Thirty-seven years have done little to dim Mabel Hill's memory of a chaplain walking up her driveway to deliver the news which was every mother's worst nightmare.
Landmine, Vietnam, dead. Her son, Donald C Hill, was aged 22.
The grief was still raw yesterday as Ms Hill, now aged 92, gathered with veterans to commemorate Vietnam Veterans Day.
"It was a Sunday when the padre came up (and) I knew it was bad news," she said. "He was a very quiet boy, he didn't want to kill anybody."
While Ms Hill remembered her son, old mates swapped stories from the frontline.
Barrie Proctor can still hear the artillery exploding on the Long Tan rubber plantation where the Australian forces were outmanned 15 to 1.
Fought in monsoonal rain, the celebrated Battle of Long Tan saw 100 Australian soldiers, under the cover of artillery fire, hold off North Vietnamese regulars. Eighteen Australians died and 21 were wounded.
Private Proctor was one of the first sent in to relieve the soldiers. On the way a rocket propelled grenade was fired at his armoured car, narrowly missing.
"If it had hit us square on it would have been ta-ta."
At first light Corporal Rick Bensley went to the scene.
"We could see that there was a hell of a battle there because of the way the tree trunks had been totally destroyed and the hundreds of dead bodies," he said yesterday.
Last week the Army agreed Long Tan veterans could wear a unit citation and three officers will get top gallantry awards.
Mr Bensley said it was welcome news, but was "40 years too late."