Fifty years after Australia sent men to war in Vietnam, we can agree the way they were treated upon coming home was nothing to be proud of. But these veterans’ resilience and pride means they are now recognised as the senior leaders of the ANZAC movement.
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For many of the Diggers who served in Vietnam, their introduction to the ANZAC legend came not from nationalism, imperial optimism, or a yearning for adventure, but via a lottery – the draft which decided which 19- and 20-year-olds would be sent to fight.
After an 11-year campaign, 521 Australians had left their lives in the jungle, the rice paddies and the rubber plantations of Vietnam.
While the experience has taken a heavy toll on some of the men, the Vietnam veterans have now emerged as the senior leaders of the ANZAC movement, and will take their place in the marches on Monday accepted as such.
It wasn’t always that way.
The young men returning from the jungles of South Vietnam, from the trauma of war – a war whose virtue was openly questioned – were met by a combination of indifference, hostility and uncertainty as they tried to return to what had been a normal life.
As the song says, “there were no V-Day heroes back in 1973”. While there were many who had risked life and limb to save others in Vietnam, by its end the war was not popular, and the hostilities hardly ended in triumph.
While the Gallipoli campaign was also a significant defeat, its cause, its virtue, and its social support were never in question. If the bloodshed at Gallipoli was a nation being born, Vietnam was its difficult adolescence: a time on the path to growing up where risky decisions, and mistakes, are made.
Will Simpson, Graham Bennett and Ian Calloway would be counted among the healthier of Vietnam veterans. They’re involved in the RSL and are active in their chosen battle circa 2016 – lawn bowls. Throughout, they had what Simpson said veterans often needed most: “a mate you could sit and talk to”.
Vietnam Veterans Association Illawarra president Ian Birch remembers how at first, many veterans found their RSL branches shunned them, as if their war was not fit for ANZAC recognition. “It’s the way the country was,” he said.
The Vietnam War commemoration page of the Australian War Memorial describes it such: “For men who regarded themselves as generally having fought with more humanity and professionalism than their American counterparts, this was a bitter blow.
“Veterans who had lost friends in combat, who had seen death and who had killed, as is the lot of soldiers in war, were appalled at the way in which their having done the job asked of them by their government was, in some cases, used against them.”
“The way were treated, it was all political,” Calloway said. “Before we left, with all the protests. And when we got home, they said it wasn’t a proper war.”
“They always had something,” Simpson said. “They never accepted us on the same stage as the two world wars.”
The Illawarra RSL branches were mostly accepting, as were many country branches.
Simpson, who left a job at the steelworks to serve with 1 Field Squadron at Nui Dat, repairing and servicing weapons, said there was no debriefing, demobbing, or preparation for civilian life. “You handed in your gear and off you went”.
For others, the years were not kind. These veterans returned before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was properly understood. Some still struggle to live a normal life, and often avoid ANZAC Day events.
“I know a few blokes who went and lived in the wild in Tasmania … or up north,” Simpson said. “They just couldn’t get back into it.”
For men who regarded themselves as generally having fought with more humanity and professionalism than their American counterparts, this was a bitter blow
- Australian War Memorial
This ANZAC Day, in many cities, the recognition will be overt. Vietnam veterans will lead Sydney’s ANZAC march – a move for which the veterans find themselves in the middle of controversy, yet again, as some descendants of World War I Diggers were unhappy about being moved further back.
In other cities recognition has been more gradual, and constant. In Wollongong the march will be structured as ever, without an explicit Vietnam contingent to lead. But look around the leadership of RSL sub-branches and a large number are veterans of the war in Vietnam.
This year will also mark 50 year since the Battle of Long Tan (see story, opposite page), where a 108-strong unit of Australians, supported by artillery, fought off a much larger force of more than 2500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers.
“Every Australian who went to Vietnam after Long Tan owes those guys a debt of gratitude, because they taught the [Viet Cong] we could fight,” Simpson said.
“They learned not to mess with us unless they had to.”
This year also sees another review of the honours awarded after Long Tan, following persistent concerns that top brass recommended themselves for medals at the expense of soldiers whose valour in the field was extraordinary. Colonel Harry Smith (retired), who commanded the Australians at Long Tan, has campaigned for an upgrade of honours given, most notably a Victoria Cross for Warrant Officer Jack Kirby.
The Defence Honours and Awards Appeal Tribunal has conducted hearings last month but it is not known when a decision will come.
No one is holding their breath. But a successful review of these honours would help complete the overdue recognition of these extraordinary ANZACs from Vietnam, whose war was unlike any other, and whose homecoming, in many cases, took decades.