ANZAC DAY 2007

For yet another year I did not march on Anzac Day. It’s the medals. They don’t match any of my outfits. Just kidding. I have been a few times. The first was the first Anzac Day after I came home from Vietnam. That would have been 1971. I didn’t go again for a long time for at least two reasons. The first was that at the end of the march at the moment of dismissal, the platoon of Vietnam Vets that I was in executed the dismissal with perfect precision, and I had a very strong nostalgic feeling – which presented me with a real dilemma. Pursue this nostalgia and get trapped living in the past or reject it and keep moving forward. I chose the latter. The second reason was that I found it really difficult to talk to people at the RSL that day. The conversation was all about being in Nam – as though we were still there. I’d had a few of these conversations with other veterans and found them very disturbing. The same has happened each time I have gone to the RSL on Anzac Day. Of course that is what you should expect the talk of the day to be about. But it’s not for me. On one such occasion a young soldier was cosying up to me as though I was some sort of hero. Tell me some warie stories Sir – how many gooks didya kill? That sort of thing. I told him that I was a clerk in the safest part of South Vietnam and he went and found himself a real man. I’m sorry if that sounds cynical. I have the highest regard for serving personnel. But I just can’t talk that sort of talk. The same thing happened when I went to the Vietnam Vets Welcome Home Parade in Sydney in 1987. It took me a while to find my old unit (17 Construction Squadron, RAE) but when I did the vortex effect was instantaneous. Maaaaaaaaate. Cuddle cuddle. Even the odd kiss on the cheek. And Oh mate, that night you got pissed on vodka and passed out on the parade ground and didn’t turn up to work the next day … And Oh mate, remember the night we all went to the (I’ve forgotten the word for brothel) and it was your first time and you couldn’t….. and Sparkie tried to perve on Clarkie and got clobbered by the fan when he tried to look over the wall…. and … and… Yes it was nice that people remembered (regrettably, all that I remembered about most of them was doing their pay books) but I wanted to talk about more than that, because the world had moved on and as a society we came to realise that being there had been a colossal mistake. So when the back slapping of such conversations ends and people start brooding over the nasty aspects of the experience, I would like to suggest that it wasn’t just us who were badly done by. What about the boys who went to gaol for two years because they refused to be conscripted for a war that they saw then as unjust and we later came to see as wrong? Not to mention the “collateral damage” to the civilian populations of both North and South Vietnam – in the case of the latter, a population in which at least half the people did not want the government we were propping up. No of course you can’t talk about THAT at such times. But that IS what I want to talk about, so the wise thing to do is not to go. All the same, one very significant reconnection did occur on that occasion, with a bloke called Ray Spurling. We had a bit of a rocky relationship in country (hey, there’s a bit of jargon for ya) but he reminded me of a kindness I apparently showed him when we ran into each other after he returned. Apparently I offered him a job (on my farm) and he didn’t show up. He was sooooooo apologetic. I was really moved by that, the more so because I had absolutely no recollection of any of it. He’s one person I’d really like to catch up with again – to thank him, because I know that I did not realise the significance of the event at the time. So the day did have a few real gut wrenches, but by the time headed off to my motel, I was promising myself: Never again. Well, as it happened, I did go again. And had the same experience of being transported back to a world that is frozen in time. All I can say is Look fellas, it’s not you. It’s me. And that’s the truth – although I don’t rule out the possibility of getting over what ever it is that I don’t like about living in the past. Perhaps when it is long enough ago and I can be certain that THAT is not me now, I will be able to go back and enjoy the memory of the most astounding year of my life: 23 July 1969 to 23 July 1970.