Veteran Don Tate was pulled, injured, out of Vietnam more than 45 years ago, but he’s been fighting ever since to have his platoon properly recognised by the Australian government.
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In his latest battle, the Albion Park Rail man has turned his attention to the Australian War Memorial, which he says is “the bastion of all war records in this country”.
Mr Tate said the memorial has refused to accept his outfit – the 2nd D&E Platoon – ever existed despite previous acknowledgements from Australian Army head Major-General Fergus McLachlan and the former parliamentary secretary for defence support, Labor MP Mike Kelly.
After butting up against bureaucracy for more than four decades, Mr Tate is running an online petition trying to convince memorial director Brendan Nelson to release more than 200 documents he says relate to the ghost platoon.
“The [memorial] is a statute body and should reflect the accuracy of the nation's military history as accurately as possibly, not depend on the whims of non-combatants who maintain the records,” Mr Tate said.
He has already received 13,000 signatures on the petition, which is being run through change.org.
Throsby MP Stephen Jones has also pledged his help after meeting with Mr Tate on Thursday, and plans to raise the matter in Federal Parliament in the coming weeks.
“We have a situation where, despite the declaration by former minister Mike Kelly that this platoon existed, there’s a denial by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Australian War Memorial which is robbing certain people from their entitlements to pensions, and also their identity and their history,” Mr Jones said.
“This is a matter of justice: these guys served their country and they’ve been treated appallingly.
“It’s time to right a long-standing wrong.”
The existence of the 2nd D&E Platoon was covered up for decades until Mr Tate published a book in 2008 detailing atrocities committed during a battle with the Viet Cong.
In 2009, Mr Kelly acknowledged the platoon, saying it had not been formally raised but had been engaged in a series of important actions.
The 39 soldiers in the outfit were disbanded after a battle with a much larger number of Viet Cong. Official reports claimed the bodies of the dead Viet Cong were wrapped in green ponchos and buried.
But Mr Tate, who was a private in the platoon, said the bodies were dragged into a crater filled with claymore mines and C4 explosive and blown up.
An Australian Federal Police investigation into these allegations resulted in no charges being laid.
