THE NEW ME

CONSCRIPTION HAD CHANGED ME a lot. It had been a long journey from the farm at Ensay to the war in Vietnam. I was now 22 years old and a different young man. I was very fit, wasn’t bothered about being in the service, and at times felt a sense of celebrity attached to the uniform. There was no question that I was slightly apprehensive about going to this foreign country, even if I had missed the trip on a ship. But then again, like Gallipoli all those years ago, this was an adventure of sorts, involving a different culture and landscape, and a war to win. And was there a better soldier than an Aussie?

There was a stripe on my sleeve, and I believed I was a competent, even skilled, radio operator. Feedback I’d received in Australia told me I handled the responsibility quite well. My preferred cigarettes were Camel; and, naturally, being a Victorian, my ale of choice was Carlton Draught. The lack of experience I’d displayed in ‘mixing it with the men’ was now in the past. Having visited a strip joint, understood what a bar was, and gathered as much information about the fairer sex as possible … remember the movies at Singleton? … I was a man. Drinking, swearing, smoking, and heaping insults on my mates were now my strengths. After only one day in Vietnam I had gathered snippets of the local language: fick fick, boom boom, and so on. I had a good Ocker sense of humour, and certainly understood most dirty yarns. Although I was a late maturer, I guessed I had come of age.

Then there was the added bonus of fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Yanks; this would be fun. If John Wayne was a prototype for the American Marine, it was going to be a privilege. Sure I missed home, the farm, and friends, but I was having more fun, and enjoyed a different freedom in the army. As well, this was a war — a war to stop the spread of communism that we had been called to fight. I was about to become an ANZAC. Without a doubt, we had received enough training to be good soldiers. The army told us that we were more prepared and better trained than any other Australian battalion. We’d had eight months, in fact, and that didn’t include Canungra. We’d heard reports that some of the American troops had only been trained for a couple of months. They must have been green.

As I gathered my thoughts and quickly adjusted to the changes of early departure and being alone in a foreign country, I vaguely recalled my only piece of knowledge about Australia’s participation in Vietnam. I’d read about it the year before, in August 1966, just after we finished jungle training at Canungra, and were heading back on the train to Pucka. The newspapers had reported on a battle in Vietnam at Long Tan. As we glanced at the newspapers being passed around, we quickly formed blurry alcoholic opinions about the event. All I could remember was that we, the Australians, had flogged the enemy. It was never talked about, that battle. The press at the time printed superlatives which reinforced the belief that those involved were reliving the digger tradition. A wonderful word, ‘tradition’. In this context, it beggared description. The incident was given scant attention by us, and was never acknowledged by the army at the time. It rang no warning bells nor dented my youthful exuberance.

Now, at the beginning of my tour of duty, I was ready. That was all I knew. I was prepared to follow any order from the army. ‘Ready for what?’ was a question I could never have answered at the time.

That I was about to face killing, deprivation, death, and a life almost devoid of social contact had not occurred to me. From being a quiet, sensitive young man, I would turn into a cold, emotionless old man. There is such an absence of reality in the mind of a young soldier about to face war. It is so cleverly masked by intense training and blunt, impersonal mentions of an evil enemy. Added to this is the propaganda perpetrated by politicians and the press. We were swamped with words that always flow freely from those in power. We were now brave, courageous, fine young men, prepared to die for their country, blah, blah, blah …