enemy were mostly ambush guerrilla fighting, snipers and sneak attacks that we were told about. Which we had happen to us. But it wasn’t

what we sort of fully expected, it wasn’t what we were, no front on combat you know what I mean, it was not a war as we knew a war that was the funny part. I can remember like thinking first time there we went out bush, every tree, every noise was an enemy.

Every, they were just as blind in the dark as we were because it was pitch black, pitch, pitch black in the night time in the jungle. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, so how the hell could they find their way let alone us find our way. But they were a cunning enemy, they were very smart, of course like they’d been fighting for years and years and years and they just seemed

endless, there was never a stop to them they were just all the time there. Although we didn’t fight, we didn’t have as much contact as the Americans had, we were only in South Vietnam, we weren’t up in the north but we still seen our fair amount but what we had was, for our amount of people was vastly in the same quantity as Americans had for their amount of people.

Well, same as always, black pyjamas. Always expect them in black pyjamas but unbeknown to us, the villagers which were coaxed into fighting for the enemy, persuaded not coaxed, persuaded, they would do a lot of surveying for the Viet Cong, like how many soldiers, how many weapons, how many machine

guns. If they could get a count of the machine guns because there was always one machine gun to each section, they would get a knowledge of how big the squad was. So the villagers would tell them that. Otherwise the villagers die because they’d kill the villagers, people. But we wasn’t allowed to leave any cans or anything whole,

we had to squash them, break them, bend them, wreck them and then bury them so the enemy couldn’t get them. They used to make bombs, landmines, trip wire explosives, all that sort of weaponry out of them. Cans they’d fill with gunpowder and nails, so forth, etc. It was, the children, when we’d do a village search, used to come around and try and sell us

ice-creams or ice blocks they were, they were just frozen water that’d give you the runs and gut aches. And they used to get a lot of information, count how many people, how many men, how many soldiers and feed it back through the pipeline to the main offenders. Same with the women, and most villages you went into you never ever seen any young men.

They were all gone, they were used up, taken away by the Viet Cong or persuaded to fight for the Viet Cong, very seldom you’d come in, mainly there was old women and children, that’s all there was in the villages.

That’s right yeah, it was, it was a thing of ‘fools come in’

sort of thing, you didn’t know who the enemy were, you didn’t know who, what was happening, you were going to shoot anybody and everybody but when we got there, most of the women were wearing black pyjamas but a white top with a bit straw hat. The men they were wearing virtually the same thing except no hat. Only the field workers and the men in the field that were doing,

a lot of them were enemy, a lot of them were counting us, a lot of them were passing on information. We just didn’t know who was who. So what the army had to do was put a curfew down and the curfew consisted of, they’d notify the people that we were going to be in this area on a certain time, on a certain date and if anybody was there, we would kill them.

Simple as that, so that’s what happened. But a lot of the enemy that didn’t know this, who’d come through and we’d had contacts and measurements with them and it become a guessing game in the end. It was a find, seek and destroy sort of thing. It become ambush valley, guess what’s happening valley

and you’d go through and the track’d be clear, the next mob to follow you would step on landmines because they’d sneak out and put down landmines in between you and the next mob. And this happened quite a bit. And this was hard, it was cunning, it was scary, nerve wracking and it got to the stage if we didn’t have a contact nearly every day with the enemy, a fire-fight or a kill, we started to get

edgy. Very edgy with each other, very edgy, very anxious is the word. And it become so bad for a lot of people, blood-lust. It become a, I don’t say a lot of people a few of them did, become blood-lust. And a lot of them couldn’t settle after Vietnam, a lot of them stayed there.

High level of training yeah. You got so, the high level of training had a lot to do with it because you expected a lot and then when you got contacts it was like taking an Aspro, it was a relief. It was a (deep breath) and then if you didn’t have a contact that day you were getting anxious and anxious and anxious. And if you didn’t have a contact or a kill or a fire-fight to let that steam off, it was like a

steam engine building up steam and you had to let it go. So it was a battles, it was a conflict of a lot of different things. A lot of tension, a lot of releases, a lot of sort of battle combatants who were

regular soldiers who had being do it and this was just another conflict but it was a relief to them you know what I mean?

Well you didn’t know who was friendly, everybody was foe. Everybody was, especially

in the Vietnamese, you didn’t tell them nothing or show them nothing or even take them anywhere because you didn’t know who they were. Even the kids, the people, we didn’t even trust the South Vietnamese Army people or the men we had with us because we didn’t know them that well. I mean in Vung Tau where the head office, the main headquarters was, they found the cleaners which the women

they found these little hand grenades which they call snatch grenades, which no need to tell you where they were carrying them. And they found them. And this is dead set true. And this is your own cleaners, this is your own, people that you trusted, well you thought, you just didn’t know who was who and what was what. So you didn’t trust anybody of the Vietnamese because you didn’t know who they were, what they were doing, who they were passing information, or where they’d gone

after they left you. So it was a bit of a worry.

My first impression was, at the airbase, was where’s all the weapons? Where’s all the bombardment? Where’s all the machine gun fire? Where’s all the rifles? I thought there was

just fighting all the time but it wasn’t, it was a bit of a surprise. It was a bit of a, like Sydney airport, nobody was carrying any weapons. I couldn’t believe it, this was an army base airport mind you. I couldn’t believe it but then you could see the fighter planes and the helicopters and all that there around the base. But it was different, I expected the,

I don’t know I just expected bombardment or whatever. Yeah and when we landed at Nui Dat it was the same thing but it was an army camp. Everybody carried weapons but there was nothing, ‘jeez is this all? What’d they want to get us here so quick for?” It was just different.

It was a big camp. It was in trees, rubber trees, rubber plantation, it was

open and my God I hope there’s enough sentries out there to protect us and all this. Because we were rifleless up until that time mind you, we didn’t get a rifle until we got to camp. Yeah it was ‘oh not another training camp.’ That’s what I thought straight off, ‘oh no, all we’re going to do is train here again,’ but it was totally different after we got in to the main

area of the camp, in our selection, in our postings. It was different. Couldn’t believe it.

We didn’t go straight to the battalion, we went to the acclimatised, what did they call it, NFB or something like that where you had to be acclimatised to the

conditions of Vietnam. The heat and the…

Yeah, first off. As they come in they went there. It was different, we done our little patrols around the perimeter of the camp at night and all this, and done our sentry duties and then you had your little light trainings and weaponries and so forth etc,

to get you used to it. And then you had your, at that camp you had movies and outside movies and all that, but it’s the first place you get used to all the dehydrated, add-water-to food. It was like powdered eggs is absolutely terrific, yuk. And powdered

potatoes, everything was add-water-to, it was just so different, so different. And that’s I s’pose in respect of what you had to get used to, and the heat and the climate and the weather and what to look out for in the sentry duties and the noises and the darkness.

I can. We went out and there was only a small group of us, I think there was about eight or

nine of us and we went out to camp over night. And it was the most scariest, didn’t sleep at all. Didn’t, we done the trial, every noise, every, you’re jumping on nerves and expecting the whole Vietnamese army to come out and jump on you. It was just, because it’s your first event, first happening, first you didn’t know what to expect. You had

experienced officers with you who knew what you was doing it for, keep you calm. You were scared of sleeping, of scorpions or spiders or snakes, of the deadly bloody crepe snake that was so popular in Vietnam. You didn’t know what to look for, you were so on edge you were tingling all over with

excitement, anticipation, combat, you didn’t know what would happen. But uneventful, nothing ever happened.

Not a real lot. Just ‘you’ll hear them coming, it’ll all break, just be alert, be on your toes.’ Because you’re camped in really thick jungle mind you. You’re really sort of hemmed in,

you’re not going to, they’re not going to attack in great forces because they never ever did in the middle of the night. It was just too dark. We never got attacked, it was always just on dusk or dawn that they, we’d get hit or we’d hit them and that was simple as that. And that was only in ambushes. So in the middle of the night I never seen any conflict, well there might’ve been I can’t say but we never had any in the middle of the night.

I can’t remember, just one of the gunners, rifleman I think. I wasn’t, I was just one of the ordinary blokes. We all spent our time on the machine gun at night, through the night, had an hour, hour and a half whatever it might’ve been. You had strings from where you were camped to go to the machine gun. Each bed down had and you’d go there and follow the string

and sure enough when you were coming back you’d get on the wrong string and all this sort of bloody thing but it was, that’s how black it was. And it was scary, it was, you sat up, you laid awake and all this. Then after a while you started to realise hey what’s happening. But it was an experience and it was something that probably without a contact, it was better because you wouldn’t have known what to do

in a contact, it was just so new.

Yeah we survived. Look boys we survived. We’re back. They won’t get in, we’ll protect you, we’re experienced now. All this sort of stuff. But it was virtually as you could say, well it wasn’t a safe ground because the enemy could’ve attacked there but it was highly unlikely that they would in that area that we went out, I’d say.

They wouldn’t send new recruits out into a busy area and most of it was, most of the ambushes and that were on tracks. Most of the contacts were on tracks, it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, it was mostly all set positions if you know what I mean. It was,

they wouldn’t have sent us out, new recruits, it was just a sort of like training ground, that’s all it was.

Yeah Delta Company, 9 RAR

Just took us up there, just said, “You’re in, go up and report to HQ [Headquarters].” which I did, we did, we got dropped off by truck. Taken up by jeep I think it was actually. Got taken in, got dropped off at headquarters, reported in, shown our bunks and that was it.

Simple as that.

Like every new comer, “G’day, hope you stay with us. Keep your head down. Do your job.” All that, that was the main thing, that was all. I got put into a camp and me first one was with three other blokes in a tent. I think it was Scrivener, Popey,

I can’t remember the other bloke and meself. Four in the tent, big bungalow, big tent. Yeah, I got on all right. They sort of, “Oh yeah, we’ve got the new one, we’ve got to look after you.” That attitude but they got over that after a while. And as you do, you weed out and you fall into line with them. Because you’ve got to because they know the ropes and you didn’t so

you just fell in line with them, that was simple.

Yeah, “You’re a nasho, I’m a regular.” “Oh that’d be bloody right, don’t want you in our tent get out.” But that was common occurrence, that happened all the time.

“We’re here to show you blokes, youse have been in so long youse have forgotten. They had to bring us in to show youse. Youse are too old to do your job, they had to bring us young’uns in.”

But it worked out after a while, some of them held a bit of a grudge but it got by. We didn’t steal their clothes as long as they didn’t steal our sort of thing, so it was fine.

We wasn’t only doing that. We were replacing a lot of blokes who was, their time was up, they were getting discharged or their

time in Vietnam was up. This happened regularly. A lot of blokes were getting discharged, a lot of blokes were sick or like you said wounded, hate to say the word killed, but yeah some of them were. And it was just a regular thing. I can’t remember how many people come in and out of our platoon in the time I was there for nine months. How many recruits come in and out, went,

new replacements all the time. There was a lot and that’s what happens. You’re not all called up at the same time, regular soldiers times up, service’s up, some of them put in extra time to stay in Vietnam and that was up. You could put in for, if you were there 12 months you could put in for an extra six months to stay there and that time was up so they had to go, so they had to have a replacement in.

But we never ever had in our section, a section is ten men, we were lucky to have seven at any time. Any given time. It was just always short, never ever had that amount of men that you’re supposed to per section. So it was just one of those things. The flow of men was constant, different blokes, different times, different faces all the time

and it wasn’t just through kill or injury, it was also through time, your service was up.

Nine months, they still had nine months to go. I think I served 275 days if I remember, I can’t remember exactly. I know it was just under 300 days I served over there.

It was an old army tent, Second World War job, it had the flap over the top, big enough for four beds, a couple of big tin cupboards inside it up on palettes off the ground so the water could flow through. Sand bags around the sides,

that was it virtually it was nothing any different to any army tent that you see in camps or on the side of airports. The same thing.

When I first started off in the section we went out, I got the replacement on the machine gun and a little bloke like me carrying that, I

only had it two days and I near collapsed from heat exhaustion. They took that off me and decided they’d put me on forward scout and this is where I learnt me thing as forward scout. It’s me first episode with the enemy virtually, was when I nearly walked into a bunker with, I didn’t see it,

I didn’t know, did not see it I just walked straight into it. I would’ve been only twenty feet off it and I was warned, yelled out, “Hit the ground, bunker.” and when we got up to it here’s a cigarette burning on the lip of it. Definitely somebody in it, I don’t know why they never fired at me they just didn’t. They went and that was me first ever episode of I don’t know if you call it combat. And that was only a couple of days after I was in the battalion,

in the company.

I didn’t know a thing about it, I didn’t know what to do. They said, “You’ll learn.” And that was it I did, I learnt very quickly. And I wondered why put a new recruit up first but the story was, “Well you’ve got to learn. And you’ve got to learn quick here, you can’t take your time.”

And I learnt quick, real quick. Don’t just look up, look all around. Don’t look down, look around, just keep your eyes peeled for something that’s very unusual, very not into the scenery that shouldn’t be there. Take note. Which I did.

Well it is. It is in a lot of respects but also it can be the safest. Because you tread on a landmine, it doesn’t go straight off it waits until you get past, two or three, and then it’ll go off. Sniper fire or machine gun fire yeah you’re the first to go, but also ‘tail-end Charlie’ is just as bad, you have the enemy come up behind. So no position in jungle warfare is safe. Or any warfare is safe. It’s all deadly.

It’s just that how good you are, how keen your are, how observant you are in that position that you’re selected to put it, how experienced you are.

Well I didn’t do it all the time, but most of the time. I didn’t do forward scout every day of the week, I did it quite a bit and in the end

I ended up being trained for it by doing a course on I can’t even think of the name of it now, observe, can’t think on the name of it. I got a promotion anyway, a silent promotion they called it, tracker, individual tracker and sign reader. I done a course on that over in Vietnam.

I’d been doing that role before that probably six months before I done the course.

Yes it did, it did actually yeah. It surprised me in a lot of respects because I would’ve known a lot more what to look for. I would’ve known a lot more how to read it. Once you’ve

done that course you know everything, well mostly everything, grass, ants, footprints, water, rub marks, whether they’re female or male just by a footprint, whether they’re in a hurry or not, whether they’re carrying a load or not. You learn all that. Before that I didn’t know any of this I just knew a footprint was a footprint. but after doing the course and fulfilling it, in practise,

I knew what to look for, I knew what to read. The heel prints, the foot prints, the walk, even the footprint the female always walks one foot in front of the other where the male walks bow-legged and things like that. I never ever knew that before but after I done the course I learnt, I knew.

No they asked me did I want to do it or not. And I said, “Yeah, right-o, it’ll get me out of.” this is while we’re back in camp and I said, “It’ll get me out of other duties.” So I done the course.

In Nui Dat, by a trained, he was a highly skilled bloke too, I can’t think of his name but he come from round about Alice Springs, he used to drive cattle from Alice Springs to Adelaide or down that way and back all the time. That was his job

before he come in the army. And he was a very skilled tracker, he was very, very skilled. For a bloke so young too, he was only our age, probably a bit older than us and he showed us a lot yeah. It was interesting, where to look, how to see, what to look for, broken branches, turned leaves, a leaf has got two sides to it and why is this side facing when all the rest are

facing the other way and all that. It was quite interesting yeah and I learnt a lot from it. I don’t say I learnt it soon enough, I wish I’d learnt it sooner, I think it was a bit late in the time of me service over there that I learnt it, to show any profit for it. But it was an experience.

Not that I know of no, I think I was one of the first with the other, there was probably I don’t know, a dozen of us that done it. I think we were the first lot to do it. I’d never heard of anybody else doing it, but I think, which is an experience also. I never struck anybody let me put it that way, I never struck anybody that done it, they might’ve but I never struck anybody. I thought we were the first.

I don’t know about safer, it made me know what to look for, it made me know to understand it a bit better, it made me know not to get scared that they were here hiding behind that tree. I could read a sign, read a footprint or read a rub mark or read and know how long, if you tread on a blade of grass it’s bent,

how long it’ll take before it straightens up. How long ago the bloke trod on it, that was interesting. Or a footprint with water, mud and how long it takes to fill with water after you leave it and things like this. Or ants, if you tread on a trail of ants, where you tread on them the ants will then go around the footprint, how long before they go back across the footprint and all this, so you can tell by that. And that was an experience because every footprint I’d see, I thought there was a bloke hiding

behind that tree, which wasn’t true. So it calmed me nerves a little bit in that respect. Yeah, it did.

No. Sometimes it was better with smaller numbers because the jungles were so thick, you had too long of a line out, and then they got the wrong signal back,

at the end, from the front to the end. And you went and turned, give an indication you were turning right before the signal got back to tail end, he’d see a movement and shoot. He didn’t know it was you because he hadn’t got the information. So a shorter, less amount of men was probably a little bit better in a lot of respects, and I think they probably knew that too. But there was a lot of misfortunes in that respect, that wrong signals, wrong indications,

wrong message and the old trick of sending a message along a line is well known, how from A to B it gets, how different it is. So probably in respect they had their head screwed on right and kept a small amount of number in the section. In that respect. But it was, it was good in a lot of ways.

It was, you could move quicker, you could move a lot quicker with only a small section. It was a lot deadlier if you got into contact I s’pose, more men the merrier, but no it was better.

Well it just means that somebody had been along there. Why is the leaf turned? Why is the branch broken? Why is it pointing the wrong way? Why is it… an indication is that if a branch is broken and it’s pointing that way well actually the person has gone that way because it,

so what was it, how long ago? How long ago do you think it was broken? How long ago, how far ahead are they? What time? What distance? What weight are they carrying? What are they doing? All this can tell you in a footprint or a branch or bent grass that somebody’s been along here.

Well usually on a footprint when somebody’s carrying a load the heel’s dug in.

Because when you’ve got a big load on your back the heel goes in first, that usually indicates that they’re carrying a load and the shorter the step. A normal step is say 36 inches, but if you’re carrying a heavy load on your back your step is shorter and your heel print is deeper. That indicates that you’re carrying

a load.

The footstep’s longer and it’s always the toe print in first and it’s a deeper scrape, that’s when they’re in a hurry. The heel is the heavy, the hurry is the longer step and it’s your toe that hits the ground first, not your heel.

It does to a certain degree, instinct yeah you know what to look for because you know what to look for. And you can look down at a footprint and say, “Well that person was in a hurry.” and then you can say why, because a) somebody’s scared them or they’re trying to make communication, or was it an enemy or friendly foe or what.

And if it’s in an area that they shouldn’t be we naturally you know it’s enemy and then you start saying, “Why are they in a hurry? Why? What’s happening? Are they building up forces and is this person, and has this person heard something and dashed off?” So you try to follow their footprints back to see how far back they’ve started this hurry, if you can find them.

Our footprints were bigger, heavier and we wore army boots they didn’t, they only wore sandals, mostly all the time. Plus they were lighter, they were little people and their footprints were lighter. And when they carried, and their footprint was different, the footmark, their shoe mark was different. When they were in a hurry you could tell, if they were carrying a load

you could tell and if they were females you could tell, and if the track was wet, you could tell by the mud, the footprint would fill up with water and it usually took somewhere in the vicinity of anything between 40 minutes to an hour for that to fill up with water after you trod in the wet mud. So you knew in that time, how to guess roughly not exactly

how full it was.

Well an ant, you can tread on an ant, an ant has a line, a track across a path and you go and tread on the track, now this is only from memory, this is a lot of years ago, you tread on the track you break that path of the ant and you leave an impression in the – so the ant will then proceed to go around that footprint. And it usually takes somewhere between half an hour

to an hour, fifty minutes to go back across that footprint. So the thing is, if you come to a footprint and you see an ant track going across it, you know it’s over an hour old. That’s if you come across a footprint, that they’ve trod on an ant track and they’re still going around it, you know it’s under an hour old. So you’ve got that indication roughly, how long a person’s been there before, they’ve been there.

I don’t know, probably a fair bit in a lot of ways. With animals, with tracking animals, with finding them, it helped me probably a little bit, not a lot to know what to look for, what sort of animals, what sort of bird,

whatever. I think it’s helped in a lot of ways for me to pick up the sign reading a little bit easier than a lot in that respect, yeah. That’s about all I think, but it did help me a little bit.

Yes, very much. Still stays with me yeah. Of a morning, especially when the dew’s on I come outside, the first thing I do I look around on the ground to see what footprints are in the dew or what’s happening, all that yeah, very much so. Yeah I find I still use a lot of it, not all of it but I find I still use a lot of it yeah. Strangely enough, I don’t know why but I do. I can still talk about it.

And still remember a lot of things, I remembered here a few years back now, I met this young army bloke down the hotel and he was still in uniform actually, we got talking and I asked him who was he with? And he said, “The infantry over at Enoggera.” but he lived here at Wynnum, he used to go there everyday. And I said, “Oh.” and we got talking about the sign reading and tracking,

and he’d never heard of it. And I said, “You haven’t?” He said, “No, we never do that.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” And I started to tell him all the things about it and he said, “My God!” he was dumbfounded. I was rather proud. But I s’pose now that they’ve got all this infra-red and night goggles and so forth etc, you don’t need it any more, I don’t know. I still find that I think of it a lot

and do it a lot. Yeah rub marks, footprints, bent leaves, bent grass, I still find that I still do it a little bit yeah I must admit. Crazy isn’t it. But I think it’s something handy to have, maybe one day they can’t find Jacky-Jacky and they might call on me. I don’t know. Which is a bit much now.

You never know.

Yeah, very much so. An incident happened where I was on sentry duty on machine gun and put a full, well nearly a full belt of machine gun bullets at this, what I thought were cigarettes, the enemy walking along smoking.

And after I caused such a big stir we discovered it was only fireflies, the night flies, you know the ones that light up at night. Which I didn’t know I couldn’t understand how I could be firing all these rounds and not hitting anything and it was only these flies. But I think many a bloke’s had that incident, I think a lot of blokes have had that one or two shots here or there or nervousness or uncertainty or unsureness. Because those buggers play tricks on you and I don’t

think you can collect a lot and put them in a bottle neither, and carry your own firefly torch, I don’t think you can. You try and catch one. But yeah that was an incident that happened when I first got there that I fired this. I felt so embarrassed, I thought I’d go straight on the VC [Viet Cong] list, killing all these enemy in one single night, the first night there. I thought great.

It was only flies, fireflies. Bugger.

Yeah I got rubbished for quite a while over that yeah. “Don’t light up cigarettes when Woodsy’s about.” That was a bit embarrassing and nobody every told us about them, I never got told. So it was a bit embarrassing.

No,

not many talk about it. No you find out as you go along. The only thing is if you come across dead bodies don’t touch them. Don’t move them don’t do anything, get a hook and throw it over them, hide behind a log or a tree and pull them because usually they’d be booby trapped, grenades or whatever under them. Same as cigarette

packet, doors, windows, don’t do anything, don’t lift anything, don’t touch anything, leave it because usually they’re connected to a booby trap. Don’t touch any, thongs, if you see a thong or a hat, cigarette, empty cigarette packet or packet of cigarettes or a bottle, leave it don’t touch them. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, don’t touch them because usually there’s a significant

reason they’re there and that’s a booby-trap.

It’s a hard habit to kick I can tell you. Or should I say that? It’s usually human, that’s why they do it. That’s why they leave it, that’s why they put it there. It’s the same as you go into a door and turn the door handle,

habit. On the other side is a booby trap. It blows up. The windows will lift up, you know the old banana leaf windows, lift them up? Usually a wire on them or something. Everything’s got its reason. Branch hanging down, you go and you lift it up, there’s usually a wire with a grenade there or something to blow up. It was all this sort of warfare,

it was all this sort of ‘be careful, be careful, be wise. Don’t touch nothing, kick nothing, open anything. Leave it. Get somebody experienced in who can do it or youse have got something yourself that you can do with it. But don’t anything. Don’t open, shut.’ Even an open door can have a wire behind it when you close it, so you’ve got to be,

had to be extremely careful over there. Had to be very careful.

Yeah, in a village even on bunkers or anything like that, you just never know, you just wasn’t sure what was there behind that or under that or above that. You just didn’t know so be careful. Don’t kick, roll,

as I said pick up or anything, don’t open close, don’t touch anything. Make sure first off that there’s nothing, you could run a bayonet under it or anything and it wouldn’t snag on anything, just be careful that’s all. Dead body, throw a hook over it or get somebody experienced that could move it, roll it, pull it, shove it whatever. All booby trapped.

Not that I know of, not that I can remember. It was a training thing that you sort of trained for. I know that this is hard to say when you

kill somebody the shock, the guilt, the everything that goes with that, you’ve taken a life, it’s it was either you or him, that’s as simple as it comes down to. It was either you or him. Shoot first, shoot quick, shoot straight because he’s going to do the same. So it was, you carried guilt

it played back on you, it still does but you’ve got to get over it because you could be now where he is. So it was one of those things. It did come sometimes you had a lot of guilt, you had a lot of wakenings. I still have these things but anyway. It still comes down to the fact shoot first, shoot straight

and shoot, make sure simple as that because you could be where he is now if you don’t. So you’ve got to come to that conclusion, what do you want? You don’t ask them to surrender because they don’t surrender. They never surrender. Didn’t get a chance anyway it was all ambush, quick, bang, gone, finished, over. That was it.

That’s it yeah. Stick your head up and be buggered.

You stick yours up. Simple as that. Everything was the same, nothing half hearted, either do it right or don’t do it at all. If you didn’t do it at all you suffered. Dig a shallow scrape for yourself, bugger it I’m going to dig a deep one. Simple as that and that’s what it’s all about. Many a contact I can remember,

they didn’t call me rabbit for nothing, I could dig a hole quicker than anybody. And it’s as simple as that. Be first, be quick and shoot accurate, that’s all it can be. Do your training and do it well, what you’ve been taught do it correctly and hope it all comes back to you at once because that’s what happens. The only thing is like, who gets down

the quickest? Who’s the quickest at it? Shameful to say but that’s the way it goes. You live with it after and if you’re going to suffer you do but, what do I say? That’s it. Be quick and be accurate.

New Zealanders yeah, no

great, unbelievable. Americans a couple of times but New Zealanders, a few times we run into them buggers. Yeah they’re an unbelievable mob.

We went out one time in chopper, helicopters to relieve them and they was on a fire base and we run into a bit of contact

and one of the helicopters got hit by fire and one of the jets caught fire and we had to dive out. Anyway when we did we had to go into fire position to do covering fire, machine gun and that and me mate said to me, “You all right?” I said, “Why?” He said, “Something stinks, you didn’t do yourself did you?” And I said, “No.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Well can’t you smell it?”

I said, “I’ve got no smell.” “Something’s really bad.” So anyway we had a look around and we was behind this log, partly log, rotted thing, so he climbs around it and here’s a, we’d just come in to relieve the New Zealanders and here’s an arm sticking up out of the ground with a cigarette in it. A New Zealander hung a sign from it, said ‘smoking will kill you.’ Bloody mongrels. And that’s what stunk, he was starting to rot.

Another time we went through after we’d relieved them at this area, with a machine gun and trenches and all that, we went out on a tail patrol to do a clearing. Same thing happened except we come across this leg sticking out of the ground with an army boot on it and it had ‘army shoes never fit.’ New Zealanders again. And things like that, they were

cruel buggers but they were soldiers. And it was why we were out on this episode in a village and we’d done a search and it was sort of persuasion operation. We were going into the village, we were showing how good we were and of all

things a helicopter comes in with all these New Zealanders on it and they got out all dressed up in their skirts and that doing the harakiri or whatever it was [the haka]. Scared the living shit out of the villagers. I can never understand why they did that. I mean there’d be nothing more scary than seeing all these bloody New Zealanders jump out and poking their tongue out doing this tap dance thing that they do, this foot thumping. I could

never understand why they did that but that was their way. The old New Zealanders, they’re not a bad mob. Play rough football. We used to play them over there and they play rough. But yeah, they were the ones. The Yanks, we never had much to do with the Yanks, they were always, could never understand our language, could never understand our slang. We done a

gun lift, we were on a protection party for a 105 Howitzers [cannon] on a hill and they were doing an airlift with the Chinook choppers and one of the Chinook’s lifted this gun up and it blew a jet on the Chinook. So it dropped the gun and crash landed and out jumped these Americans and this big Negro, big jeez,

I’m standing on a mound about two foot high of dirt and he come and stood beside me and I still had to look up at him to see him, look him in the eyes. And I said to him, and he’s all dressed up with his little six gun on his side and all this, and I said to him, “By Jesus that was a close one digger.” And at that he reached down for his pistol and the sergeant standing behind me

just clacked his weapon, made a noise and said to me, “You’d better come with me.” and walked away. I said, “What was the problem?” He said, “He was going to shoot you.” I said, “What for?” He said, “What you said.” I said, “What did I say?” He said, “That was a close one digger.” I said, “Why was he going to shoot me for that?”, “Because he thought you said ‘that was a close one nigger.’” Because he didn’t understand see. He was going

to have me but anyway, that was a run in with the Yanks. They’re all the same, nice blokes, nice to see them go. But I made a couple of friends over there from Vietnam, Tom and Bill. They come here in 1972 and seen me from America. They were nice fellas. Rang them up a few times, nothing much. We’ve lost contact now, they’ve moved, I’ve moved. But yeah.

Yeah, I was only there about, after I got my company, only about three weeks. It wasn’t much, it was a contact and it made all the hair on my body stand up. It was something I’d never experienced,

it was only two enemy and it was just a walk in and run out thing. It was a stumble across each other if I remember rightly. I think I was there, I think it was only the second week that I was with me company and we had this contact. It wasn’t much but it was a thrill and it was exciting. It was no kills,

no wounded nothing, it was just firing a few short bursts and that was all, but it was exciting. It was different, “Oh God that was close.” The old experienced, “Close? What do you mean? That was nothing.” “Oh sorry.” you’re shaking and… but that was, I think that was the first I knew.

Yep.

Next?

Just a fire fight, a few dead, lost a few of, a couple of our blokes got wounded. It was just one of those ambush set ups. Yeah it was just one of those fire fights. Just shot at each other. They walked into us, we was harboured up and

we was near a track, we expected something but we didn’t know what and it was just one of those, a fire fight. That was it. An ambush, well it wasn’t an ambush we’d harboured for the night, we’d settled in and they come along. They didn’t see us, we didn’t know them. My first sight of the enemy was I was on sentry duty. This wasn’t a kill. I looked at him and he looked at me and

he run off. I didn’t know what to do I thought, “My God are you enemy? You look like us.” He wasn’t in black and white or black, he was in army uniform and I didn’t know what to do. I thought, “My God.” And that was me first contact ever with the enemy. First ever I’d seen. But then it become, “Who is the enemy? They all look alike.”

They all dressed different, there’s no special, specific uniform, mostly black but they had jungle greens, they had camouflage, they had workers out in the paddies and were they enemy of the day? Workers of the day and enemy at night, you just didn’t know. But our, yeah that’s what happened.

I think the Yanks

created that. I don’t know exactly. “(UNCLEAR-singing), sweet Charlie.” Viet Cong. Viet C, Viet Charlie. I don’t know. Vissi Charlie or something like that, it might’ve been the French. Vichy, was it Vichy? Something like that Vichy Charlie or Vichy Chong, something like that it was I think and just went on and on to Viet Cong. [actually ‘Viet Cong’ is something the South Vietnamese coined, being a derogatory term for a Vietnamese Communist. The term ‘Charlie’ comes from the phonetic alphabet for VC, being ‘Victor Charlie’].

Yeah we were known as the booby trap and bunker company. We sort of found a lot of them, booby traps, land mines, trip wires, bunkers, endless bunkers we found. Crawl trenches, machine gun pits, you stumbled across them all the time, it was just endless.

We had to call in engineers a lot to blow them up. Planes, Canberra Bombers. It was, yeah it was pretty common that we’d find them. Other companies would have regular, regular contact with the enemies, we just kept finding all these bunkers all the time, and booby traps, land mines. I don’t know why, it just was. Maybe it was better.

Don’t know. But there just seemed to be an endless amount of them around that I think some of them, a lot of them were just put there and forgotten. A lot of them were occupied no doubt. We lost a lot of, a couple of good mates I lost in one episode there with them. We’d found all these bunkers and we were held back, and they sent these crew and both of them

Beresford Edwards and Bruno, got a bullet through the head. Both of them in these bunkers. That was a bad one and we don’t know what, we had to call a Canberra Bomber in, he had a load on to drop on them.

Yeah, I found the bunkers first, one bunker we seen

and we didn’t know how many more there was. And they called us back and put us in a fire position, around so we could cover and they sent Bruno and Beresford through to check out what was happening. And as they got to the first bunker and lifted their head up to have a look, they both got a bullet in the head. Poor buggers. And so we done a layout, a stretch, open fired a bit and nothing happened, couldn’t see anybody and

called in the bombers and they dropped a few and then we done a survey and found these, all these bunkers. Called in the artillery and they had to, lifted in by helicopter because they wasn’t close enough and I do believe they suspected the enemy coming around the back of us and we were near the coast so they got the, I don’t know if it was Australian or American navy to bombard at the back of us to try and stop this

enemy force coming in. But I don’t know, I believe there was quite a few bunkers, quite a few they found they had to call the engineers in to blow them all up, and tunnels and underground tunnels and rooms underground. I don’t know how many they found, I believe it was quite a few and never found any dead bodies but, not that I can recall, not that I know of.

But there was definitely somebody there, definitely enemy there. That was a close call, we don’t know what. Because we got sort of, after they secured the area we got taken out straight away and they sent in real, other relief company, other relief platoons. And we never heard much more after that about that area, what happened. They don’t tell you much neither, it’s just ‘You done a good job, now you go.’

So yeah we used to find a lot of bunkers, a lot of trip wires, a lot of landmines, a lot of booby traps all over the place. It just seemed strange that all the other companies, they probably did and we never heard anything, how they never found anything, as well - the platoons as much as we did. Why?

Well what it does to your nerves is it blows you apart in, ‘Why them, it should’ve been me.’ Or, ‘What happened? Why did they send them in it was mine, it was my bunker. It was my, why didn’t they send us?’ You blame yourself for it a lot because they knew what to look for but they didn’t know actually what the position was.

Where I knew it. I knew what was going on, I knew what to look for, I knew where that bunker was. And it just sort of plays on you a little bit. And you feel sorry, you feel so guilty after it. You feel so, so guilty that it was them that got shot when it should’ve been you. You possibly say to yourself ‘I wouldn’t have got shot because it was mine, I knew what to look for.’

And this is what happened, yeah. So it plays on you a lot over a period of time, yeah.

After, not at the time but after, well after. Not at the time because everything, the adrenalin’s flowing too much and you felt so ‘let us in and kill them.’ Afterwards you’ve got time to think about it and think ‘Why?’

They shouldn’t have done it, ‘Why?’ But this is the way things go. You knew what to aim for, they put you in that position because you were there to protect these others and you didn’t know what was behind. So that’s it.

Well what we did was open fire. They were down, open fire, went in, got them out,

they were dead. But everything was quiet, the enemy had gone. I think they knew what was happening. Well ‘bang, bang see you later’ and that was what it was. ‘Bang, bang see you later,’ they’d gone underground as far as we know. That’s when we called in the, this Canberra Bomber’s idly floating by, we got on to him with a radio and called him, couldn’t get the artillery they were too far away,

so we got him to drop this whether it was 500 pound or 700 I don’t know. They dropped it to give us a bit of a cover and that’s when we went in and discovered all these bunkers. We couldn’t go in without that security, that first shake-up because we didn’t know what we was stepping on. Well poor Edwards

and Bruno, they didn’t know neither and they got killed from it. So it was one of those things that you just had to have that security, that helicopter fire, support, whatever. We didn’t have it there, we couldn’t afford to wait for it, the bomber was floating by he dropped his bomb, he had this one bomb on and then we went in after it and seen what happened.

No just sorrow. You haven’t got time for ceremonies. They were taken out, they were lifted out. The medics come in and got them, put them in body bags and brought them out and lifted them out by helicopter. Medevac [medical evacuation] took them out. You can’t have a ceremony, you didn’t have time for that, we all felt sorry no doubt, all felt rotten about it but

we still had to do a job. We still had to, as these pair would’ve understood, which was sad and I still think of them to this day, can still remember their names, so that’s, I still think of them a lot.

No we didn’t go in, no they had their own the medevac, the medics and that, they took it through us. They try not to let you see too much to upset, to throw you off your job.

Simple as that and that’s what it was. They were clean killed, there was no mangulation of the body or anything. They were clean killed, so that’s what happened.

You hope you see it, yeah. You’ve got to try, you’ve got to observe everything. When you’re forward scout you just can’t go rummaging through the jungle, you’ve got to

be observant, you’ve got to look, you’ve got to see and you’ve got to watch. And you look for obvious things. When there’s no track and we never, Australians never followed a track, they did a distance, they never walked along it and you come to this two trees, but all around the other trees is all shrub and that, so you’ve

got to go through. And you say ‘Why is this like that? There must me something there.’ So you look, you’ve got to be very observant and look. You can hardly see these very, very thin wires or fishing line, it’s very hard to see so you’ve got to be very observant to see these things and you’ve got to be very observant to understand, ‘hang on a minute, that’s not natural. Why isn’t there something growing between these trees?’ Why isn’t there something,

they’re all blocked each side of it but it’s open in the middle. So, it’s not only that, there was a number of things, a number of reasons and you’ve got to say ‘Why is that happening?’

You leave it. You call in, you let everybody notify, you call in the engineers to dismantle it, you don’t touch it yourself. You had to call in the engineers, they knew what to look for, knew what to do. You only found it, you didn’t touch it, you daren’t touch it.

You move on, there’s a couple stay around it and you call in the engineers and mark it and move on. And they come and dismantle it. Simple, that’s what they’re trained for, you’re trained to find them, you’re not trained to touch them. I didn’t know enough about them to ‘oh that’s all right, I’ll take this off,’ because as soon as you touch that wire, bang. Sometimes all they do is blow it up themselves.

Simple, just put a detonator there and blow it up themselves. It was a lot easier because you didn’t know what other settings were with it if you know what I mean. You didn’t know how it was going to react. You didn’t know if there was other explosions around, you found that one that was a start, let them search. You just marked it well so that nobody else walked over it, then you’d walk around it. Sometimes you’d put a rope around the trees or something like that so nobody could,

just don’t interfere with it.

Sometimes you start to see things. Sometimes you start to imagine noises, not very often but sometimes. You get

you get very aggro with things. Used to get on edge, used to get, “Shut up!” You know, I remember one fellow that we had, he was in my section, my platoon, Pollock, he wrote a book, he never put this incident in it.

We were outside a village and we’re laying in the harbour position but it was an ambush just in case enemy come in it. Just on dusk. And we hadn’t had a contact for a few days and…

We’d gotten about. What was the question? Yeah being on edge yeah. I remember the night outside the village we were in a harbour come ambush position waiting for if any enemy come along to this village. We were just laying there and this

Pollock said to me, “This is not bloody war.” I said, “Course it is.” “It’s bloody not.” he said, “It’s bullshit. It’s not war.” I said, “Shut up of course it is.” “Who’s getting killed and who’s not.” I said, “Who’s getting shot at and who’s not, as soon as they fire one bullet that’s war.” “Nah, it’s bullshit.” I said, “Nah.” and we were so edgy because we hadn’t had a contact for a couple of days. Next thing here we are in an ambush position fighting, rolling around

punching each other, the shit out of each other. And that’s how it used to get that if you didn’t have a contact with the enemy, this is how you used to, because you were so hyped, so trained, tense, you wanted, you had no way of letting it go and this is what used to happen, yeah. Happened a few times amongst the boys, odd here and there.

No, nothing was ever said. No you just, everybody knew, just keep it quiet. “Stop that punching each other, wait until the enemy comes

and punch them if you ever get close enough.” All this yeah. It was a tense thing, it was very, because you were so highly trained. You were so into it, you know what I mean. You just, it was not like the Second World War, we were on the front line every minute of the day every day we were in Vietnam. We were front line. We were, even in camp, you were still front line

because there was no front line, it was all front line, the whole lot. Wasn’t like Second World War where they go for fourteen days and then taken back for a month behind to have a rest, we couldn’t do that. So you was tense all the time, you were on nerves all the time, you were expecting all the time the enemy, bombardment, mortars, sniper fire, ambush. You were expecting it all the time, it was just nerve wracking,

it was so tense, so if you didn’t have a kill and release that tension, you fought amongst yourselves.

No, some of them got really strung but none that I know of. There could’ve been I don’t know. I know we did, we fought amongst ourselves but that was only over that, there was nothing else, nothing what each other said, it was just because we hadn’t had a contact, we got so strung.

To release tension. That was the way it was.

Yeah we used to have a bit of a barbecue after we got back after an operation, sometimes it’d go three, four weeks the operation mind you. You’d get back and they used to have a barbecue and free beer and it was great. It was just, it was a relief, it was a tension release. It was, take it out, relax.

And this is what it was, it was great, we used to like it. And then the next day you’d all jump on a truck and go to Nui Dat for thirty-six hours.

Vung Tau yeah.

Oh Vung Tau I meant. Well same thing as I told you before, used to go into town, you’d have relief, swimming, go to the bars, the B.A.R.S. not the baths and see the girls and massage

and all this sort of stuff. It was a bit of a tension release, get the operation out of your system sort of thing. They had to do it, well they didn’t have to do it but that’s what it was like. But it was still front line, it was still whatever you like to say, we were still on alert sort of thing. And you didn’t trust anybody and if anybody followed you, you got wary. You never went by, never ever went by yourself, always had

somebody with you, at least two or three blokes with you if you could. But it was good and then you’d come back and you might only be back and day and then gone out again for another two, three, four weeks. It was just that way. Sometimes it was even less, you’d come in today and you’d be gone back tomorrow, it was just that way, it was always there, always on call, always at it. And it was never ending.

They had a few in town. The fun times, not the, there was prostitutes there, the girls, yeah the call girls but it was, the Grand Hotel was a good place and that was a well known place for Australian soldiers. It was a fun place, it was full of hype,

it was and you had to be back in camp that night at Vung Tau and the main, at Peter Badcoe [an Australian soldier’s club named after Victoria Cross recipient, Major Peter Badcoe], had to be back there, curfew was ten o’clock and if you wasn’t back then you were in strife I tell you. But it was good, it was a relief and then you didn’t only go and see the girls, you went and you bought stuff like I remember I went and I

bought, for Elizabeth I went and I bought this silk material for a wedding dress and silk lace, white, beautiful stuff. I bought that for her and for the bridesmaids I bought this pink that I’ve never ever seen since, this beautiful pink silk and pink lace, it was absolutely beautiful. And I bought that for them see. So you didn’t only just go in to play around, you went in to

buy good stuff.

Oh yeah, not from there, you’d wait until you got back to Nui Dat and roll it and parcel it and send it, because a lot of stuff was illegal to send. Anything made of wood you couldn’t send. Worse luck you wasn’t allowed to send home grenades or rockets or machine guns or anything like that, we needed them to get rid of the roos. The kangaroos.

But they wouldn’t allow us to do that so you could only send all this sissy stuff home like silk and all that sort of stuff so had to settle for that. Photos.

Well, I was writing and then I bought a tape recorder. And I sent her one home, a tape recorder and I had one. They were only little fellows they were and we used to tape, send tapes to each other.

And that was better than letters, letters would have to go through the customs and sometimes if you wrote too much in it they’d cut it out or ink it out or blot it out and all this. But on the tape you never said much, you never told anything secret or anything like that. So it was pretty good, it was great.

They probably would be, I don’t know I’ve never seen anything, nothing was ever

cut out from her or from me to her. Nothing was ever cut out that I know of and she never said anything was cut out so I think it was all pretty good. Like you didn’t send anything porno over or anything like that but explicit, like sexual or anything like that, you just talked to her, “Hi Darling, I’m doing this and nothing much is happening.” you’d never tell her what was going on. You didn’t want to have them on

nerves end, the newspapers were bad enough without you describing things that were happening. So it was just to talk and get together, “I’m all right, everything’s fine, got a chaffed arse.” or something like this, that’s all you’d tell them and that was it. But it was better than writing. Sometime writing, what can you say, you lose, you just lose the whole thing in writing, you couldn’t explain yourself, talk or anything like that.

Oh yeah, well we had an incident there once where we got attacked in camp and I was on the tape and forgot to turn it off and raced out and left it going. We got mortar-fired on it. And we raced out under attack and all this and when I come back I forgot to switch it off and I started talking to her again,

“Sorry about that, I had to race out and all this.” and forgot to wipe it off. And I believe she got it and it upset them quite a bit, so you know what I’m saying, you can’t send too much home. I don’t go through me tapes after I used to tape stuff, I didn’t go through it and listen to it. Christ who wants to listen, that’s sissy talk that. So they got it at home, I didn’t know and they were quite upset by it. It upset them in what actually was happening.

They don’t think it happens to you, like they see on TV.

No, no I don’t even know what ever happened to it. I think I’ve got a couple of tapes in there but there’s no tape recorder now that’ll take them. I think I’ve got a couple of old tapes up in me, what do you call it?

Reel to reel, little

I think, I don’t even know whatever happened to the old tapes to be honest. A lot of stuff I don’t know whatever happened to it. My God, what’s happened to me wife?!

Yeah I took photos, I didn’t take many photos because we had a problem, being so hot and humid

your cameras used to sweat a lot. And when you’d take a photo, it didn’t come out too good, it’d all be sweaty and marked. So we used to take a lot of slides, slide things and they could somehow or other work it out. But now what I’ve discovered is the slides themselves are going black, they’re so old and the chemicals they used back then, they don’t last. I’ve got a

couple of big rolls of slides there. Not that long ago, 12 months ago I looked at them, I was showing somebody and I couldn’t believe that they were, half of them had gone black, just pitch black. So it wasn’t much good in a lot of respects and I think a lot of people have lost a lot of photos in slides over that climate, humidity and the sweating of the camera. And you couldn’t carry a camera around your neck like you were out on patrol, what’s this a shooting tourist or what?

You couldn’t do that, you had to have it in your back pack if you took one and not many took a camera out in operations with them.

No, as long as they didn’t make flashes at night. Somebody might open a machine gun on you.

Well when you go into a harbour

position at night when you’re on a patrol and say it’s a platoon size right, you’ve got three machine guns. You would set the machine guns up at the most likeliest points you’d be attacked in a diamond position right. And you’d set your riflemen up between your machine guns. And this would be over an area of say fifty metres.

And then you’d set machine gun, machine gun, machine gun, rifleman, rifleman, rifleman in that area. Then in the inner circle you’d have your non-commissioned officers and your forward scout. And then in the centre you’d have your CO, commanding officer and that was your harbour position for the night. And in these positions what you used to do was

you’d have your gunner, machine gunner and your second on the machine gun right, that’s your belt feeder. They’d be there and then on each side of them would be a rifleman, and then a rifleman and a machine gun and this is how it’d go. And it was shell scrapes, always dig out shell scrapes, prepare for the nights and try and eat before it was dark.

It was advisable to eat before it was dark because you couldn’t see what you were bloody eating after dark and you’d stand-to about fifteen minutes before, half an hour before dark and half an hour or more after dark, which is the most likeliest time of attack. Of enemy movement and attack or whatever. And that was your harbour position and then you’d do a sweep of the area and this is when you’re settled in you do a

sweep around with a section. They’d sweep around, a few riflemen would go out and do a sweep and make everything, sure everything was clear and then same thing of a morning and your stand-to of a morning same thing. And this is what happened, that’s your harbour position for the night, it’s like your bed position, settling in for the night. Of course an ambush is different, you’re awake all night in an ambush.

Sometimes if they got behind logs and that yeah but the ground was very soft. In the dry season it was hard but in the wet season it was very soft, it was easy to dig and really honestly I think everybody knew the shell scrape was a necessity.

Yeah, you dug in. It was quick, it was easy, you had your little shovel, your little fold up and that. It was easy, there was nothing complicated

about it that I ever found over the, it was quite simple and it was a life saver a few times we’d been in harbour positions and we had enemy attacks, it was a life saver. Because at ground level at the trees behind me we counted forty-seven, Kennedy and meself in a tree that was between us we counted forty-seven bullet holes and that was ground level. If we’d been sitting above ground we’d have been dead. So simple.

We were in a harbour position this night and we lost six blokes that night. One of them, Chris Williams, he got half his head poor bugger. We were sitting on a harbour position and we’d set up the platoon size and we’d set it up and stand-to come and Edwards, no Kennedy and meself are laying

there and I said to him, “Bugger this.” it’s gone really, the hairs on me neck stood up, the frogs, the crickets the breeze, everything stopped. It was like being in a coffin. I said, “Bugger this.” He said, “What?” We were only whispering. I said, “I’m getting down and I, as I got down, Chris over the other side must’ve thought the same thing and as he got down he knocked his pannikin and it went ‘clunk’ just like that ‘clunk’.

And all hell broke loose. And a rocket, a bamboo rocket come up and hit the tree and it was above him and shrapnel come down and ripped half his head off. Poor bugger. And all hell broke loose. We got rocket machine gun fire, light arms, we got everything. We done everything. In the end we ended up calling in the Cobras, well Casper, Spooky I’m sorry, the DC-3 [bomber]

with everything on him, rockets, machine gun, Gatling gun, cannons the lot we called him in then the Cobra choppers come in and cleared the whole area and then the medevac come in and lifted all the wounded out. And it was a scary, it was a bad night, it was just one of those nights. Wasn’t just a night it was a bad night. Next morning we found a lot of blood marks, so we had

to follow the trails. We come across quite a few graves that the worst part, we had to dig the buggers up to find if they were bodies or caches of weaponry and ammunition. Had to dig all them up but it was, that was what happens, that can happen, it did happen and it’s happened a couple of times. Not as bad as that one, that one was a real bad one for us. Maybe other companies, maybe other battalions had just as bad or worse I don’t know but that was bad for us.

Shell scrapes is important I find that it’s an important, by the time the morning come in had a hole that I needed a step-ladder to get out of I can tell you, I just kept digging. But it was scary, it was an experience that showed you what shell scrapes can do and has done for us, it helped yeah. And it was, they’re a necessity,

you’ve got to have, soldiers have got to realise they’ve got to have them, there’s no two ways about it.

Yeah, you do that as soon as you settle in and get your positions you start and scrape it out. It’s only a matter of eight, nine inches deep. It’s just enough to get your, it’s not and body length that’s all it is and body width and body length, that’s all it is, it’s not a big back hoe job. It’s just a, it’s only a little thing.

It was a great help. It was a necessity I think in respect of, God knows how long it could’ve gone on for. And God knows we didn’t have enough ammunition and that anyway so we would’ve needed it. We were given hand grenades that were wrong, they were, thank God for that, this incident

we had one of the rifleman throw a grenade, he was given permission to and he threw it and it didn’t go off. And luckily the next morning we checked the hand grenades and they were instant grenades set up for booby-traps. Had two pins, one on the top and then you had another pin across your firing lever, your mechanism. And if he’d pulled that one over

as soon as he let it go it would’ve killed him. So thank God it didn’t go off and thank God it didn’t, we were issued the wrong grenades. Thank God for that. We all had, the next we had to give them in because they were too dangerous even to carry. So we were lucky in that respect. So if the fire support, air support hadn’t come in, like the helicopters, the Cobras, medevac for another thing and the DC-3 ‘Old Spooky’ or whatever

they like to call it, Casper or whatever they like to call him didn’t come in, I hate to think what would’ve happened, or what could’ve happened because we’d found quite a number of graves the next day from the enemy but how many other soldiers was there to drag them away and dig the holes, dig the gravesites.

I think in

stamps for the soldiers, yeah, we fought them off, we done well. Should be proud of yourself boys, you held them off. I think that’s a big thing yeah because it all went back to 11 Platoon, D Company, 6 RAR on their effort, what they did and held off all them enemy

in 1966 and they had something like I don’t know, they had a thousand men they held off, a thousand killed they held off and they done it. And this was a big thing for the Australian Army this was a big, and we were always proud that we could hold this numbers off ourself even though it was nowhere near them. They were the backbone, they were something to look forward to, the pride of the Australian Army

in Vietnam what they did. Like now today in Afghanistan and Iraq, the SAS [Special Air Service] what they’re doing, unbelievable, terrific, great. The American Army said, “We’ve seen nothing like it.” and that’s what they said about 6 RAR. And that’s why we have Long Tan Day on the 18th of August every year for 6 RAR, for the boys.

In what way?

Well for a start we could only, we couldn’t throw hand grenades without asking permission, even in combat. This is the strange part about it, we can’t be Yanks and just pull the pins out with our teeth, have you ever tried that?

That’s why I’ve got all false teeth now, tried to pull pins out with… anyway he only threw the one that didn’t go off and we wasn’t allowed to throw any more. Thank God for that, our lieutenant then was Lieutenant Brahma, he was the CO at the time. It was something that stores, had it, how can

they make a mistake like that? It makes you wonder the dangerous – but then again we should’ve checked them ourselves which we didn’t. So I don’t know which way to go with that, one’s to blame and so is the other really isn’t it. We should’ve known, we should always have checked our weapons and our weaponry first. We have a fire, free fire every time on the firing range at Nui Dat before we go out on ops to check that our weapons are in

operational condition. So we should’ve checked the grenades, that’s as simple as that. That’s what I feel about it anyway.

When I become forward scout.

Easier to operate. And as funny as it sounds, the SLR can put a hole in a tank where a M16 or Armalite, they were not M16 Armalite

only ricochet but an SLR, you get hit by one, you get hit in the arm you lose your arm. With an Armalite you didn’t. If you got wounded you died from shock apparently, I don’t know. But they were easier to handle, light to manoeuvre, light to – in the jungle they were shorter. The SLR was too bloody long,

it was, that’s why they didn’t have tanks in the middle of the jungle because they couldn’t move their turret. And the same with the SLR I found. That’s why I envy the boys now with the shorter weapons they’ve got which are far more manoeuvrable, far lighter. The back pack’s heavy enough without carrying something that’s the same weight at the front of you. But the firing power of the SLR was tremendous, it was so powerful, so

knock an elephant over.

Well it was too cumbersome in the jungle the SLR. It was too big, too long, too heavy. A lot of blokes will disagree but I’m only saying because of my height and size then whereas the Armalite was light, easy, I could carry twice

the amount of ammunition because the magazines were smaller. Everything in that respect went with it. But as I’m saying, the SLR they could knock a hole in a tank, they were so big and powerful that they were just too big for jungle warfare I found. That was my reasoning anyway.

Yeah.

You used to use a bit of silver paper in your weapons to make that. That was a bit of an old trick that. The only trouble is with that, they were good but you had to throw a leg over them to keep them down they were that powerful, they used to go up to the right and high. They were hard to hold in fully automatic, that was a lot of firepower. And yeah so you had to know what you were doing. A semi-automatic was better

in that respect, but it was always made for a single shot. That was a semi-automatic, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And that was far better but yeah you could make them into fully automatic as long as you didn’t want to shoot down aeroplanes in the meantime.

They were good, they were hard, they were doing the same job as us. They were trained, the only thing is we used to call them 21 Day

Wonders. Wonder how they become officers, but they still had the same. Half of them come over with this gung-ho, after you were there a while you become the old hand at it and you get a new officer in and they had all this you beaut highly skilled, straight out of officer school, they wanted to win the war with a silver pistol. It didn’t work that way but

gradually you wore them in. You showed them what to do and let them know. And besides that the NCOs [non-commissioned officers] and WOs [warrant officers] and all that let them know as time got on, broke them in a bit and told them to…

Oh yeah, I had one bloke, he was an Englishman. I had a lot of respect for Jim, Jimmy Riddle.

Dead now poor bugger. He joined the Australian Army in England, he was a warmonger, very under suspicion of being a mercenary but he had so much experience. No bigger than me, only a small little nuggetty bloke. He had so much kill behind him, he had so much experience, so much knowledge that you felt

safe with him, you felt, and he was the sort of bloke you wanted to know, you wanted to be friends with, you wanted to be next to in a contact. You wanted to be near if something was going to happen. Whereas he could tell these officers what to, how to, where to and why to, but he didn’t, he kept it to himself. Yeah I looked up to him all the time. When we come back

from Vietnam on the early December. I can’t remember the exact date, I had me birthday on the aircraft carrier [HMAS] Sydney coming back, he stayed for an extra, extended tour of six months and I never seen him again. When he come back his time in the Australian Army was up and he toured around apparently

around Brisbane here in a Volkswagen and then like all of us he got a little letter asking us to go to South Africa to do army instructor. So he went and then I think he was dead in about three months over there. They killed him, but that’s Jim that’s what he wanted, he wanted to die fighting, so he did. That’s what I heard, I might be wrong on that, I hope I am,

but that’s what I heard, he got killed yeah, poor bugger.

Yeah come home for R&R.

It was the worst thing I ever done really, it was the hardest. Come home with a plane load of Americans, a few Australians only seven or eight Australians, might’ve been a few more I’m not sure. It was the worst thing coming home

and trying to come back after four days was really, really hard. Really, a few of the blokes, a few of the Americans never came back, I believe a couple of Australians didn’t come back neither they went AWOL [Absent Without Leave].

It wasn’t tricky to pull it, it was good it was just so much, “You’ve got to come back; you know you’ve got to come back. If you don’t come back

you spend ninety-nine days or whatever in gaol and then you’ve got to continue your service.” and all that.

Probably, I don’t know but I did have trouble coming back but I had to get back, I couldn’t stand it back here in Australia. I was, I felt uneasy, I felt nervous, I felt uncomfortable, I felt out of place when I come back here on R&R.

I just didn’t feel – not at home if you know what I mean. And when I got back to Vietnam, home. And it’s a strange feeling but that’s the way it was then. And it, coming back here was the cruellest thing on anybody.

Not only that but you was still,

see the thing is I was out in the jungle on operations and all of a sudden word come, “Woods.” “Yes Sir.” “Helicopter will be here in fifteen minutes, you’re on R&R.” “What?” And you’re lifted up, taken away. There you was killing, that night you’re on a plane on your way to Australia. Six hours ago you were shooting somebody.

How do you handle that. And you get back to Australia, everything’s, “Where’s me weapon? Where’s me grenades? Where’s me bayonet?” And everything was, it was uneasy, I didn’t feel at home I felt uncomfortable, really uncomfortable and four days took so, so long. So long to go. I was glad, I was,

I was glad to get back to Vietnam yeah.

That’s exactly right yeah. You felt like they were battling and fighting and getting shot, wounded, killed and you were here having… You felt really bad, guilty. It was that’s a fact, that you never felt, you felt you were not carrying the weight, not supporting them, not,

you were letting them down, exactly.

Oh yeah, we can’t get home quick enough. Yeah. “Did you take any photos?” “No I didn’t.” “Did you bring anything back?” “No.” “Oh come on.” And all this but no it was a thing. That was, I never thought of it that way, it was true too, you felt out of place because you wasn’t there, you wasn’t helping them. And then you’d hear, “9 RAR’s just had a big contact.” “Oh shit.” On the radio while you’re home on R&R.

Why wasn’t I there, I should’ve been there and you felt guilty you did.

No, none, never seen any. Didn’t worry me, I didn’t care anyway. What was worrying me was I might’ve stabbed them, I might’ve killed them, might’ve just lost me temper anyway. I was glad of that probably because maybe it was country, going out in the country that there wasn’t that many of them. Alls I can remember was, the only thing I was grateful

to was Narrabri RSL [Returned and Services League]. These people didn’t even know me and they were sending me fruit cakes and newspapers and all this, little things from the RSL which was great. And it was only a little RSL club then and they were doing all this. And probably twice, three times in the year that I was there and I got them from them and I thought it was great.

They don’t even know me. And yet they were sending me this stuff over. It was terrific I thought. Because it’s not often you get fruit cake over there, even though it was a bit stale but then again fruit cake don’t go stale does it?

I went in once, it was a bit hard because remember, RSLs didn’t accept us as combatants. That’s when the,

it was a hard time with Australia at that, I can remember we come back and we were in uniform and we still wasn’t allowed in to the RSL Clubs.

Yeah, but that’s, yeah that’s what was happening yeah. It was really weird, it was really I don’t know, it was just a weird set-up. And now I’m a bloody Director of one.

I wear two hats in the one club, can you believe it? It’s only because they’re running out of old diggers and they need – marvellous isn’t it? But I did, I felt, yeah I felt I let my mates down, I was home I was away on leave, I was having a good time and they were over there.

Yeah I was. Yeah very much so. I can still remember that.

I was, I felt a big weight off me shoulders when I got back. I nearly run from the plane to the bloody camp when we landed in Nui Dat. But it was great yeah.

Yeah it was in the middle of the tour yeah.

No not to a great extent. The battalion did, a hundred days to a sleepy -

a wakey sorry not a sleepy, a wakey and all this sort of stuff, that went on but in reality we sort of didn’t, well I s’pose we did in a way but not much. I didn’t have anything marked up on me tent, or on me cupboard or on me locker or anything like that.

Went bloody slow, shit it felt like I was there for years.

Because everything, it was just, it just went so, so slow. When I got back to Australia I was expecting to see everything different, everything new, driving Cadillacs instead of bloody Datsuns. But no it went slow. Vietnam was slow, it took a long time.

Yeah

on the go all the time. I don’t know it’s just I think, you’re away from the Australian type of living. You’re away from the beach, you’re away from everything, the football, everything. And when you got news over there it was all pretty old news anyway. I think it was just that, just being away from Australia, just being away

from everything that you’re used of, that’s why it went slow. You just wasn’t a soldier in the day over there it was soldiering twenty-four hours a day and that’s what made it even tougher. And then you went out on operations and the time just dragged. I mean it didn’t go quick. What might’ve been three weeks seemed like six months out in the bush. It just was so, so and that’s probably why it made

it feel tough.

Nice big steak and gravy. Nice and fresh vegetables. Nice big steak, gravy and fresh vegetables, that was always on your mind. Beautiful home cooked, instead of this rubbish. Yuk.

Wildlife, I encountered a lot actually, I was surprised. A lot of deer I seen, I was surprised with them. I found tracks of tigers I think they are or lions, tigers I think they are over there. Huge, huge, big, biggest crocodile these

goannas what do they call them? A special name.

Yeah komodos, holy mackerel I couldn’t. I of them I didn’t know whether to use a hand grenade on it or a machine gun or what. But the other thing I did find and every time I have a reunion I ask a certain amount of blokes if they still turn up about the, I was forward scout and we were hacking our way through some bamboo

and I heard this noise and I thought it was an ambush, a sniper. Anyway I finally got up to it and looked up and here’s these six white gorillas. Snow white. Now gorillas in the trees are unusual but they were definitely gorillas, they were too big to be monkeys in this huge big tree, and six white ones. I can remember, and I ask them, “Do you still remember the white apes? The gorillas.”

“Yeah.” And that’s unbelievable, six of them there was, white. It’s something I’ve never ever experienced, I’ve never ever seen. I never ever seen them on TV or in the zoos or in the – white ones, it’s something that sticks with you, you don’t forget that. And we nearly bloody shot them. That was something that I’ll never ever forget that, it was really something special seeing them, six of them. I think water buffalo,

those mud skippers a lot of them, snakes, endless amounts of snakes, spiders, leeches and what they had over there they come out once a year only for a month was the RTA [Return to Australia] beetle. They’re a little orangey coloured beetle with a claw in front. One on their nose.

RTAs were returned to Australia. Once you got bitten by them apparently they paralysed your whole body, whole system and you could die from it. I do believe in our whole time over there one person got sent home in my time I was there, one person got sent home from them. They were a definite Return to Australia beetle. But there was so much animal over there, so much wildlife that it was,

monkeys, bloody monkeys. We had a pet monkey in our camp, Pogo, I’ve got a slide of him here. Pogo was a camp follower, never leaves camp always stays with camp. The little mongrel, he used to take all our cigarettes, all our money, socks, hankies, pinch the bloody lot. Rotten mongrel, anyway when we were leaving there we had to take him up to

the transport mob, they had a female and he was a male. And we would’ve been about three hundred metres from it and he must’ve been able to smell her and we hadn’t even stopped in the jeep and he was straight off the front of it, straight into the camp. All’s I could see was truck wheels flying in the air and trucks being rolled over, I tell you what, he was horny. He was wanting to get in, poor bugger.

But we had dogs, we had a couple of old tracker dogs that they never got rid of. We had a python, a big python snake. We had an owl, a big owl. We had like a zoo at our camp. We were allowed to keep them to a certain extent, couldn’t keep any tigers, elephants. They wouldn’t allow us to keep elephants, can’t understand the army’s just go no bloody sense of humour at all.

Anyway, but no, we tried to fill in our time. Monkeys, dogs, pythons.

Morale, having a pet. It’s like having I s’pose photos of nude women on your cupboard doors and all this. These had pets, you’d walk past and throw them a rat

or pat them or the dogs would come up and you could sit down and talk to a dog. All this sort of stuff. I think it was just that little bit of homeliness. Throw the snake a rat, the python. I don’t ever seen anybody cuddle an ant but I mean. Yeah we had a little bit of a zoo. We had, out in the jungle we seen a lot of different wildlife, a lot

of different things that you don’t normally see here in Australia.

Always check your clothes and your bed first. Always. Always check your boots, shake your boots, scorpions were really bad over there. Really bad. They were pretty common scorpions, anywhere so always shake your boots. Before you put anything on shake your clothes, before you put them on, check your pockets,

smack your pockets first before you put your hand in them and all this sort of stuff because you just didn’t know where they were. Just didn’t know, in your packs, in your cupboards, stand back when you open a cupboard door, you just didn’t know. Things like that. Your locker door I’m sorry, cupboards.

Leeches yeah, we had a problem, see our uniform, our battle,

our jungle greens and that you had to spray, you had this tick and leech, you had to spray all your seams, your buttons, your pockets, the rims of your pants, around the bottom of you know you had to spray everywhere. It was a liquid, you squirted it on. Leeches were pretty bad, we used to, the leeches were so small in the wet season you’d walk past bushes and if you didn’t spray yourself which happened to a few blokes, the leech would get on you and crawl into the fly

in your pants, no lie and they’d get into the eye of your penis. True, true. They were that small and a couple of blokes I do know had to have it surgically removed because you can’t. And this was a bad thing. This used to happen a lot, not a lot but leeches would get in. And they’d get in and they were pretty savage. I mean, how savage can a leech get it hasn’t got a,

sabre toothed tiger teeth or anything but they were a bit of a worry.

No they were, they were so fine, they were hair thin these leeches and they used to get anywhere, honest they used to get in anywhere. Spray everywhere with this stuff but never on your hands if you could help it because it tastes rotten. All your packs,

check everything, through the night if you’re out in the bush if you checked, before you’d open your pack very carefully of a day, check it. You’d spray around it and all this, for snakes getting in it and scorpions, things like that, it was bad. If you felt anything move beside you or onto you, don’t touch it just let it go at night because you couldn’t see it. Let it go.

Not a real lot, just made you very careful. It was good to see them, it was soothing to see something that wasn’t going to shoot back at you.

It was soothing to see something that wasn’t going to explode on you. To see an animal or a, I don’t know how many blokes as we were going through villages would pat a water buffalo. Christ these things roll in mud but it was that soothing, that animal, something that wouldn’t hurt you attitude.

A lion would, you didn’t see many, hardly seen, I think I only seen a glimpse of one. But having something that you could remind you of home, of a pet, an animal. We wasn’t allowed to bring women into camp so that was, you had to get - dogs, didn’t have any cats, monkeys.

A snake even, this big python we had. Things like that.

Oh yeah, everybody did. We didn’t carry them with us out in the ‘J’ on ops, but everybody did in the camp, in their beds, under bunks, in the cupboards, on their lockers. Cupboards I keep calling them cupboards, they’re not cupboards, bloody lockers.

Relaxing, soothing.

It was good to know there was somebody there, somebody back at home. It was a cleanser if you know what I mean. You could lay there and look at it and feel relaxed, feel good. Know that there was somebody back there. It was good to write home and show expression in a, you couldn’t walk around the camp all the blokes, “How you going love?”

You couldn’t, you know what I mean? So you couldn’t say anything like that. It was so soothing to get back and as you walked into camp, you got the photo, made it back there, “I’m home, you all right?” And you’d (kiss) put it back. True. And you’d do that yeah you would.

A lot. Heaps poor buggers. The women, I don’t blame them.

The women were getting lonely. Even the national servicemen, you had two years in the army, you were away for virtually two years. I mean that’s a long time, a woman’s wanting to get married and have children and you’re away. And you’re in Vietnam, you’re there for six months before you see her and then you go back for another six months virtually. But they miss their male company, they miss their male, so why, some women just couldn’t handle it.

And the blokes it knocked the hell out of them, knocked the hell out of them in Vietnam. It really would, ‘Dear John’. Blow them away. The morale, they used to get drunk and upset, things like that, it was just crazy. Why couldn’t they wait until he got home and say, “No, look it’s finished, I’ve met somebody else.” But it just blew them away poor buggers. And I think that’s happened in every war, I think

that’s happened in every conflict. I think it’s even happened blokes just go in the army, never go out of Australia, they still get ‘Dear John’ letters, that’s it they’re finished, met somebody else and I’m moving to a town that you’ll never find. Things like that. It’s a long time, he’s occupied all the time, the man’s occupied all the time, the woman’s sitting there waiting, waiting, wondering, wondering what’s going to happen. Of course she’s going to say

“I can’t hack this any more.” And he’s there thinking bad things all the time, “I wonder what she’s doing now? I wonder if she’s playing up?” And then he gets a ‘Dear John’– “I was right! I knew she’d do that.” But it’d still break him. Yeah there was a lot, a lot of ‘Dear Johns’ in Vietnam, not in just my time but it would’ve been all over that time sad to say.

But it happened.

No wind down at all. None worse luck. It was straight out of Vietnam, straight out of the jungle, straight into camp, straight on the ship, straight home. The wind down was on the ship but nobody talked to us. We had ten days, ten or thirteen days on the ship, the Sydney, aircraft carrier and there was no

what do you call it, no …

Yeah, no debrief, nothing. There was nothing like that, it was really hard. For years after I know I dived into gutters every time a car backfired. And I think everybody, most of the soldiers did the same. There was no debriefing, we didn’t get any

anything like that at all. It was yesterday in the jungle, the next day into army camp, the next day on the ship, the aircraft carrier Sydney. Or if you were coming home before that time was due, it was straight out of the jungle and virtually straight on the aeroplane and home.

On the ship you’ve got time to wind down but it just took so long, you had that ten days but no debriefing no nothing. You were just, alls they could give you was different jobs to do and every afternoon they’d give you one Darwin [beer] can about that big, about that round, twenty cents and they’d open it. So you couldn’t store them up.

Rough seas, most blokes wasn’t used to it, we landed in Perth and the people who lived in Perth could get off the ship and go their way for their month’s leave. Then around Adelaide to march, where we come from our home base was Adelaide, 9 RAR. Marched there it was very abusive

protestors, very scary, very frightening.

Adelaide.

Down the main street, down to the park, the Memorial Park at Adelaide there where they’ve got the big memorial. I can’t think of the name of the streets now. The only good thing about Adelaide was when we got off none of the pubs were open, we went up and it was early morning and we banged on one of the hotel doors until the publican come down

and he was on the wharfs. And he come down, he opened the door and he said, “What is it boys?” We said, “We’re just back from Vietnam.” He said, “Right, come on in. What can I do for you?” He said, “I can’t give you keg beer but I can sell you bottled beer.” We said, “Can we get some sandwiches?” and his wife made us toasted sandwiches, and it was great, a great reception but we paid for it. But the reception we

got when we marched was boos, taunts, spit, urinate, vegetables, abuse, name calling, it was so humiliating, it was so embarrassing, it was so disgusting. We thought we would’ve been welcomed home and we were rejected by our own Australians. We were pushed away, we wasn’t wanted, we’d done a job and yet they pushed us away. And a lot of blokes are still suffering from

that today.

Yeah, a big crowd of protestors yeah. There was a lot of people who welcomed us, a lot of people who, well the did welcome us but there was none of the, “Rah, rah, rah boys.” It was, “Good on youse.” ‘don’t let anybody see me clapping, but good on youse,’

and all that. Even the Second World War vets were jeering us and saying like, “Youse never went to war, what’s all this about?” The Second World War was a war, all this. But our, one of our officers and it scared me, he said, “If we do become where we’ve got to defend ourselves, I’ll order to fix bayonets.”

I mean, fixing bayonets for our own people, against our own people that’s bloody disgusting, that’s shocking. And that was in Adelaide and that is dead set true. That scared the hell and I’ve never ever forgotten that. That disgusted me.

Very hard. It’s just the pride we had in ourselves, what we did that kept us going. A lot of blokes,

and they’re still not with it today, they’ve left civilisation, they’re living out on their own somewhere away from people because they just don’t trust people anymore. They just don’t trust anymore and it’s affected a lot of people in a lot of ways.

Hate them, I still do. But I don’t live with a lot of them, I tried to understand them but I hate them.

They never ever knew, they believed the propaganda. They were collecting money, our own people, our own Australian people were collecting money and sending it to the Viet Cong. Yeah can you believe that? And that’s what disgusts me, that people can be led by a couple of whatever, doctors whatever. Look at that bloody rotten bloody prostitute Jane Fonda.

Look what she did, she went over and sympathised with the Viet Cong and told people of Australia and America that they’re doing wrong. Bitch.

Yeah. Bitch.

I think so, I think it happened in ’69, I know it was in that time period that she was over there yeah. I’ve got no respect, it just loses its whole meaning

of what the people were told and thought. The Communists done it themselves, they were the one that, and these people fell for it. They were so easily led, they were so easily trapped. It’s just wrong that they could get away, that people believe that and not told the truth, what was going on. But that happened.

Only one day.

We only marched there and the people who had to go through to Sydney, the Adelaide people stayed there. The people who had to go to Sydney went back and hopped on the ship and went around to Sydney and got welcomed there by their rellies [relatives] and friends. We didn’t march in Sydney. The prettiest sight I ever seen was coming through Sydney Heads on the deck of the Sydney aircraft carrier. You’ve got no idea, all the porpoises that were in front of the ship, I’ll never forget it,

beautiful sight. Coming through the heads of Sydney you could see part of Sydney and the rest smog, absolutely beautiful. True. Just complete smog.

We were told there might be a few but luckily there wasn’t, there was mostly all the people on the wharves were relatives or girlfriends or wives,

fiancées or whatever. We were, once we were allowed off, got our cargo, duffle bags and that, we were off, went our own way. We had our leave passes, see you later. And we went and stayed with me army that night and the next day we caught the plane to Narrabri and had a month’s leave and then I come

back to Enoggera where 9 RAR was based, no sooner back at Enoggera than they said, “You’ve got to go up to Swan Bay for army training, for general training.” I said, “Get out, I’m not going.” They said, “Why?” I said, “I’m going to get married.” So I went and proposed to her and we got married and me leave was cancelled up there. Me going up there was cancelled.

And it was probably the worst thing, unhappiest thing I’ve done for both of us, was do that. Our marriage didn’t work out which was bad but the worst part about it was I was still in the army and alls we could have was a holiday in the Valley, New Farm valley here in Brisbane where we stayed in, they let me stay for a week in a B&B [Bed and Breakfast]with her opposite the

old museum in the Valley. Which wasn’t good, which wasn’t right and shouldn’t have done it. Should’ve waited until I got out of the army and then things might’ve been different.

I did, I said to her that if we went in, if I could stay in the army, we could go over the Malaya, to Butterworth

as husband and wife and she could come with me and we could have three years stint over there. But she wouldn’t, she said, “No.” So I had to make up me mind then and I said, “Well you know.” I thought I loved her, I wanted to stay in the army, I did like the army, I had a future in the army. But it wasn’t to be the way, but I still had me job on the railway which I had to add up which was the better and I decided

that with her it would’ve been right. Which we did, we started off fine but it just deteriorated after a while. Because I couldn’t handle being out of the army, one, it took me a long time. I was drinking a lot, a hell of a lot, she was working, I was a shift worker on the railway, I was a guard then by then, a railway guard on the trains. I wasn’t home much, I was away a lot

and things just deteriorated. So we tried to make a new start and I transferred up here to Brisbane on the NSW [New South Wales] Railway, bought a new house out at Kingston, Browns Plain it was all bush then. War service home we thought we might be able to make it but it only lasted four years and it just deteriorated, fell apart and went our own way. And that was it.

Only a couple of months, only a few months it wasn’t long. I had that month’s leave, that was January, come back February, March, two months. We got married, I don’t even know when we got married. But it wasn’t long after. I got discharged on the last day of April.

It was pretty hard. I’d lost a lot of interest in the army then because I knew I wasn’t going to stay. I couldn’t stay once I got married, it was just a routine boredom sort of thing. It wasn’t, there wasn’t any fulfilment, there wasn’t any life, there wasn’t any adventure, there

wasn’t any excitement it was just humdrum army camp life. Guard duties, kitchen duties, sentry duties that’s it. It was just a fill in. Nothing could compete with Vietnam, it was just a fill in and if I could’ve stayed in and went over to Butterworth to Malaya it would’ve been nice, I would’ve enjoyed that.

No you couldn’t, that’s right. It was so, in the telling of the difference was that we were equal in every think and we had the same qualities, they always thought they were above nasho, because they were,

they were regular soldiers. But mind you, the regular soldier done a hell of a lot for the regulars, fill the regulars and we learnt the same as the regulars in that respect. And we were so great buddies, we still are today after we got out. We’re still regular soldiers and even though there’s that little bit of a jib and that little bit of a poke, “You’re only a national service bum, only a two yearer.” and all that

but there’s, they don’t mean it there’s a great love there. It’s a great feeling you know, comradeship and that.

Not that I remember.

Some of them were even jealous that we were getting out because they’d done their stint. But others had put in, a lot of the regulars had put in, a lot of the nationals rejoined in the regular army mind you. A lot of them put in to get into a battalion that was going back over to have a second tour of duty and things like that. But once it was in the blood, there was a lot of soldiers that done two or three tours of duty over there, in Vietnam.

And a lot of them hated coming back to the quietness, they wanted to get back over to there and they couldn’t handle it. In respect of they couldn’t handle the thrill, the adventure. But when you got out and the regulars stayed, the regulars got, the career soldiers got promotions and got sent to other battalions and so forth etc, when we got out alls we did was went back to our old job

which they, sort of couldn’t understand, “How can you do that? You’ve just been a career soldier, you’ve just been a Vietnam veteran, how could you go and work in civilian street?” And it was hard, it was very very hard, it was very hard to get used to. It was so different, the lifestyle was different, everything was different. The behaviour, even standing in the bar with blokes was different

because you couldn’t talk the same lingo, you couldn’t talk the same talk if you know what I mean. I was different and this is what happened a lot of blokes became so uneasy with it, so unsettled and you didn’t know who was going to have a shot at you, you didn’t know who was going to have a jib at you. RSLs wouldn’t have anything to do with us, you couldn’t join RSLs they didn’t like us, they didn’t want us. People didn’t want, you didn’t dare tell anybody.

“Was you in the army?” “No, not me.” “You go to Viet…?” “No, no, no.” And this is what happened for years, you wasn’t game to tell anybody. You kept it quiet, you kept it, your medals you threw in the bottom drawer under all your underwear, you never pulled them out again. Things like that. It happened for years and years. It went on, some blokes are still doing it, it was that bad, it

affected them that bad. So it was a thing that even though you wasn’t guilty people made you feel guilty. And you didn’t want to be, you know you’ve done the right thing. I know I’ve done the right thing and I don’t care what they say. I wear mine with pride, I’ve got stickers all over me car, me boat, me 4WD, ‘I’m a Vietnam Veteran and damned proud of it.’

And that’s what I am.

Well once you got to Butterworth you wouldn’t do a second tour, that was classed as a tour over there, in Malaya, Malaysia. But I probably would’ve, I think she might’ve been a bit scared of me doing that too.

I wasn’t hunting for it at the time but when I become a regular soldier I might’ve I don’t know. I often thought about that, whether I would’ve or I wouldn’t’ve. I won’t go back as a tourist to see Vietnam, I’ve got no interest. There’s nothing there that interests me to go back and see. It’s an interesting point, I never thought of that I don’t know, I probably

would’ve if I’d become a regular soldier and they’d said, “You’ve got to go back.” I don’t know, it’s something I’ll never know, I’ve never thought about that.

I remember a lot of

days over there, a lot of things that happened. I remember a lot of different events but I don’t remember the sad ones. Well I probably don’t want to remember them. I remember a lot of happy, like the time our sergeant, he was, in Vietnam I was hooked on bourbon. I was a heavy, heavy bourbon drinker.

Calms the nerves, kills all insect bites and numbs the pain. And I used to go out on patrols and I always had one bottle full of bourbon. And old sergeant, he used to come past and camp at night in the tent. “Lights out.” and he’d walk past and check and he’d say, “Woodsie, put the bloody bottle away and get to sleep. You’d better be throwing out zeds by the

time I get back.” And he’d go along the camp front and he’d come back. And I’d be snort, snort. But I decided to get even with him one time, he had piles, really bad. He walked like old Roy Rodgers who’d been riding a horse all year. Right next to our, my tent and three others we had a deep trench

about four foot, five foot deep, dug out to go down to the fence line for the rain season because that’s how much rain used to. And we were on the side of a hill so it could flow down this trench, this gutter and it was about six foot wide and it had a little wooden bridge across it, only probably a foot and a half, two foot wide. You could walk on and it had a railing

on it, on only one side. So at night you could feel the railing to walk along because you didn’t have street lights remember. So this time we loosened the railing right off, he had piles and he used to grab hold of the railing and walk along. And over he went. That was getting even for stopping me drinking. Well funny things like that used to happen. It wasn’t funny it was serious

stuff but we used to do things like that and you remember them things. You remember the funny things.

Oh well there’s heaps of them. Like the time we were out on operations and one of the, it was on a river patrol anyway we’d had a contact,

the night before we blew up a sampan. It had enemy in it, about six people and the next day we were given orders to do flat bottomed boats up and down the river. This, that wasn’t funny, that part wasn’t funny and find the bodies to identify who they were and what importance they had for the enemy. So we knew what we had in our area, our section,

what sort of people, what sort of enemy of importance. So anyway we cruise up and we’ve got this new bloke Brownie and he’s a machine gunner, he’s a big tall bloke. And he’s only just come in to relieve us, he’s just on relief. We were in the boat and the bloody thing tipped over, everybody went overboard. Weapons and all. Anyway we’re all scampering up and we grab hold of this flat bottomed boat

and grabbed that, got our weapons, I said, “Where’s Brownie?” And he’s on the machine gun see. So one of the officers said, “Get down and find him, dive down.” So he dove down and he come back up. He said, “Did you find him?” He said, “Yes sir.” He said, “Where is he?” He said, “On the bottom.” He said, “What’s he doing?” He said, “He’s marking bloody time waiting for an order.”

So anyway, that was one of the funny, but you remember a lot of funny things, incidents that happened. They might be only small things but you do remember. Like the other time I was on patrol and one of the blokes, it’s five minute smoke, and he plonked down on the ground with his back pack and he’s laying there and he whispered, “Woodsie.” I said, “What.” “Woodsie.” “What?” He said

“Help me.” and he’s only whispering. “Help me.” “What for?” He said, “I’m laying on a snake.” I said, “You’re what?” He said, “I’m laying on a snake, can you get it out?” I said, “Be buggered. Just lay there.” He was he was laying on a bloody crepe, a little tree crepe, green one. After a while it went out. And he’s laying there and the sweat’s just pouring. “What do you want me to do? Put me hand under there. I got it.”

So little funny things, you remember these with fondness. But things like that, you don’t want to remember the cruel, the hard, the death, the sad.

That’s a pretty delicate point. Probably a shot in the foot

here and there. Nothing, I do remember one incident, a shot in the foot but that could’ve been accidental. Could’ve been. You’re trained not to have your weapon loaded while you’re cleaning it so you know, different things happen. It’s a hard point that to say which is accidental and which is not. I don’t know of any personal

incidents like that, but I do know one shot in the foot. How you do that I don’t know but anyway. I believe it did happen. I believe it was an incident that was not regularly, not common, but now and again it happened.

In personally shooting yourself, well it could be. It was probably a true story I don’t know. I don’t know of, I can imagine, many a time I wanted to shoot meself in the foot only I’m sick at the, I hate the sight of blood especially me own. So I think it could be, it possibly would be a true story

people desperate enough to get out. Yeah I believe that.

How different. Very, very different, one’s wet and one’s dry. One’s like the desert in the dry season; it’s so, so dry there’s no water anywhere. All the creeks, the streams all dried up. We gotta get helicopter water drops in the dry season over there. It is,

and this is out on operations, you’ve got to come in every third day, every second or third day? Third day I think it was and do water drops. It was so bad. And they’d bring these big containers, like petrol containers, green plastic. If they couldn’t land they’d throw them out, most of them would split of course. It was dry, it was dusty, it was everything that you’d hate about dryness. You couldn’t believe.

The wet season was like living in Tully, everything was mildew, everything was wet, boggy, soggy, damp all of the time, you were out in the jungle, you were wet all the time, you wore ponchos all the time over you. Totally two different, absolutely two different climates. Absolutely totally different, you’d fill up

from the streams in the wet season, you’d put your whats-a-name tables in the water. Totally different. Everything was alive and fiery and snakes, scorpions, spiders, leaches, everything was fiery in the wet season, everything was go. In the dry season it was hot, dirty, dusty,

humid, dry. I don’t know what else I can add to that, it was just so dry.

Well the thing was the dry season, you could only, you were dry. The wet season you were soggy, you got tinea, you got bloody all sicknesses, you got everything. Your clothes were always wet,

everything leaked, your weapon was always rusting. Yeah the dry season I think was the better one, meself. I preferred the dry season.

In?

They were soggy, always wet, always had to carry two or three

spare sets of socks or underwear. Well we never wore underwear anyway, out in the jungle. Always carried a spare shirt because everything was damp. At night time you hung them up to dry at night after the wet, after the rain and that, or hung them under your lean-to. Always had these little blow up mattresses to lay on.

I remember when we went into a position one night and there was these old tank tracks, God knows how long they’d been there, they were pretty old. One of the blokes said, “I’m going to lay in, sleep in here tonight, bugger digging the shell scrape.” And so he put up his little poncho and all this, blew up his little mattresses and he had these little single strips, three strips, blow them up you had a little bed for the night. Four o’clock come and it rained and next thing you know

“Woodsy, help.” and here he is going down the track on his bed. But so like it was a lot easier digging in the wet, in the dry it was very dry and hard and dusty and dirty and sweaty and sticky and all that. But it was easier to me, going in the wet than the dry. The dry was just so wet, so soggy,

so everything. So moist, so mildewy, so like I said, you had foot rot, you had arm rot you had everything and it was just, everything was out in full life. All the animals, all the insects, all the spiders, snakes, scorpions, everything was on the go.

Didn’t get cold. It was so hot, it was sticky all the time, it’s just hot all the time there.

No it’s not cold it’s hot. Still hot yeah. It’d dry off your body, your body heat would dry it off eventually but you just had to carry extra gear when it was wet in the wet season, like your poncho and your all that crap. Extra oil for your weapon.

The spray?

The chemical? Yeah I’ve got photos of that. Of course they’ll say it’s only insect repellent. It’s, it was pretty deadly, a lot of defoliant in the bush we done patrols and you had to, they used to do it in grid squares. Kill a hundred metres stretch each,

and they’d fly along and all that defoliant would die from this spray. It’d go everywhere, it’d get on you, it’d brush on you, you couldn’t pick up a stick and chew on it or anything, clean your teeth or anything like that it was just murder. And not only us are suffering from that now, same as the Vietnamese people themselves, they’re suffering from the same thing. This Agent Orange.

I’ve lost with the little lady friend I had, Annette, we shared two miscarriages and a birth and they all had Agent Orange. And little Shannon, he was born with no kidneys. They couldn’t say it was not Agent Orange but two years later after his death they called, two years it wasn’t two years, get out of that. Oh it’d be a year after his death

he called us in and said, “You had any kidney problems because this child had no kidneys at all.” brain dead, they kept him alive with tubes and that and he said, “You were in Vietnam?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “This, you know was probably Agent Orange that killed him.” I said, “I wouldn’t have known that.” He said, “Well it would’ve been.”

I said, “Can you put that in writing?” He said, “No.”

Yeah but he couldn’t put it in writing. So we lost three. But the funny thing is we had a little daughter after that and unbeknown to me, it’s only the boys, only the male that suffers from this as bad. The female still does but she wasn’t bad, she was all right. As far as I know she’s still alive but I haven’t seen her. She’d be 24 now. She was 24 on the 1st of February this year.

She was born in ’80, 2080. 2080? 1980 what am I talking about? I think she’s all right, I hope she’s all right.

I haven’t seen her now for sixteen years, she was eight when the last time I saw her. Eight, yeah.

I’ve got over it, well I still think of her

every day because I’ve got photos of her, everywhere of her that I’ve managed to get. I don’t know where she is, I don’t know, but I find that her mother’s probably poisoned her mind against me because I was blamed for telling them to pull the tubes out of little Shannon, the little baby, the boy and she called me a murderer. She was probably scared that I was going to do something to this baby so, when

I went and asked the solicitor to look after my case and see if he could get me weekend visiting rights, he went into it and found out the child was put down on the birth certificate as ‘father unknown.’ So she was scared, so in respect I don’t want to dig into this child’s life now and throw her into turmoil. I know she’s there and I know she’ll probably,

well the only will I’ve got made out is to her so she’ll get the house and all that, whatever there may be if I die tomorrow. Maybe if I meet a woman tomorrow and marry her I don’t know, she’ll probably miss out.

Well the worst part that worries me is that if she’s got it, it can be inherited and she can pass it on to her son. This is what I’ve been told,

I don’t know how true it is but that’s what I’ve been told and that’s what worries me.

Well I don’t know. Well yeah, I want to know but I don’t know where to look, I don’t want to upset her and she’s getting old enough now. My name’s in the phonebook, hers is not. So I think in that respect she could ring me up. I don’t want to upset her life. My life is upset enough but I don’t want to upset hers.

Dapto, I think Dapsone or something like that it was. Dapsone that rings a bell, used to take that yeah.

No I do know, they used to put a mixture in our, I was telling a mate the other night, I was asking him actually, he’s Vietnam and I asked him what

that drug they put in our food and that was, to stop us thinking of sex out on operation.

Bromide yeah. And he said, “That’s funny, why do you ask that now?” And I said, “I think it’s beginning to work.” So yeah, so I can remember that. But Dapsone or Dapto, something like that it was yeah, used to get that.

My memory’s shot I can’t remember half the stuff now.

I can remember getting something like all tolled in the arm, about 30 bloody needles, I can remember that. I can remember walking down the aisle way at, and getting doctors each side with needles. And you had singlet on and you get them all in the arms and up here in the shoulders

and all bang, bang, bang, bang. Many of the, a lot of, a couple of blokes not many a couple of blokes fainted, couldn’t handle it. Yeah, that was a common occurrence, you got the six in one, staple machine. Yeah you hold your arm out, I think it was this arm, it’d be like a big stapler, “What are you going to do?” “No.” And you’ve got a circle of needles with one in the middle. About eight needles or something.

Not as much as when I went in. I just smoked, and see I drank a lot when I went in because that was the manly thing to do. Everybody was, and the pressure and stop for a smoke, all this. I ended up smoking a lot while I was in, and even when I got out, I smoked probably more when I got out because of the upset and pressure and that. I drank a lot. I drank a lot

when I was in the army, did I ever, I got into a lot of trouble over drinking in the army. But yeah, I’ve managed now to give up smoking; I’ve cut that down thank God. Right down, I haven’t smoked now for a couple of years, a few years but I still drink a lot. I’m still a restless sleeper, very restless. I don’t sleep much at all, I go to bed at eight I’m up at half past eleven and I

lay in bed all night then until about four o’clock and then I get out and have a coffee, walk dog, come back hop in the truck, drive dog, call the paper shop, come home make breakfast, feed dog and cat, do me housework and me ironing and drink. I’d be drinking now if youse wasn’t here.

Straight away virtually. I had an operation when I was over there in Vietnam, they just lifted me out of the field and I was bleeding intensely through the bowel, very much so. And that’d been going on without me reporting it because I didn’t know what it was for at least two or three weeks.

But then a lot of things started to happen like restlessness, uneasiness, unsure, not mixing, drinking a lot, smoking a lot, not wanting to come home. All that sort of things were happening, I noticed that virtually as soon as I got out

what was unsettlement. I found it very hard, very, very uneasy, very, I was sick a lot, splitting headaches a lot, giddiness I suffered a lot. And I still suffer giddiness now, even bad now and nobody can tell me what it is. One doctor told me it was me jaw was out of line, that causes it.

Another doctor told me it was me inner ear, so I don’t know. I found that concentration is very limited now, very limited. I can’t pick up a book, if I get to three pages on a book I’m lucky. I can’t even watch TV. I watch a movie, the most exciting movie for probably the first 20 minutes, then I turn it off

and not even worry about it. I just lose interest. Forgetfulness, I can be talking we can be talking, I can be talking to you and I’ll stop, and all of a sudden, “What was I saying?” I just forget what I’m talking about it. And that’s a common occurrence with me even though I’ve been going pretty bloody well shooting me bloody mouth off today. Yeah, I find a lot of things are happening now and I don’t know what to say to them.

Nobody wants to do anything. I see my psychiatrist and tell him about it and no problem you know, he said, “That’s regular.”

March 2000.

Well I went that long because I was trying to do everything. I wouldn’t go to doctors, I wouldn’t do anything.

I wouldn’t, I was going to hospital, the Repats [Repatriation] to get me internal operations done which I had to have because they kept growing all the time, the bleeding polyps or whatever they call them. But I was getting into fights, I was drinking, I was uneasy, I was losing everything, I’d lost a wife, I’d lost women, I’ve lost four houses. I just didn’t know what was happening, when I

had me business I was starting, I had a thriving business and then I was starting to lose everything and I couldn’t understand why. Then one of me mates come and he said, “You see a doctor and see a government doctor.” And this is when it started and he virtually picked it up straight away. He said, “It’s nothing uncommon for somebody in their late 40s, early 50s to have this.” to pick it up, it comes out. And I didn’t know.

Yeah heaps, and this is one of them that put me onto it, he said, “Get and have a look.” he said, “you’ve got it.” I said, “Got what?” He said, “PTSD.” I said, “What the bloody hell’s that?” He said, “Go and see about it, get a government doctor.” And a lot of them now I discovered, have got the same thing. Exactly the same. Even me psychiatrist tells me, he said, “You come in.” he said, “the next bloke comes in and the bloke before you come in, it’s all the same symptoms, you’ve got all the same problems. The same thing.” And he

I don’t know what to say, I can’t live with anybody, I can’t talk with anybody, I lose me temper, I’ve got to take tablets, I’ve got to take happy pills, I’ve got to take – things go wrong I kick, sorry I’m saying this but I do, I lose me temper. I wind, I keep the windows up in me car otherwise somebody’ll shoot me because I abuse them so badly. Everybody’s a bloody Victorian.

Shit. I think there’s a lot more they can do. I think there’s a lot more that they can go into. The only thing I see is what they’re doing is waiting for us to die off.

That’s as simple as that. I think there’s a hell of a lot more they can do in trying to find out something for us. I mean, PTSD is shell shock, heart murmur, heart whatever. They used to shoot blokes in the First World War thought they were chicken. And I think there should be a lot more for it they can do because there’s a lot of blokes kill themselves, committing suicide, heaps of blokes committing suicide.

Because of this stress. And it shouldn’t be on. There’s something that they should be able to do to fix it. They know everything else, Christ Almighty they’ve put men on the moon, how about fixing us? How about doing something for us?

What’s that?

No I was in Vietnam.

Didn’t until we come back.

I didn’t know anything about it until we come back.

I don’t know I didn’t think about it. Didn’t worry me, I didn’t think about it. It’s funny that I’ve never ever thought about it in that respect. Now it’s an obvious answer, they can do that why didn’t they spend all the money fixing things

down here first. But I never thought about it at the time, it didn’t worry me. So what? Let him get down here and fight our war now he’s done that one. But I never give it much notice at the time. I had other problems trying to fit in with life here that I couldn’t do. Life that I couldn’t get them to think my way instead of me having to think their way.

It was pretty hard, it was rough, tough, still is. I don’t have much problem now I don’t care any more but back then it was different.

Changed me whole life forever, whole life forever. I’m still army, I still starch everything.

I still have me creases in the right spot, I still iron everything. I still live clean. I still go out and check the lawn of a morning to see who’s been treading on it. I still, I do, I’m still army virtually in that respect. Whereas I don’t wear a lot of green any more, all me clothes are bloody blue.

I go out and I’m not buying a blue shirt any more, that’s it. You can bet your life I won’t get one I’ll come home with three blue shirts, only different patterns on them. Like the poor old darling I had, I hope I’m allowed to say this, I iron here and I have the TV going right and poor old Joan, poor bugger her husband died. She’s an elderly lady used to live across the road, she used to the me housecleaning for me. And she come over one day and she seen me ironing,

and she was always trying to get me to marry her sister, “My sister’s single.” I said, “Oh yeah, how old are you Joan?” “I’m nearly 70.” “How old’s she?” “Oh she’s a little bit older.” “For Christ’s sake.” “She can do all this for you.” “Joan, yeah.” She come in one day and I’m standing there ironing see, I’ve got the telly going because I put it on the sports or whatever’s on, interesting and I might do my ironing. She came in and she said, “Brian, you’re ironing.” I said, “Yeah.”

“Oh my God.” And I picked up the tin of starch. “You use starch.” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “You starch everything.” I said, “Yes, even me underpants and that’s the only stiff thing in my duds.” She went the colour of your shirt. But I’m still army in a lot of respects but I’m still,

you can never shake it, no matter. You see the old blokes from Second World War, they’re still army, they still talk army.

It’s probably the only highlight in your life. It’s probably only, you know how you have that, what’s that old saying? You get fifteen minutes of being famous in your whole life, that’s probably it.

That’s probably brought it down to, that’s the thing you’ve done. Of all the things that I’ve done, the crashes in the helicopter, hitting by the car, the roll in the truck, blah, blah, blah, blah, I still class that as the main thing in my life now. I’ll die with that, to me that’s great, that’s a great thing.

That I’ve been, I’ve survived this long. I had a business, I was successful in the business, even though I’m a drunk which I know I am. No I’m not a drunk, I’m not a drunk any more, I was.

I can do delicate things, make lead-lights, sketch, virtually do anything with me hands in, rephrase, anything except electrical. If you’ve got something you want to claim on that’s playing up that’s electrical, get me to work on it because it’ll never work again.

All’s I’ve got to do is even show the thing a screwdriver and it’ll stop completely. But no I’m pretty good, me mates all ask me, “Come and do this, fix that, show them what to do.” And I’m proud of that, that I’ve managed to survive, I’ve managed to get here. I’m nearly 57 so yeah. And something else, I’m proud that I’ve got to wear two hats in the RSL club.

Something I never thought I’d do.

That the RSL didn’t want us.

No, the RSL didn’t want Vietnam Veterans, we wasn’t combatants, that wasn’t a war. They were in the same boat as the public. And you know that, look at that Ruxton [Victorian RSL President, Bruce Ruxton], he didn’t want us in for years until all the Second World War blokes started dying off

and they’re running short of ex-soldiers. Now most of the clubs, RSLs are run by Vietnam veterans.

It was very hard, very hard. I didn’t become a member at Wynnum RSL and that was only Associate Member until 1982. That’s when they’d,

they didn’t even let me be a returned serviceman, I could only be an associate member, in 1982. And that was a really hard battle, it was really tough. It’s only just now because of the boys, everybody, veterans have been fighting for it that we’ve managed to get where we are.

Over the time they have. I had a talk to a bloke one day about it and I think I just mentioned it before in the conversation about where they’d go onto the front line in the Second World War for a couple of weeks and then get a month’s back. We were on the front line every day in Vietnam and they couldn’t believe it and this is true, this is what happened. It was the same as the boys in New Guinea, they were on the

front line all the time out there because snipers and everything but these other blokes, and they’ve got to understand this that it was, it wasn’t, mightn’t have been a full scale world war, but it was still a war. It didn’t last, it lasted longer than the Second World War, it lasted ten years. Come on boys, come on. We didn’t lose many soldiers because we were probably

better trained, I don’t know, better weaponry. More bombs went off I don’t know but we were still front line and ten years. And still booby traps, snipers, so forth.

Not when I got first home. Now I do, very proudly, now I do yeah. With me new coat supplied by the RSL, with me emblem on.

No, in here.

I march here now, for the last four years. I used to go in town but now I march here. I’m too old for all that, big marches here and too far to get home when you’re drunk.

I think of me mates, the ones that are dead, the ones that have died since. I think of the good times, the fun times I had. Sometimes a little bit of memory

goes back over the bad times but not many, try not to. I dream enough of it now without having to think about it during the day.

The people now are starting to realise that we’re all combatants, all of us soldiers have been there. No matter what war it is we’ve been and done it. Thank God and

they’re starting to accept us a little bit, the children are anyway which is great. The elderly people might have their different opinion but it’s still the same. They’re getting better, they’re starting to accept Anzac, we’re all Anzacs, that’s the great thing.

Great, terrific. It makes me great to feel they’re out there, accepting it and they can understand. Once upon a time it wasn’t anything like that, it died off for a long time but now it’s

lifted back up again, it’s great. It’s good. And now we’ve got the new fellows, the East Timor, Fijians, the Solomons, all them, now the Iraqi and Afghanistan, all them boys. It’s great they’re being accepted. We had a young fellow up there Anzac Day, his father’s a Vietnam veteran, he joined the army and he was over in Baghdad and he wouldn’t march. And we couldn’t

understand it, I said, “Why? Why won’t you?” He said, “He’s only just come back from over there yesterday, just got his leave yesterday from the army.” I said, “Why won’t he march?” He said, “No, he didn’t declare himself in a combatant.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well all’s he done he said was throw water bombs over the fence at the Americans and they’d throw them back.” He said, “That’s all they done.” And I said, “Well that’s needless to say, what if, that still the threat was there. Still they

were there doing a job even if it was only water bombs.” He said, “No, he won’t march, he reckons it wasn’t, didn’t fit into the category of us veterans.” I don’t know.

We are. We are, yep. What we’ve fought for they’re getting. Which is great. And I hope it keeps up.

I hope, because they deserve it. They’ve got a worse battle. Theirs is far, far worse, theirs is more, more as they used to say ‘press button.’ All this gear, this combat, it’s more deadlier. I watch them on the streets now over there in Baghdad, house to house fighting and I said to a bloke the other day down in the RSL club, “Thank Christ we didn’t do that.” we

done villages, but that, I’d rather do jungle fighting than that street to street. That’s deadly stuff that, really that’s deadly. Jungles you had a bit of a chance, camouflage and all that. Them poor bloody street fighters, they’ve got nothing.

Nup.

I thought it was a bit of an insult. They should’ve made us welcome them home straight off instead of doing it now, I thought it was an insult. But there were a lot of other blokes didn’t, it eased their mind a lot so maybe that was a great thing. I don’t know. I was a bit insulted by it meself. I thought it was

a bit late. But I still march today so I don’t know. I go to reunions but I don’t go to any of that hip hop stuff. I don’t think it’s right I think it’s far, far, far too late. But then again I hold grudges.

Yeah, I go to that every year.

That’s a closeness. Anzac Day’s for everybody, Long Tan Day is just for Vietnam Veterans, it’s for us, it’s for not just 6 RAR boys, it’s for all the fallen. It’s for Bruno, Beresford, Chris, all them, it’s for Vietnam.

A lot. Not too many. Don, these are in Scone, Don. Who else? Shit what’s his name, he used to live here. Two blokes in Scone, I’ll think of his name in a minute.

Isn’t that embarrassing. Don’s down in Scone, Donny Albert and it’s gone.

I ring them up every now and again, have a yarn to them and talk. A few blokes around here they’re all Vietnam veterans, we all drink together. We’re known as our own little group, nobody disturbs us, we just sit there we talk regularly. They’ll ring up and say, “Woodie you coming down?”

“Yeah.” “Right-o I’ll meet you there at one o’clock.” “Yeah, right-o.” And we’re there, we don’t mix with others we just get our own little group and that’s it. And we have a laugh, we’ve got navy, we’ve got air force, we’ve got army. We’re all Vietnam veterans so it’s pretty close. It’s like that little political, that group that you can’t break into it and if you do you’re still not welcome because you’re not one of us.

That thing you know. So I think in a lot of respects we’re like the Second World War blokes except now we’re Vietnam blokes. The Korean blokes, we accept the Korean blokes in because those poor buggers never got a thing, nothing. They’re only starting to be recognised now the poor buggers and they’ve been a long time without any. And I don’t care, we all done the same, we lost lives, we got wounded, we suffered,

we seen a lot and now we’re suffering still, why not? Why not? So that’s it.

What a shame, who would’ve thought that? Who would’ve thought with the power that the Americans and all, we’d all put in, who’d have thought they’d seen that? Determination of people

in your own country, that’s all you can say. Determination that this is our country we want it back and no matter how powerful you are, we’re going to take it. And I hope, Australians, do that if we ever get over run. Which I think we will anyway. I’m sure we will. Well look how close it was Second World War, the Diggers went up there in New Guinea. They drove them back over the Kokoda Trail, you never know. And that’s,

when Saigon fell I was just absolutely shocked to see it go so quickly. They just, they were just like they were waiting outside the town with their tanks.

What was it for or what was it like?

What was the point? No I knew what the point was and the point was it was example, like New South trying

to take Queensland. We’ve got to stop them, we don’t want them to take it. And that’s what it was the north was trying to take the south. The north was trying to make the south into a Communist country which they finally did but unbeknown to most everybody, it was going to turn that way anyway because the people just didn’t care. They, even as I said, what we thought was our friends in Vietnam, were

Communists in disguise, they were, you just couldn’t trust anybody. And that’s as simple as that.

My life or Vietnam?

Probably wouldn’t go there. I don’t know. That’s a hard question I don’t know. I would go back into the army if my country asked me,

I would go in the army again. There’s no two ways on that. It’s a hard thing to say, if you go back after it’s been over for 30-odd years. At the time I’d probably say yeah. If we were given the same reasons of, as we were given then.

They’re coming to take our country, let’s stop them in somebody else’s. Why not?

Try not to have any wars and make love. And I’ve got a prescription for all the Viagra [anti-impotence medication] you want, so I’ll send it to youse.