A 20-year-old Murray Claydon was on on the train to Puckapunyal in Victoria, conscripted to fight in Vietnam, when a sergeant who was with them told the new recruits what to expect.
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There’s one thing you’ll find out for sure, he told the newbies. The people around you now, the ones you go into battle with, will be your friends for life. There’s no friendship like one forged in war, when you’re having to look out for each other’s lives.
As veterans gather in Wollongong on Sunday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, Mr Claydon, now 71, couldn’t agree more.
Once brothers in arms, many Vietnam veterans are now brothers in healing.
It’s been well documented how the troops weren’t treated well upon their return from South Vietnam, as it was then. The decades since have been difficult for many of them. But as Mr Claydon, and his comrades in the Vietnam veterans Association, can attest, they help each other through the struggles of civilian life as well.
In 2016 we know how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has had a huge impact on the lives of many returned soldiers but in 1972 it was a different story.
It didn’t help that the RSL in many places didn’t welcome them home, belittling Vietnam as not a proper war.
The friendships with their comrades became a saviour.
“I lost a few mates over there and this just really brings it home,” Mr Claydon said. “Since getting involved with these old fossils it really has helped me get through, well, PTSD. We have a lot of fun, a lot of laughs.”
Murray Claydon was at Binh Ba, a base about 12km from Long Tan, when Australia’s bloodiest day in Vietnam unfolded.
The 6RAR’s Delta Company encountered, in a rubber plantation during a torrential downpour, a force of more than 2000 enemy soldiers.
The 108 Australians fought them off, helped by New Zealand artillery fire, with the loss of 18 Australians and about 250 opposition. It was credited with changing the direction of the war – as after the showing at Long Tan, the North Vietnamese Army largely left the Australians alone.
Vietnam Veterans Day, and the 50th anniversary of the Battle Long Tan, will be marked in Wollongong at 11am at the Vietnam memorial on Flagstaff Hill.
A Caribou aircraft will fly over at 11.10am.
