When deciding whether to return to Viet Nam, the veteran will be wondering what they are letting themselves in for. What will it be like? How much will things have changed? Will I be able to recognise anything? How will I respond if someone asks me if I was a soldier in Viet Nam during the war?
To help answer some of these questions, this book records the thoughts and experiences of those who have already been back.
I have accompanied five tour groups to Viet Nam and have observed a variety of pre-tour perceptions by veterans of what revisiting the war zone will be like, ranging from no preconceptions whatsoever to real concern that they will not be able to ‘hold it together’ when they return to where their mates were killed or wounded. My personal experience was something of an emotional rollercoaster, from being fascinated on the one hand by the progress of the country since 1975, to feelings of utter sadness when I stood where I had once helped load a dying soldier onto a Stokes litter for casualty evacuation, only to lose him inflight. But such emotions are normal and natural, and should be expected—not something to be feared.
So what can one expect when returning to the place that marked, for most veterans, a watershed in their young lives? The responses to that question during the interviews in this book are as varied as the veterans themselves. Garry Adams was a Regular soldier, a corporal and infantryman serving with 6 RAR on its second tour of duty in 1969–70. Garry said he found his first visit ‘very daunting’:
I was quite ill before I left, I had had my blood pressure checked and it had skyrocketed to 200 and something, and it was ridiculous. I was almost at the point where I wasn’t going to come. But then after a while everything settled down and I was okay; once I got into the country I was all right and I didn’t have any great problems at all.1
Garry is now a tour guide and tour director for Battle Tours, a company that specialises in taking veterans and their families back to battlefields.
Another former member of 6 RAR who served as a National Serviceman in South Viet Nam was Steve Campling. Steve had deployed to Viet Nam in 1969 as a reinforcement soldier before ending up in 6 RAR. Steve and his wife Gail both believed that the war was a waste of lives and effort, but wanted to see the country as it is today. Steve looked back to a tour he and Gail did with Garry in 2002 and recalled that he felt ‘some trepidation at first, however as the tour started in Hanoi, I treated it the same as the many other tours I had done in South-East Asian countries and enjoyed the tourist experience’.2
From November 1969 to April 1970 Sergeant Derrill De Heer worked in the Operations Section of the battalion headquarters of 8 RAR churning out typewritten orders on Gestetner wax skins. Then he was posted to the formation of a new unit, the 1st Australian Psychological Operations Unit (1 Psyops Unit). He believed he got the job because he had ‘previously served in Asian countries [Malaya and Thailand], was infantry, and intelligence-operator and signaller-trained’.3 Derrill did a second tour in South Viet Nam with 4 RAR/NZ (Anzac) Battalion as the unit Intelligence Sergeant. Like many other veterans he thought the fall of South Viet Nam in 1975 was ‘an absolute tragedy’, adding Australia and the Allies ‘let the South Vietnamese down’ when the South finally succumbed to the Communists: ‘I believe that the politicians in conjunction with the Americans sold them out.’ His passion for Viet Nam has continued through his military and now academic career. Derrill went back to Viet Nam and the old Phuoc Tuy Province on a private trip in 2003:
I wanted to show my wife where I had been, show her the beautiful places and the beautiful friendly people. We then went on an organised trip throughout Viet Nam and Cambodia. We just loved it. I went back again in 2005 for study purposes; again I loved the place. I would love to be able to help the people of the province, and I could easily live in Hanoi.4
Looking back
Staff Sergeant Bob Hann, who was the Company Quartermaster Sergeant with Delta Company, 4 RAR, in 1971–72, recalled how he felt when he left the country in March 1972. He was:
Glad to be going home to my family. I had no great feelings after the withdrawal because I felt that the lack of resolve by the Americans in the final year or so made the result inevitable. History will judge if the loss of 500-plus of our prime young men was worth it.5
Another soldier who was with Bob Hann at the very end of Australia’s combat involvement in South Viet Nam was mortarman Garry Heskett, who was attached to Delta Company 4 RAR prior to the withdrawal of the battalion. He recalled how he felt when he was leaving the country after his tour of duty:
Being part of the last rifle company out of Viet Nam— [leaving in] March 1972—I felt somewhat relieved I was going home in one piece. However, I have never hidden the fact that I felt cheated by a government that withdrew us before the job was completed.6
When asked how he felt when the South fell, Garry Heskett replied with a degree of sorrow:
I recall most vividly watching the fall of South Viet Nam and Saigon on TV. I wept, feeling bitterness and anger against the South Vietnamese for giving up the fight so easy; anger at our government for not leaving us there to protect and serve, making sure that there was proper government infrastructure and defence capabilities in place prior to departing; and sadness for our troops that were killed or wounded.7
Garry’s wife Suzanne accompanied him on their trip back to Viet Nam in 1993 in an organised tour with a group of fellow soldiers, mainly from 4 RAR’s second tour of duty. Suzanne supported Australia’s involvement in the war, coming, as she said, ‘from a patriotic family’ (her father had served in the Royal Australian Navy for six years in the 1950s). Suzanne admitted:
I really didn’t know what to expect; it wouldn’t have been my choice for a holiday. However, I think it was important for me to go, as the place had had such a profound impact on Garry’s life. I was hoping it would be helpful for him in a healing manner. It was also a way to picture in my mind this place called ‘South Viet Nam’. I really was surprised to see such a ‘rich-looking’ place that at the same time was so utterly poor.8
National Serviceman Bill Kromwyk (pronounced ‘Kromway’) went to war in 1969 as an infantryman. He recalled how he felt when he was leaving South Viet Nam on a ‘Freedom Bird’ out of Tan Son Nhut after 12 months on active service:
I was happy, I was glad to get out of the place. I felt I had had enough . . . Yes, [we were] just wasting our time and blokes were losing their arms and legs for nothing. Why do that? And we were causing so much upheaval in the country.9
Bill thought the collapse of South Viet Nam was inevitable and ‘felt awful but not surprised’. He reflected on the position of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) and the civilian populace who had supported the South Vietnamese governments:
I thought, well those poor bastards now. But I knew they didn’t have the stamina to hold out. I just had that feeling; the North was more committed . . . They would still be fighting today, if the Yanks hadn’t pulled out and [the war] kept on going. They [the North] were never going to give up.10
Bill Kromwyk went back to Viet Nam in 2001 with a couple of close mates with whom he had served during the war, as he says, ‘to see how the place looked after 30 years. What was it like there? Has much changed? And I guess we just wanted to go back to our old stamping grounds if you like.’ This was a case of these blokes ‘doing their own thing’, although some very handy in-country contacts helped make their trip easier to arrange. Bill added:
We did our own individual visas through the travel agent and that went fairly smoothly. We decided we would start off in Hanoi and work our way south and exit from Ho Chi Minh City, and that is the way we did it. We went from Brisbane straight to Hanoi direct on Thai Airways— straight in—whack!11
Peter Rogers was a second lieutenant pilot with 161 Recce Flight and saw out a tour of duty unscathed in 1969. He spent the bulk of his tour hovering over the lush green countryside trying to locate the enemy and occasionally getting shot at. When he left South Viet Nam he felt good:
I felt terrific; I was going home to a wife and a brand-new kid who was born during our tour. I was impressed with Qantas Airways who brought us home. Once we had got airborne they brought around ice cold bottles of full-cream milk. And everybody loved it because of the awful taste of that long-life stuff we used to have.12
When asked how he thought his tour of duty had gone Peter replied, ‘Pretty good, yep. I had gone there for a purpose and it was the highlight of my Army career.’ Like many young officers his tour carried with it a large amount of responsibility—and as a pilot it was even greater as decisions were based on information supplied by the Recce Flight. Peter Rogers was in Paris on holiday when he saw a newspaper shouting the news that the Communists had finally taken Saigon. He saw the banner headline and said, ‘It really punched me in the guts. But we could see it coming from a long way off.’ Peter returned to South Viet Nam in 2001 and 2003. On his first visit his wife of 40 years accompanied him; as Peter said, ‘I wanted to show Suzie what it was like and I wanted to see the place again and see how it had changed.’ Like Bill Kromwyk, Peter and Suzie Rogers organised their own trip:
At the hotel we were staying at in Ho Chi Minh City we arranged for a car and driver for two days, and we stayed overnight in Vung Tau. The driver came along as an interpreter. It was great.13
But for his second trip back in 2003, Peter went on a 35-day trip with a tour group from the Sunshine Coast Vietnam Veterans Association. Peter described their marathon adventure:
We started off in Hanoi, went down to Ha Long Bay, had an overnight on the boat, back to Hanoi and then went up to Sapa and visited the Nung tribes people; that was interesting. They have a totally different culture and I thought they were quite Mongolian, and I was very upset to learn that the Vietnamese government keeps them on the outer.14
A tour of that magnitude would normally be very expensive, but one of the veterans owned a tour company and was able to offset some overheads, as Peter explained:
The big thing about that trip was that we had our own bus and we worked our way down the whole way by road, and went to a lot of places the average person wouldn’t see. We stopped and ate at the local restaurants. It was great; we met a lot of people. Went back to Ho Chi Minh City, and then down to Phuoc Tuy, Vung Tau and Nui Dat, and some went out to Long Tan. Then back to Saigon and then down to the Delta. We also went out to the Cao Dai temple [near Bien Hoa].15
What made it special for Peter’s group also was that the men already had a strong bond from their Association, and many felt that the trip only strengthened those ties.
One man who showed a true sense of adventure on his trip back in September 2004 was former gunner and battery surveyor Ian Ryan. He arrived in South Viet Nam in early January 1968 as a reinforcement with 106 Battery, 4 Field Regiment. His unit supported 7 RAR, but from the end of April he worked with 102 Battery, 12 Field Regiment supporting 1 RAR. Looking back on Australia’s involvement in the war, he reflected: ‘In the end, I was saddened by the fact that there had been so much work put in there without any positive outcome, only just a whole lot of pain and misery for many.’
Ian gave the background to why he returned to Viet Nam:
I had been thinking of going back for some time, but it was after having been on the Kokoda Trail the year before that I became interested in returning to Viet Nam. I am involved in a church here in Melbourne and a group of us from Melbourne and Adelaide raised $12 500 to fit out a playroom and playground for a hospital that had been recently built in Tam Kay [70 kilometres south of Da Nang]. Before meeting up with them, I arrived on my own and spent three days touring around the old battlefields and to the main Task Force base at Nui Dat, and the logistical support base at Vung Tau. I was going to hire a car and an interpreter, but instead was able to engage the services of a taxi driver in Saigon to take me to all the places I wanted to go to for the princely sum of $US200. Cheap at half the price! He was hopeless outside of Saigon. The bugger had absolutely no sense of direction.16
Mental and physical preparation
Apart from being medically fit to travel and fully inoculated, it is also important that veterans are mentally prepared for their return to the battlefield. In particular, they need to be aware that things have changed fairly dramatically, and sights and places that have been etched into memory will no longer look the same. As part of his preparation tour guide Garry Adams contacts his tour group to set the scene for their visit:
I speak with them on the phone and give them a brief outline of what the place is like now. I think it is important to let them know that it is quite safe to move around and they are not going to have people jumping out of the bushes at them with guns and all that sort of thing.17
Garry also ensures that the group acclimatises before reaching the battlefield areas, both physically and mentally:
It sets their mind at rest . . . We always spend a few days in Saigon first to let them get back and to realise they are back in Viet Nam and it is not full of boogie men and they are not going to get shot at, and they are not going to get robbed—I mean they might get pick-pocketed if they are unlucky—but it eases them into it. And even if it is [only] two or three days it is always helpful to spend that time in Saigon first, or even in Hanoi if we are coming south. It just lets them get back into the swing of things, have a look at the city, and see how friendly the people are. Then we just take it from there step by step.18
But before even joining the group, the veteran must also be psychologically ready to tour. It is not in the best interests of the veteran or his family and friends if there are ‘issues’ that need to be resolved. As Garry Adams explains:
I have had women ring up on behalf of their husband and say ‘my husband needs to go back to Viet Nam because he has a lot of issues’. And I ask what issues does he have, and they say, ‘Oh, he beats me up and he beats the kids up and then runs out the back and hides behind the chook house, shouting out the VC are coming,’ and all this sort of business. And ‘he has been arrested for assaulting Asians down at the local supermarket’. I tell them, ‘I can assure you he is not coming on our tour.’19
Thankfully those cases are very few. Most tour members are ready and more than willing to visit Viet Nam and immerse themselves back into the country.
However, it must be realised that Viet Nam is still a Third World nation, not a first-class tourist destination. There are no facilities for the disabled, and there is a distinct lack of public amenities away from the larger cities. It can be rough on the ladies at times, and carrying your own supplies is always strongly recommended.
Thoughts on the former enemy
Most tour groups will run into former South Vietnamese soldiers and may find the experience unsettling, as the men are now treated somewhat unfairly by the current political regime. Occasionally tour groups will also come into contact with former Viet Cong (VC) or North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers, and this can be even more unsettling.
Men like Bob Hann had quite strong views on the former enemy. Bob returned to Viet Nam with me in 1993, and when asked if he ever felt sorry for them, replied, ‘At the time never. After the trip back in 1993 I saw some things differently.’20 Fellow infantryman Steve Campling expressed a similar sentiment when asked the same question: ‘Never! It was them or me!’ But that hasn’t deterred Steve and his wife from returning for a second trip to Viet Nam, which they undertook in late 2006. For Steve events of war are now ‘water under the bridge’.21
Derrill De Heer, who met and interviewed many prisoners and detainees during the war, had a different view of the former enemy:
After many interviews and seeing the effects of abductions, kidnappings, assassinations and the destroying of government facilities used to achieve military and political ends, I’m not sorry for their leaders. I feel sorry and have a lot of sympathy for those who had been coerced into supporting the VC. I felt sorry for the peasants who lost limbs to the mines the VC placed where the locals were injured.
I felt sorry for the people, as the VC [Communists] destroyed their society with fear, coercion, threats, kidnappings and assassinations, so they could build it in the way they wished.22
And that is one thing that may stick in the craw of some veterans: the manner in which the former enemy fought. It can be a sticking point to reconciling with the former foe— but only if the veteran allows it to be. I found it was easier to let bygones be bygones, and get on with living in the present. Many former enemy soldiers were only doing what they believed was right for their cause at the time.
Only rarely have I found that Australian servicemen actually ‘hated’ their enemy, and even then it was tempered with respect. Mortarman Garry Heskett viewed his former foe as ‘a very resourceful and battle-hardened opponent which I hated on one hand, but respected on the other, for his skills in confrontation had been tested and honed over many years’.23
Ian Ryan saw the enemy uncomfortably close on a few occasions, especially at Fire Support Base Harrison during the Tet Offensive of 1968. As a gunner and battery surveyor he saw first hand how hot the action got as the enemy assaulted the Australian position. His view of them was pragmatic:
At the time, I did not allow myself to think too much about them. Even when you saw their dead bodies, it had no impact on me whatsoever. The NVA I thought were very good soldiers and made the most of what little they had. I feel sure had they been better equipped and trained, who knows how much more damage they could have inflicted on the Allies. You have to remember that we were fighting on their terms and in areas that they knew well and they could easily blend in with the local population most of the time. I did, however, feel that they were expendable (‘cannon fodder’) by their leadership, and that how many of them would be killed in the process, it did not matter, as long as the end justified the means.24
Ian Ryan’s supposition about the attitude of the enemy leaders is supported by Intelligence Sergeant Derrill De Heer, who had a great deal of contact with captured Viet Cong soldiers, and many others who had surrendered under the Chieu Hoi (surrender) program:
Many were uneducated, illiterate poor peasants. Some had been abducted into the Viet Cong [units] and pressed into service. The VC cadres were very good at indoctrinating these people. The VC volunteers who came back under the ‘returnee’ program came back because they were tired, hungry, needed medical treatment or had lost the will to fight. After some time many of them didn’t believe their cadres anymore.25
Bill Kromwyk did his tour of duty as a machine-gunner in the Tracker Platoon on 6 RAR’s second tour of duty in 1969–70. His platoon had a ‘successful’ tour in that they accounted for a number of enemy and lost no-one from the Trackers. Bill offered these comments about the men he fought against:
I suppose I did feel sorry [for them] a couple of times after someone was shot. I remember one VC; his foot was only just hanging on with a bit of tendon. He was being lifted out by helicopter, and I can still see the look on his face. He was in absolute agony. I suppose you feel a little bit sorry there, but it could be you. I remember someone throwing me the wallet from a dead Viet Cong soldier and they said, ‘Here Bill, that’s yours.’ Inside there were a couple of family photos of his sisters and his mother, and you don’t feel good after that.26
Such moments of compassion were quite understandable, although Bill also added that after a while he became ‘a bit hardened with them actually. But I was there to do a job and I did it as best as I could.’27
Peter Rogers was attached to the Americans for a while on flying duties and was exposed to a different type of enemy, the NVA, that many in Phuoc Tuy Province didn’t get to see too often. Peter described how he felt about them:
When I was with the Americans we were up against the NVA almost exclusively. They were very well trained, well equipped and well disciplined. The local force—the VC— would pick up a rifle part-time and I don’t think they had much idea of what was going on. The thing that got me was that they were fairly dedicated—very dedicated—and you had to have a lot of respect for them.28
No hard feelings
It is now 32 years since the war ended. Over the last two decades I have interviewed literally hundreds of Australian Viet Nam veterans. The common thread seems to be that the war was a dreadful waste of time, resources and lives— on both sides. But the veterans also realise that one cannot undo what has been done.
Many former Viet Cong that I have also spoken to on my six trips back to the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam state that they hold no grudge—indeed, many respected the Australian soldiers because they ‘did not commit atrocities, took care of the Viet Cong wounded, buried their dead and tried to do something for the people of Phuoc Tuy Province’.29
In the fifteen years since I first returned to Viet Nam the attitude towards Australians who fought in the ‘American War’ has not changed: there is no animosity, anger or angst expressed towards the returning veteran. I have drunk beer and other potent substances (I am still not sure if it was avgas or alcohol) with our former enemy, and the stark realisation that we were all soldiers once—and young—is driven home most emphatically.
No-one has anything to be ashamed of, especially Australian veterans.