Time has not healed veterans' pain

Years have passed, but the pain remains for many Australian veterans of the Vietnam War.

We will remember them on Sunday August 18 – Vietnam Veterans’ Day – in services at Burpengary, Caboolture, Bribie, Redcliffe, Bribie, Bray Park, Deception Bay, Beachmere and Woodford.

But, 50 years on, some veterans still feel “disrespected” and “undersold” says Jeff Hughes, CEO of This Story Australia. They want to be “seen and listened to”.

The North Lakes resident speaks from experience having recorded dozens of interviews with Australian military veterans from conflicts since World War II.

All are posted on This Story Australia, a website preserving history, honouring veterans and sharing stories to educate and “change the status quo about veterans suffering in silence”.

When asked if Vietnam Veterans' Day is undersold, Mr Hughes said: “It is our veterans who are undersold, not one day of commemoration.

“Our servicemen and women have sacrificed so much to serve Australia and need to be respected for the jobs too many of us wouldn’t do.

“From the Vietnam veterans I have interviewed, I have felt the spectrum of happiness and emptiness in their comments.

“They could be storytelling, laughing and recounting a story and then suddenly a patient silence … followed by what I can only describe as just despair.

“I think Vietnam veterans want to be seen and listened to. We owe it to them to learn from their stories and show them respect for their experiences.”

Around 60,000 Australians served in the Vietnam War from 1962-73. The Australian War Memorial (AWM) says 523 died and almost 2400 were wounded.

An official welcome home was eventually held in October 1987, when Long Tan Day became Vietnam Veterans Day.

But the Memorial describes the war as “the cause of the greatest social and political dissent in Australia since the conscription referendums of the First World War”.

“Many draft resisters, conscientious objectors and protesters were fined or jailed, while soldiers met a hostile reception on their return home.”

Norm Wotherspoon, President of the Caboolture Sub-branch of the Vietnam Veterans’ Association, was among of the latter.

He was in a Charlie Company radio hut, 5kms from Long Tan and heard the 108 men of Delta Company confronting more than 2000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers.

Norm and his Company buried 245 Vietnamese at Long Tan the next day. It is believed more than 250 bodies were taken by the retreating enemy. Delta Company lost 17 soldiers.

Norm was among the first conscripts, obeying the law as he believed was right. But it caused a rift with his family, which was anti-war.

On returning he was “spat on a couple of times” and at an RSL for a beer to “remember friends lost” was told “this is for real diggers, you’re not welcome”.

“I was saddened when I came home … and sad before I left,” he said, “but Vietnam was part of my life, not all my life.

“I am not focussed on the scars, but what I am doing now and want to do (in the future).”

Norm has PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) but a “very strong support network” and volunteers his time to help in the “mental health area”.

“The fact we have Vietnam Veterans’ Day is a positive,” he said, “with most veterans being in their late 70s, early 80s or older, I can’t see if the day will progress much further.

“My personal opinion … we have Anzac Day for all the Forces. I’d like to see a Veterans Day to remember those who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Timor … and Vietnam.”

Peter Hegarty, from Cherbourg, has a similar tale. He spent 10 months in Vietnam with the Royal Australian Engineers dealing with “booby traps, mines and searching tunnels”.

“Coming back to Australia was bloody awful,” he said on This Story Australia, “there was a sense the general public despised us as Diggers.

“We had conscripts who had gone and served this country well. They didn’t ask to go, they were sent. To be treated like that by the public was so bloody bad.”

So too Peter Hindle, a Signalman First Class in the Corp of Signals, but in recent years President of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia Queensland branch.

“You couldn’t walk around in uniform, you’d get beaten up, spat on, stuff thrown at you,” he said. “That would be a common tale for all Vietnam Veterans.

“Only in the last 15-20 years the general public has actually loved the veterans.”

After being medivac-ed (medical evacuation) home Jon Fallows, a leading aircraftman born in Kingaroy, was discharged from hospital in Sydney and asked for a posting to Amberley.

“That was it,” he tells This Story Australia in an emotional interview, “flight back to Australia, get out of the aeroplane, walk across the street … nothing. You’re a civvy.”

Eric Law has a similar tale. Aged 17 when sent to Vietnam as part of the Australian Logistics Support Group, he returned in September 1971.

No-one told Mr Law’s parents he was coming home. When his mum opened the front door she “thought I was a ghost and fainted”, he said.

Mr Law’s father then took him for a drink and was asked “why are you bringing him in here?” They left. Mr Law said it was “the last time I saw my father cry”.

Clarence Whitehorn, who lived in Albany Creek, gathered intelligence on movements of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. One intercept about an ambush saved many US lives.

But when he flew into Sydney … “not a soul there,” he said. “That was our welcome back, (my) wife was there and that was the only greeting I got.”

Jeff Hughes believes those memories have not faded for Vietnam Veterans.

“I believe the feeling is as strong now as it was when I came to Australia in 1996,” he said, “the perception the feeling isn’t there stems from the fact it isn’t deemed media relevant.

“Today, mass media sprukes entertainment, adrenaline-focussed news stories and influencers - rather than sharing community stories, positive breakthroughs or God forbid, history!

“So, with history and community an afterthought, how could people find learnings about the past? No, there is no mellowing, not for my generation anyway.”

From his work for This Story, Mr Hughes has seen a resolve in veterans to “get on with it”.

“This resolve stands up to adversity,” he said, “it embodies resilience and in this Canadian's opinion is uniquely Australian. And that is to be commended.”