‘It was August 1966,’ said Grandad. ‘I was stationed at Nui Dat, like I told you.’
He picked up a pawn, thought better of it and replaced it on the board.
‘I was twenty-seven,’ he said. ‘An old man compared to some of the kids who were there. I’d volunteered, but others had been conscripted. Their birthdays came up in the lottery.’ He looked at me, saw confusion in my eyes. ‘The government ran a kind of lottery. Three hundred and sixty-five days went into a barrel. If your birthday was pulled out …’ He shrugged. ‘Happy blankety birthday.’
‘Why did you volunteer, Grandad?’ I asked.
‘The Old Lie,’ he replied. ‘Have you done Wilfred Owen in school yet?’ I shook my head. ‘Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. Latin for “It’s good and noble to die for your country”. That’s the Old Lie. And that’s what Owen turned into the most beautiful anti-war poetry.’
‘But why is it a lie? Isn’t it a good thing to fight for your country, for freedom …?’
Pop held up a hand.
‘I’m not going to argue with you on this, Rob,’ he said. ‘That’s a question you have to work out for yourself. I’m just telling you my experience. I saw many deaths.’ For a moment his eyes changed, as if focusing on a point in his past. ‘Many, many deaths. None of them were good. None of them were noble.’
His voice trailed off. I waited but the silence stretched.
‘You were stationed at Nui Dat,’ I prompted.
Grandad gave a small shudder and then he was back in the room with me. He smiled and moved his king’s knight. That looked like a mistake to me, but then he’d made moves before that seemed like mistakes and turned out to be no such thing. I tried to focus on the positions on the board.
‘We came under fire from the Viet Cong. You know who the Viet Cong were?’ Again, I shook my head. ‘They were communist soldiers who fought alongside the North Vietnamese army. Australian troops, along with soldiers from America and some allied nations like New Zealand, fought for South Vietnam against the north and the Viet Cong.’
‘Why?’
‘For the same reason all wars are fought. An idea,’ said Grandad. ‘In this case, the idea that communism was a bad, bad thing, that it was spreading across the world and would destroy the western world’s way of life. Basically, it was America’s war, but we got dragged in.’
Grandad shook his head. ‘Read about it, young Rob. I told you, you have to make up your own mind about things like communism versus capitalism. I thought I was telling you a story. Do you want to hear it or not? Because, trust me, I’m happy not to revisit this part of my life.’
I moved my bishop.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
‘We were ordered to track down the Viet Cong who’d fired on us. You have to understand this war was very different to other wars. For one thing, much of it was jungle warfare. The Viet Cong knew the jungle. It was their home. For us, it was alien and confusing. So we heard the shots, but we didn’t know where the enemy had gone. We left our compound, one hundred and eight of us, and went searching for them. We ended up in a place called Long Tan.’
He stopped again, reached for his queen’s rook. I saw his hands were shaking and I regretted putting pressure on him to talk. But I was too late. I think I knew that. For good or bad, this story was going to come out anyway.
‘The thing is,’ said Grandad. ‘We thought we were tracking the Viet Cong, but in reality, they’d been tracking us. One hundred and eight soldiers, young men not much older than you, Rob, not really … surrounded by an army that didn’t take prisoners. Trapped in a space no bigger than two football pitches. Surrounded.’
‘How many enemy soldiers were there, Grandad?’
‘Oh,’ he said. He moved his rook halfway down the board. ‘No one’s sure. But probably two and a half thousand. Two and a half thousand against one hundred and eight. What do you think about those odds?’
I couldn’t say anything.
‘We knew we were going to die,’ said Grandad. I’d never heard his voice so soft. ‘It was the strangest feeling.’