Australians at War Film Archive

Well, Tracy was only about fifteen months old when Bob went away and before he went away I think, I saw him for about three weeks in about six months. It was very hard but it was his job and I expected it

you know, and then all of a sudden he was gone. When he was gone I thought well, we never even spoke about whether he was going to come back and the time went so quick because he was really good at writing and I used to write every second day, send tapes over. Tracy was a help. She kept me busy. I went home to the family a lot

and I couldn’t wait till the time was over. And when the time come for him to come home I just don’t know, all of a sudden the ship was there and we were waiting for him. And it was just unreal to think after all

this time, and while he was away when it happened I’ll never forget. I got up one Saturday morning about five o’clock and my brother said to me, “Bob’s been in a terrible battle.” I tried to get onto the army and found nothing and then the lunchtime paper come out and, ‘How I got out alive, Robert, Sergeant Robert Buick said’, I was just so relieved.

But it was hard, but still it’s his job and that’s what we expected. When he come home it was very hard because you didn’t tell people that he’d been to Vietnam because they just didn’t believe in that. There was that many protesters and that. When you went out you never said anything. He never went in uniform.

You never went out with him in uniform. It took a long time to accept it. It was very hard on the families… but that’s the way life was and you accept it. And then when he come home I, about ten months later we had our son Robert.

We were in Townsville. Oh, the years have just flown by, don’t ask me where they’ve gone. Thirty six years and I don’t know. And about six years ago I said to him, I said, “One day,” I said, “You’re going to die and the kids are not going to know anything you’ve done.” And we never spoke about the army and only until about a

few years ago that I knew what really happened. So he started writing this book and it’s being published and released on the 1st June. I’m just so proud of him…

He never spoke about it much but he stayed in the army and I think while he was in the army he just seemed to block it out. He probably talked to his mates about it. He’d changed in lots of ways but just ways that, oh I don’t know,

it’s very hard to explain, but just in the last, I reckon in the last ten years it’s affected him more than anything. And he’s very hard to live with at times, but as I was brought up, you work it out. We get along really well together. We have our ups and

downs but more ups than downs. We have our two great children, they’re both married and we’ve just found out our first grandchild is going to be born on the New Year’s Eve so we’re so thrilled. But I think as the years go by it really does get to, it really does. And

he gets so upset. I think they think that he was very hard, but he had a job to do… it’s very hard.

Well, as he always says, it’s you that brought the children up really, with me in the army, and he was always away and he was in infantry and there’d be times he’d be away for six weeks at a time. Other times, a couple of weeks. And I don’t know, I think our children just adapted to it because they, I’d explain to them that’s what their father’s job was and there was nothing else we could do about it. Bob loved the army. I think

he would have stayed in only for the children. He’d done his twenty years. They wanted to post him to Canungra and he said, “No, I think my children had that many schools it’s time I got out.” I think he would have liked to have stayed in longer but because of the children he got out. It was just too much. He thought it was too much for me.

Our kids have accepted it, they really have. They’re wonderful children.

Well, they’ve had to accept that their father’s been away. It was, he was in the army, that was his job. I’d explained to them, you know, Dad wasn’t here and they knew that I was always there. I never worked. As Bob said,

“You stay at home and be with the children.” and I just loved it. And the kids found it; I think our daughter found it very hard when she was moved from school to school. She’d just make friends and we’d have to move and it was very hard to because when Bob got posted we didn’t go straightaway with him. Sometimes the army would keep you there for three months before you went to where he was posted.

It was very hard then because the children couldn’t understand why. But no, I think we just accepted it because he was in the army and that was his job. And as long as they had their mother there and they knew their father was coming home it made it easier for them, you know. But I think it affected our daughter more than it affected our son because he didn’t worry. He used to

just get out and play with anybody, do everything and know that Dad was coming home. But the one thing I can say Bob never ever brought his work home. We never really talked army at home. I can remember Robert was only about eight years old and he was at the school and some kid come along and was carrying on about his own father in the army and said something about he was a captain and Robert didn’t know and Rob said, “Oh, my Dad’s a private” and he come home and told me.

I said, “Oh it’s all right darl, your Dad’s a sergeant at the moment.” But he didn’t understand because I mean, we never ever spoke about it at home. We, Bob wanted to be just normal at home, have it all the time while he was at work so when he come home it was just us, the four of us.

I felt really terrible when he was in Vietnam because there was a lot of people in Melbourne, and it was all written up in the papers that they were collecting money and sending it to the Viet Cong you know for bullets. But there wasn’t much we could do because like I accepted it and when

Bob come home it was harder for him because I mean as I said before you’d never ever say anything. He wouldn’t go out in uniform and you wouldn’t say it because I had very good friends from Townsville and they used to come down and see me all the time. When they knew that Bob had been in Vietnam and been in a big clash and killed the Viet Cong they didn’t want to have anything to do with us. It’s just so sad….

too many memories, I can’t… people didn’t want to have anything to do with you. It was terrible.

The first time I met Bob was at the Majestic Hotel in Brisbane and then I met him that night and he went away for about six weeks and come back and

I saw a couple of his mates and they said, “Oh, just watch out for that Buick, he wants to take you out.” Anyhow Bob and I ended up going out and we were married the following June. I think we’d only been going together six months. And oh, he was just so wonderful, he really was, and we had some really good times together. He got out of the army because he felt he wanted to get into the air force and do something different but that didn’t

work out so Tracy and I come back over here to Brisbane and waited till he got back into the army. We’d been married I think about nine months when we had Tracy and she was just so wonderful and he thought she was wonderful too. And then he got back into the army and Vietnam was on so we really didn’t have that much time together and as I said

before, you know, six months before he went to Vietnam we saw him for about two or three weeks. Tracy was only a baby. They were hard times because we really didn’t have much time before he went and we had some great times. We still have great times. Then he was gone just so suddenly. It was just unreal. We never spoke about whether he

would come back or what would happen. But he was really good, he used to send me tapes all the time, write all the time as often as he could. It was just, I don’t know, I just knew that I’d that was my soul mate and will be my soul mate for the rest of my life. You know as I’ve said, we’ve had some

ups and downs but more ups than downs. And then when he come back we got posted to Townsville. I didn’t like Townsville. It was terrible because that’s where, we had friends up there and they didn’t like knowing that Bob had gone to Vietnam. We’ve never seen them since. And Townsville people really hated it and I think the reason was because we were all

put into houses together and I’d never lived in an army camp like that before. And it was just in too close proximity as far as I was concerned. We knew our neighbours and everything and, but we mixed more with civvies [civilians]. I had family up there as well.

Yeah but it’s pretty hard after all these years. You know Tracy and I were there waiting with everybody

and all of a sudden I could see him coming down the gangplank with this big teddy bear. Tracy’s still got it today. And it was just unbelievable, just couldn’t believe it after all this time. I didn’t feel it then but I suppose I was to blame too because I’d been on my own for so long, you’d get dressed, Tracy dressed and away you’d go and you’re all of a sudden think, ‘Gee Bob’s there you know, where is he?’ and you go to

go out on your own. And I think he held it in for a long, long time because that was his job at the army and he just stuck with it. But when I first met him he never ever lost his temper. He never had things like that. But I found he lost his temper just so suddenly. He just couldn’t, I don’t know, he changed in that ways but then he’d come

back all right. But no it’s too long ago it’s, you forget about these things because life’s got to go on. I suppose at times he could have killed me, I could have killed him but that’s the way it is.

Well he smoked when he went away, but when he come back he was smoking nearly three packs of cigarettes a day which was very unusual. He never drank much when he was here but once he come back from over there he used to drink a lot. You know, they’d have the sergeants do’s [events – parties] and everything like that and he would drink a lot but

it did take a toll on him but no, I don’t know. I think he holds it in too much. He doesn’t, even today it’s very hard because as I said it’s only in the last few years that I’ve known how bad it was when him and a few others done it down at Canberra and only then did I

realise how very close he come to not coming home. So that just tells you how much he did talk about it. Didn’t talk about it to anybody really, except probably his army mates but no, no. He’s a bloke like that and he’s never changed. No I don’t think there’s anything else.