Fifty-year commemorations for end of Vietnam War planned for 2023

Vietnam veteran Lindsay Wright recalls the day that he and a group of his mates were refused entry to one of Sydney’s largest RSL Clubs.

“When we came home prior to being discharged, four of us went to Parramatta RSL and, when we told them we had been in Vietnam, they said we weren’t allowed to enter the club,” he recalls. 

“That’s one of the kick in the guts that we received,” the lifetime local and president of the local Vietnam Veterans Association, said.

Another time, he recalls a less-than-welcome reaction from a local bus driver.

“I remember I was coming home on leave, and the train stopped at Blayney, I started walking to Orange and a bus came along, I tried to flag him down and he wouldn’t stop, the bugger. I presume it was because of my uniform. So, I kept walking until I got a lift,” he laughed.

Helping overcome the bitter memories of this most contentious of Australia’s armed conflicts is one aim of Federal Government plans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of our involvement in the decade’s old conflict in 2023.

Local Member and Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel, Andrew Gee, recently announced that the Australian Government has committed $6 million to ensure this important milestone is marked with appropriate respect and appreciation for all those who served and those who gave their lives in Vietnam. 

“Australia owes our Vietnam veterans an enormous debt of gratitude,” Mr Gee said. 

“Almost 60,000 Australians served in the Vietnam War, 521 lost their lives and more than 3000 were wounded. We honour and remember the service and sacrifice of each and every one of them.” 

Mr Gee said that the anniversary will be an important opportunity to heal the wounds of the past.

“The Vietnam War and its aftermath exacted a heavy toll on all those who served and their families. The treatment of our diggers upon their return home by some of their fellow Australians remains a source of hurt and pain for many,” Mr Gee said. 

Ironically for such a bitter conflict, Lindsay was one of the thousands of Australians who never actually volunteered, but who were conscripted in a national draft determined by a macabre lottery drawn by birth-dates.

For Lindsay, his call-up also came at the most inopportune time, the day he returned from his honeymoon!

“I was a ‘Nasho’ (National Servicemen). I had finished school and I worked on the Railways before being called-up.  

“I went and did my medical, but they said that I had failed, but when I came home from the honeymoon, there were the papers… I came home on the Friday, and I was in the Army on the Monday, I had to catch the train out of Orange on the Sunday,” he recalls.

“I went to Kapooka (Wagga Wagga) for basic training and then Puckapunyal (Victoria), and then to the Russell Building at Canberra (Duntroon).

“My colonel at Randwick then said: ‘you’re going to Vietnam’ but, by then, my wife Carol was pregnant with our first son, Timothy. 

“She almost died in childbirth and was only saved at Orange Base Hospital, and I never saw him till I got home.” 

In the Service Corp at Nui Dat in Vung Tau province between October 1967 and 1968, he experienced mortar attacks on the camp and later went on a number of patrols with US-based helicopter groups.

But it was on his return home that he found-out how unpopular the “Vietnam Conflict”, by then subject to widespread anti-war opposition and increasing community ambivalence, had become.

“We got home between midnight and 3am; they brought us home between those hours to avoid the protests,” Lindsay explained.

Other veterans interviewed at a recent commemoration day for the Vietnam War at Orange Cenotaph, have similar memories.

Many recall without rancour the slights that they were subject to on return from our most controversial of wars but one in which they conducted themselves with professionalism, courage, and a sense of stoic duty that seems lost in the mists of the past 50 years.

Formerly Long Tan Day — named after Australia’s most famous action in the 10-year conflict — Vietnam Veteran’s Day has only been held since the mid-1980s. 

This is not just to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice of the 521 Australians in the jungles, bush, and villages of South Vietnam, but also to heal the unseen wounds of these servicemen and women.

“I was regular army,” Garry Roach says to distinguish from the “regular” and “National Service” (conscripted) soldiers of the Australian forces. “I was there in 1967–68; we viewed it that we were doing our duty, it was that simple” he said.

Bryan Hutchinson who “toured” Vietnam in 1970 was one of the thousands of conscripts drawn-out of the lotto-style ballot depending on your birthdate. For about 200 National Servicemen who died during the 1962–75 conflict, the “winning” numbers meant that you, indeed, lost.

That the sons of so many wealthy, well-connected Australians were able to gain “deferment” through either attending university, marriage, or from vague medical conditions, was one of the reasons for the increasing unpopularity of the conflict at home.

Bryan was in Vietnam at the crucial moment when Australian public sentiment turned against the war with huge “Moratorium” marches held in most capital cities, events which seemed strangely-distant to the Australians based in Phuoc Tuy province.

“Over there, you didn’t think about it, you didn’t think about politics, you don’t worry about it,” he said.

The only thing that rankled, the men said, were strikes by Australian postal workers and other unions that stopped the sending of mail and other goods to the troops in protest at the war.

Another local, Noel Clegg was deployed relatively early-on in Australia’s involvement from 1966–67 before public opinion had turned against Australia’s involvement.

“There’s no point in recriminations now, being bitter will kill you,” Bill Murphy said. 

“I was there from the start of the Tet Offensive in April 1969,” Clark Bell said of the major Vietcong/North Vietnamese campaign that is credited with turning world opinion against the US-led war against the communist North Vietnamese.

“Would you believe that, after I came back, I went into an RSL and they said, ‘you have to be signed in by a World War I or World War II veteran?’ We weren’t in a ‘real war,’ we were only a ‘peacekeeping force’ they told me.”

Abuse from radicalised university students towards soldiers was common-place at the time, he said, but believes that now is a time of healing. He said that the view of Australia’s 1965–75 involvement (the last Australian combat units were withdrawn in 1973) in the conflict had changed for the better.

“The early rejection that we suffered, that was a long time ago, everything’s different now.“

He said that most Australians who remember those divisive times see now that the abuse of individual Australian troops was wrong.

“When we were abused by everybody, that doesn’t exist anymore. A lot of people have seen their ways. They realise now that it wasn’t the soldier’s fault, it was the government that sent us,” he said.

Most of the men agreed, saying that since the late 1980s, Australians views of the men facing the conflict, have changed.

“I think so, I asked a young woman today ‘where’s the cenotaph?’ and she asked ‘why’, and I said I was coming here for the Vietnam Veteran’s ceremony, and she said: ‘Thank-you very much for what you did’,” another of the men said.

Conscripts, who were often tacitly-allowed to remain back in Australia if they told their commanding officers that they objected to the war, mostly chose to remain in their units due to a sense of camaraderie and mateship.

“If you didn’t want to go with your unit, you could tell your officer and no-one would know,” another of the men said.

“It was like parachuting, I didn’t want to jump-out of a perfectly-good Caribou (army transport plane) but everyone else was, so I shut my eyes and ran at the hatch,” another added.

“In the end we got through it, and I believe that the army made me a better person, it gave me the confidence that I simply didn’t have.”

New Zealander David Pepper-Edwards recalls being on one of the artillery guns (Royal New Zealand Artillery 161st Battery) that saved the Australian platoons at Long Tan firing almost on the Australian’s own positions as they came under withering North Vietnamese attack after being ambushed in a rubber plantation in August 1966.

“I remember it vividly, I was just 19, but I can recall it all pretty well,” he said. “We started up as fire management batteries and then it went to ‘danger close,’ which meant you had no margin of error, you had to have everything right or you could land on your own positions,” he said.

He still remembers the way that many of the soldiers were treated, with mail strikes denying them postal packages and letters from home.

“I left the army and never talked about it, I can’t say ‘no, there is no anger left’ I didn’t want apologies from everyone, but from the people who protested, who abused the soldiers,” he explained.

“I had a friend who was marching in Sydney, this woman came-out and threw a bucket of red paint all over him and called him a ‘baby killer,’ and he’d been over there building schools and housing and the like.

“And the Army, they made him pay for the dry-cleaning, to clean his own uniform,” he concluded.

“Things have changed, you see that everywhere, people now understand that we were only doing what the government asked us to do,” Lindsay said.

Mr Gee said that the 50th anniversary is another step in this healing process and urged veterans who still suffer from this conflict, to seek help.

“We owe the men and women who served in Vietnam nothing less than a commemorative program that reflects their extraordinary service and sacrifice. Our country will always be grateful for it, and we will never, ever, forget it,” Mr Gee said. 

Note: Timothy Joseph Cutcliffe, from Orange, serving in the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (2 RAR), died of wounds in South Vietnam on August 25, 1967, aged 21 years.

For help, go to: 

• Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or openarms.gov.au.

• Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072.

• Defence AllHours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or defence.gov.au/health/healthportal.

• Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608ends