Well Done Barry

Lib and I, and G and R, tripped to Wangaratta on the weekend (13/14Feb-- I'm behind in my blogging, this sat as a draft for a week or more) to visit Molly. At 91 Molly is well but frail, and has various health issues that make her life awkward. Reduced mobility means it takes her so long to do things and of course there are many things she can't do. She relies on home help which comes twice a day, morning and afternoon. We took up an oxtail stew that Lib cooked during last week.

It was a nice little rest. I finished the book I'd been reading, 'Well Done Those Men' by Barry Heard. It's the memoirs of a Vietnam veteran who suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It details his experiences before his conscription, during training, in Vietnam, and then on his return to Australia, continuing through his studies and career as a teacher and his breakdown and recovery. I found his story riveting and I feel compelled to write to him, as follows.

Dear Barry,
                  I have just completed your book 'Well Done Those Men', and I congratulate you for your courage. It's an amazing and alarming story, well told. I too was conscripted, fortunately not till September 1972. I didn't go to to Vietnam; Australia had withdrawn most of the troops by then and I have never suffered PTSD, but your graphic detail roused me, as does your honesty.
                  Despite having about five years to get used to the possibility, and many months to the reality, I was shit scared when I fronted up to Swan St for the bus trip to Puckapunyal. I resolved to meet every challenge as best I could, but it was a strange feeling, one of losing control of my destiny from that point. I had been a student at Caulfield Tech doing business studies when the ballot took place, I could've had it deferred, but frankly the army at that point looked more exciting than accountancy.
                 The anti war protests and moratorium marches had been building to a massive scale. I sided with the establishment. Early in 1971, the 'love of my life' up to that point, gave me the flick for a long haired, bearded, caftan clad older bloke at Melbourne Uni, where she went after completing school. It was gut wrenching. I had no time for the protests and the hippy movement in general and spent much of my spare time away in the bush with a mate or two camping and fishing. A friend, Ian, had been to Vietnam, finishing his national service in 1971. Three years older than me, he went through school with my brother, as I did with his. He was a keen hunter and fisherman, we often camped and fished in the Victorian highlands. On his return, that's all he wanted to do. He left the railways, where he'd worked as a fireman on the trains pre army, also with my brother. If I couldn't go bush with him he'd go by himself for days at a time.
                As 1972 came and my number came up, I quit the business studies and had some months spare. Ian and I did a trip to the Flinder's Ranges in January 1972. It wet our appetite so we took off next to Alice Springs and Darwin. Before my whereabouts became the business of the army that September, I spent a lot of time with Ian which was somehow a comfort to my anxiety, as he'd already done it. Not that he talked about it much, and he said little about Vietnam. He didn't really show 'readjustment blues', other than lengthy morose, silent periods, and the odd angry outburst. One I recall when a country cop in Sth. Australia pulled up his car and wanted to look in the boot. When he found Ian's two rifles, what should have been a routine roadside check became a heated incident back at the police station while the cop asked questions and did his checking. Ian seethed with indignity, his anger obvious, and he worried me with the lack of respect he showed. The policeman to his credit seemed to read the situation and we ultimately left without further incident or impediment. Weeks later a fine from the SA Police arrived at Ian's house for driving a car with "excessive exhaust noise and emitting sparks." He flared and seethed.
                Another time I foolishly shot at a rabbit quite close to the camp after I'd been off on a walk, and he didn't know I'd come back. He was totally enraged. Looking back I realize that both these incidents concerned firearms and he was ultra sensitive. Fortunately he wasn't a heavy drinker. Before Vietnam he was a light drinker, afterward he hardly touched it, saying he drank that much beer in Vietnam that he now had no interest.
               The NCO instructors when I was at 2RTB were regulars and had all been to Vietnam, some perhaps more than one tour. To a man they seemed to have an alcohol problem, you never knew when one or more would turn up in the evening, drunk and nasty. The 'Parade 8' call would come and we'd line up in front of the hut and cop abuse. 'Shellshock' Murphy was the worst. We loathed and dreaded the sight of him. The others were bad but Murphy worked himself almost to a frenzy, spraying saliva from his purple face, his blood vessels and eyes bulging, telling us we weren't fit to sleep in the same beds as those that came before us, some of whom bled and died in some stinking muddy ditch in the stinking bloody jungle. They loathed us, we felt, and the society that had shunned, protested, marched, yelled abuse, and thrown paint. In retrospect I think they were all close to 'the edge' and it was only their 'togetherness' that prevented them going over. Perhaps some did later.
             Our march out parade at 2RTB was the same day as the 1972 Federal Election. I couldn't vote, the voting age was 21 then. It was an uncertain time. We didn't know whether we'd all be discharged or what if Labour got in. After a couple of weeks of sitting around or being taken out to the bush in trucks and having to find our way back, we learned we could leave if we liked or at any time before term by now reduced to eighteen months was up. If we left early we'd get the benefits the previous nashos got after they completed their term, eg training schemes, and if we stayed on the incentive was that we'd be eligible for the same perks as nashos that had served OS, eg cheap home loan. This annoyed the regular soldiers. I decided to stay on and finish my term. I went to Corps training, the Service (Transport) Corps for a short time, till some incident upset me, and with no compulsion to stay it all seemed a bit pointless. Morale in the army seemed to deteriorate badly after the election. My platoon sergeant called me an effing weak prick when I told him I was off. I felt like a jib, but I had a life to get on with.
             Ian had done a bricklaying course which ran for a few months with the intention of working with his uncle in Canberra. He finished the course and built a path and a wall at our new 'farm' but didn't set up as a bricklayer. He had a suspect back from falling off a truck in Vietnam. He came up to our farm everyday for months on end and helped planting trees and starting the garden. I'd signed up to do a beekeeping course at Qld Ag College in 1974, but he had no plans or ambition, and just hung around every day. In the end we got stuck into him a bit, his aimlessness was starting to irritate. One day, he said he was going to WA. His brother who went through school with me, was working for a plumber mate at Kunanurra. I felt guilty after he left.
            He wrote the odd letter, but we didn't see him for a number of years. Then he started appearing out of nowhere without any notice, every couple of years or so, when he came to see his mum in Melbourne. He'd want to see the garden he'd helped plant at our farm. That had given him a love of trees and planting them. He travelled constantly through Australia and Asia with long hair and a beard like a hippy. He went where the fancy took him if he could afford to get there. One time he turned up in a beat up old Toyota jeep with WA plates, a lot of rust, but no current rego. I told him he was foolish, he'd get picked up by the cops for sure. He said, "I don't care, what can they do?" I said they'd put a canary on his car and fine him and it'd cost him heaps. He said that didn't worry him. He'd just leave the car there and piss off back to WA, which is exactly what happened. Another time I questioned the wisdom of his lifestyle, suggesting he buy a house, with thought for the long term. We'd discuss things like that. He said to own a house was the last thing he'd want because, "Then they can find me".
             So your story rang a lot of bells for me. Like you, I married a nurse. Her family had, and still has, a holiday house at Lakes Entrance. I'm not much of a golfer but I've played a few rounds at Swift's Creek and was comfortable there while I'm not at other courses. I distrust authority and bureaucracy. Over time I've changed my view of the Vietnam conflict. We never should have been there, is my opinion now. It appalls me to think of the 500 plus Australians who died and the thousands wounded bodily and psychologically. Also the huge numbers of Americans and Vietnamese. I hate violence, racism, and injustice.
            Ian lives in Canada now, after marrying a Canadian lady he met on his travels. They have two sons, one about twenty and the other ten. He's on Vancouver Island for twelve months where his wife is doing a naturopathy course, but they have a house in Whitehorse in the Yukon where they live usually, and where the winters are about 6 months long. He still loves hunting and fishing, but now it's moose and salmon. He rings every Christmas and other odd times. The last time I saw him was March 2008. He came to Australia so his younger son could meet his mother who was turning 90. It was minus 40C when he left Whitehorse and 40 above here when he arrived and took his son camping up around the Big River arm of Eildon, where we used to go.
            Thanks again for the book. It's the best account and explanation I have read about something I have pondered about over time. There has been too much silence over the decades and I'm sure your book has helped soothe many who served in Vietnam. I wish you and your old army mates the very best of everything for the future. I'd send your book to my friend Ian but I have to return it, as I borrowed it. I'll keep my eyes peeled for one.

Carey Williams

I'll try to transfer the above letter to 'Word' and print it out and send it to Barry via the publisher. I'd recommend Barry's book. I hope Ian doesn't mind me writing about him in my blog, should he read it. Too bad if you do mate! As I said I'll send you the book if I can find one.

( Since I started the draft saying Molly is well, she has had bleeding from the bowel and has been in hospital and has had a couple of transfusions. She's being discharged tomorrow and Lib is going to Wang in the morning for a few days.)