by Gary McKay
Pilgrimages to Viet Nam usually take a similar form. Most veterans are keen to see their former areas of operations, and most visits begin in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon, as veterans still refer to the former capital of South Viet Nam). On landing at Tan Son Nhut airport, the busiest airfield in the world during the war, many veterans are surprised to see so few relics of the war. This is to be a common theme of their visit. In Ho Chi Minh City, they visit various sites including the former Presidential Palace (now the Reunification Palace), and the markets of Cholon. Most tour groups then head into the former Australian area of operations, basing themselves in the coastal town of Vung Tau, formerly the location of the Australian logistics support base. Visits out of Vung Tau take in the towns of Ba Ria and Hoa Long, the Long Hai Hills—still a heavily mined and dangerous place—and, of course, the Long Tan Memorial Cross.9
This book looks at the sites that most Australian veterans will want to visit, including the base at Nui Dat, the logistic support base and town in Vung Tau, the Horseshoe feature, the Long Tan Cross and areas such as the Long Hais, the Hat Dich area and towns like Binh Ba, Xuyen Moc and Ba Ria. The 5 RAR first tour veterans who made a pilgrimage in 2005 tailored their tour to take in specific locations that were important to them such as their lines in Nui Dat, the Long Hai Hills, the village of An Nhut and Long Son Island. For many veterans, simply driving the major arterials gives them the memory freshener they have been craving.
For a soldier, sailor or airman, returning to a battlefield is a very personal confrontation. War is one of the most life-changing events an individual could ever experience, and it shapes their personality, their behaviour and the way they live their lives. For many who have been involved in war—and not just the combatants—it is a time when they have their morals, beliefs and ideologies seriously challenged. Regardless of who they are, their family background and their education and social status, war affects them all—albeit to varying degrees.
As a veteran who has returned to my own battlefield many times, I decided the best way to write this book was to lay out all the facts and let veterans decide for themselves whether and how to undertake their own pilgrimage. This book concentrates on the areas in Viet Nam where most Australian forces served, Phuoc Tuy Province (now called Ba Ria–Vung Tau Province). To adequately cover the regions where the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) served would take another volume. For those readers wishing to gain a better idea I recommend the book The Men Who Persevered.10
For many Viet Nam War veterans the thought—and the practicalities—of going back where they served as soldiers, sailors and airmen is fraught with problems. For some it is the fact that they are now in their sixties and their health is beginning to falter, or even downright fail. For others it is not so much a physical or medical issue that concerns them but the thought of unlocking potential demons from the recesses of their mind.
I found myself in a similar situation back in 1993 when I was researching a book called Delta Four—Australian Riflemen in Vietnam.11 I wanted to get a better grasp of the province in which I had fought, and also to interview the former enemy to discover their impressions and recollections of fighting against the Australians. I was distinctly nervous about the idea, especially as I was still serving in the Australian Regular Army as a lieutenant colonel. My fears were realised when it was discovered during my three-week visit that our tour party was being ‘shadowed’ as we travelled around Ho Chi Minh City, Vung Tau and around the old Phuoc Tuy Province. The ‘agents’ tracking our group were far from covert and were in fact captured on home video.
Thankfully that xenophobic approach to serving Australian Defence Force members has changed somewhat with the more ‘open door’ policy taken by the Vietnamese government, although serving personnel do attract some special attention at Customs and Immigration on arrival at Tan Son Nhut airport even today. However, the veteran who has no ties to today’s military has nothing to worry about, and will pass through the airport much like the thousands of other foreign tourists flocking to the country every other day.
For veterans who were physically or emotionally scarred during their tour of duty, it is easy to understand any reluctance to revisit the country in which they were injured. The manner in which veterans recall the past can also have a bearing on how they approach the idea of returning to the war zone. For some it will simply be too painful to even contemplate. Others will want to return out of curiosity, or perhaps take a holiday in Asia and combine it with a visit to their ‘old stamping ground’.
So when should one venture back? Most veterans are now in their late fifties or early sixties and consideration should be given to the extreme tropical conditions they will encounter. I asked Garry Adams, a veteran of some 40 tours, the best time of year to return and he replied:
I think the best time is from August to October. Other than that I would say February or March. You could get into April or May when it is good; it is very dry so you haven’t got to worry about wet weather or problems with getting into any of the places, but the heat tends to get to some people. Once you get here and get going it is okay, but initially it is very hot. Up in Hanoi you can get temperatures like 40 degrees [Celsius], and I have been here at Marble Mountain [Da Nang] when it has been 46 degrees [Celsius].12
Touring can be done with a group or individually, but as I hope to demonstrate by the end of this book, it is probably best done with someone accompanying the veteran, and for the first visit organised tour groups are probably the best way to go.
Not everyone who returns finds it a totally enjoyable experience, and a few even suffer flashbacks and post-tour problems—but in my experience, for the majority of veterans it is an experience they are glad they undertook. This book will not gloss over any difficulties that the veteran may encounter, but will try to present the situation in an unbiased and informative manner that will allow veterans to make a balanced decision on what avenues they wish to take.
Part I
THE VETERANS
Chapter 1
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
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 battlefie
lds.
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 compa
ny 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
