In summary:

SERVICE	CONTINGENT	KIA	WIA
Royal Australian Navy	12,503	8	20
Royal Australian Army	41,592	498	2348
Royal Australian Air Force	4,674	14	30
Civilian Organisations	1,850	7	N/A

The figures above include: 513 women - 76 Army, 106 Air Force, 331 Civilian;
17,424 Army National Servicemen; and, 6 Missing In Action are included in the KIA list.

What the numbers above do not reflect is the fact that the Navy personnel included boys of between 16 and 17 years of age, who went into the war zone of Vietnam on Australian ships. At a time when the prescribed age for overseas service was 19 years old. Nor do they reflect on the National Servicemen, firstly forced into the Army by an Act of Parliament, then secondly, for the majority, forced to go to war in Vietnam. This, in direct conflict with claims that all National Servicemen volunteered for service in Vietnam. The fact was that in nearly all instances, at some point in training, either at Basic, or Corp Training, recruits were asked in groups, 'if anyone present objects to going to Vietnam see me after Parade.' So, of course, if you could not find anyone after parade, or, you did not want to be seen to be letting the side down, it was assumed your non-objection meant you volunteered.

What the Vietnam War, with all its horrors, did to the mind, and body, of the young men who went there, not withstanding those who were wounded in action, nor forgetting the ravishes of Agent Orange on them and their children, is the topic of this page. The aftermath of the Vietnam War has left a legacy that must be told.

The Vietnam Veteran arrived home to an indifferent public. Battalions marched proudly on returning from Vietnam, only to have red paint and rotting fruit thrown at them. Veteran communities, such as the RSL, shunned them saying it was not a war, only a policing action. More and more, those returning from Vietnam felt alienated by a society that saw them as a losing army. The fact that Australians never lost a single battle in Vietnam never seemed to reach the print and television media.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs, (DVA), also seemed to be making it difficult for Vietnam Veterans to obtain rightful disabilities for injuries caused in Vietnam accepted under the Veterans Entitlement Act. Vietnam Veterans saw a need to form their own association in order to fight for their rights, because no one else was helping them. By the late 1970's the Vietnam Veterans Association had formed, and was taking the DVA to task over suspected use of chemicals used in Vietnam affecting the Veterans and their children.

In October 1987, with the Sydney Vietnam Veterans' "Welcome Home Parade", the public was changing its mind about the Vietnam War, and the Australians who went there. Not so the DVA. The governments of the day seemed to be in cohusion with the DVA, and several attempts were made to change the Veterans Entitlement Act to make it harder for sick Vietnam Veterans to have their claims accepted. The RSL seemed to be agreeing with the amendments made by DVA.

The issue of Agent Orange - so called because the drums of herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, and their by-product dioxin TCDD, had a distinctive orange band around the drum - gathered momentum until, finally, there was a Royal Commission into the effects of herbicides on soldiers in Vietnam, and their off-spring. The findings of the Royal Commission did not agree with the Vietnam Veterans claims. However, because of its flawed content the findings were later lambasted by internationally reknown scientists.

It might do well to report that US Defence Department documents show that hundreds of millions of gallons of herbicides had been sprayed over Phuoc Tuy Province, where Australian troops had served, continuously from 1965 to 1968. Australians who served in Vietnam had complained of skin disorders, continuous headaches, personality disorders, but more frightening, the number of their children being born with abnormalities far higher than that of the general populations abnormality rates. The Army told parliament that no chemicals were sprayed after 1970, but their own records showed that spraying still being carried out in July 1971.

It is history now that Vietnam Veterans, and their off-spring, have proven to be affected by the use of herbicides in Vietnam. The DVA and Governments own reporting of the findings of the health study of Vietnam Veterans showed that, among other things, the incidents of Leukemia and colon cancers in Veterans was 3 times above the non-veteran community. However, even more alarmingly, the children of Vietnam Veterans had incidents of Spina bifida 10 times above the expected rate, and all other congenital abnormalities, like Cleft palate were also well above normal averages of the general population.

Some thirty years after our last veterans returned from Vietnam, DVA has now accepted that some abnormalities in our children was caused by Agent Orange. The findings of the Evatt Royal Commission lay in ruin. Its lies and hidden agendas confined to the waste bins of time. Its injustice never forgotten by Vietnam Veterans.

Let's now look at typical Vietnam Veterans, and find the reasons why so many appear to be worse off then veterans of other wars. The point about the Vietnam War being so different from all other wars cannot be stressed enough. In all other wars that Australia was invovled in there were clear objectives. The enemy was holding ground that Australian troops attacked, trying to dislodge the enemy and reclaim the ground for its rightful owners, or pushing back invaders who were bent on attacking Australia itself.

The troops of these wars had a battle front, a point of reference to be attacked, and a clearly defined enemy to attack. There were rear sections where men could be held in reserve, and sent to relieve those at the front. The men at the front could be replaced and returned to the relative safety of these rear echolons. Statistics have shown that infantry soldiers who fought in any theatre during the Second World War saw an average of up to a total of 60 days, (continuous), under combat-like conditions, in a 12 month period.

As you may have read elsewhere on this site, Australian Infantry in Vietnam were fighting an enemy that required no ground to be held. The enemy in Vietnam were fighting an ideological battle to join South Vietnam with North Vietnam under one Socialist Government. The type of warfare they chose was one of attack and disperse, trying to kill, wound or capture as many allied soldiers as they could. A war in which they hoped to wear down resistance until South Vietnam, and its Allies, were no longer prepared to keep up the fight.

Australian troops in Vietnam then, had no definitive battle front. The enemy were all around them, within villages, hidden in underground tunnel complexes, or training in areas where the jungle was so dense that their bunkers remained hidden until an unwary patrol stumbled onto its location. On patrol, Australian troops were always hyperalert, looking for tell-tale signs of the enemy. All over Phuoc Tuy Province was enemy territory, and Australians endured the stress daily. The same study that provided the statistics for the World War Two Diggers above, show that Infantrymen in Vietnam suffered, on a comparable scale, 300+ days of (continuous) combat-like conditions, in a 12 month period.

The training of Australian Army soldiers was intensive from the outset. 10 weeks of 'Basic Skills' Training, honed and drummed into peak of physical condition while brainwashed into working as a member of a team. All individuality was unacceptable. Everyone passed this or that drill, or weapons training or bush skill together, or you repeated the task until the whole unit could do that task together, everyone part of a team. If you failed, the team failed.

At the end of Basic Training recruits became Privates and were then sent for more training, this time to an Army Corp, where you completed further training for that particular Corp. For the Regular (Enlisted) soldier this was usually the Corp of his choice. For the National Serviceman it was sometimes his choice of Corp, but most likely a Corp that needed troops as formulated by the Directorate of Manning at Army HQ in Canberra. As the need for more infantry troops in Vietnam grew, so did the number of National Servicemen who were sent to Infantry Training Centres.

Infantry Corp Training was another 10 week intensive exercise, usually starting within a week of completing Basic Training, and further honed weapons skills, patrol technigues, and logistical manouvreing in company-like strength. Again, everything was learned as a team. Night harbours and ambushes were learned over and over. Tactical response to being ambushed, or assualt on defended positions were tested over and over. Weapons training on all an Infantry Platoons weaponry was repeated, with each man learning and firing each type of weapon until proficiency skills were satisfactory.

The Infantry Training was done at two levels, but each as equal as the other. One section were those posted to, and completing their infantry training with an Ifantry battalion, the other section being those yet to be posted. However, whichever was completed, it had the same end result. A soldier, super fit, hyperalert, ready to take on any adversary. The mix of Regular Soldier and National Serviceman in battalions was never to be less than a 55/45 percent ratio, and at first the 'REG' v 'NASHO' scenario was rife, until each learned that the other was as good as each other, in the battle field.

The next step in training was dependent upon whether your unit, battalion, or whether as an individual, had been selected for service in Vietnam. If so, then the next period of training was a 3 week intensive course of Counter-Guerrila and Jungle Warfare Training at the Jungle Training Centre, Canungra, in Queensland. Here, you learned the skills that were meant to keep you alive in Vietnam. More over, the skills and many obstacle courses were designed to ensure that everyone got through each section together, or it was repeated until you did it together, as a team. Obeying each order instinctively, all together in the same instance, and without question, seemed like basic training all over again. It was the final phase of a brainwashing that was supposed to keep a unit together, acting as one no matter what the condition, or whatever stress was placed upon a soldier, and reacting to the given order immediately.

At every phase of training, almost every day of those 23 weeks, a soldier is taught, screamed at, and bullied into submission, and brainwashed with a common anecdote. That is, you are being trained to kill or wound an enemy, to put him out of action so that he cannot fight against you or your mates again. The enemy never becomes a person, just a target. The enemy is given derogatory names, and is never allowed to be referred to anything material. The enemy is less than human, even less than the animal world. There is no hate because he is not an individual, and the enemy becomes an objective for your team to overcome.

Once in Vietnam, the infantry soldier is immediately under threat. The tactical warfare is dicussed elsewhere on this site (HERE), and the steep learning curb is enforced by soldiers with in-country experience. The 'Standing Order' is handed out, and read almost to the words; " Your (Unit) role is to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground and to repel attack by night and day, regardless of season, weather, or terrain". During the next 12 months the soldier is confronted with all the horrors that a war produces. Mates killed in every way possible; Shot, bombed, mined, accidently killed, or the victim of a booby-trap. The enemy similarly slaughtered. He witnesses scenes of destruction that sees mutilated body parts, and maybe is wounded superficially while attacking an enemy bunker system. Somehow, and with the grace of god, if he is lucky he returns to Australia physically unscathed.

Here, the plight of the Vietnam Veteran takes two directions. The infantry soldier who stayed within a unit through the war, and returned with that unit, could unwind with his mates, usually on a voyage aboard HMAS Sydney, all the way to that battalion's headquarters in Australia. However, for some and particularly the National Serviceman whose time in Vietnam was curtailed by his completion of his 2 year conscription period, soldiers were returned to Australia on 48 hour flights direct to their home state capital city. Often with a 2 week leave, and told to just go home and forget the war, these soldiers were then sent to miscellaneous units close to their home addresses for the processing of their discharges. Sometimes, they never saw the mates they served with for several months or years. Too often, the discharge procedures failed to provide any psychological assessment, and any physical examination was just rubber stamped in order to get the 'victim' processed and off Army payrolls as quickly as possible.

It must be remembered that the selection of National Servicemen was unigue during the Vietnam War years. Those so selected were the elite of twenty rear olds throughout Australia. National Service selection meant that the Army could pick from a pool of 800,000 men between 1964 and 1972. They chose the fittest who passed 2 exhaustive and clinically meticulous physical examinations. Of those passing these tests, they selected only those that proved satisfactory after psychological assessment. During basic training further assessments of character and vocational aptitude analysis was carried out. The proof is borne out by the fact that of 800,000 men, some 60,000 were called up, and of these less than one third saw service in Vietnam.

Now these same men, the cream of their generation, are inflicted with diseases of both mind and body that are far above the averages for the same diseases in the rest of the population. That is, Vietnam Veterans are worse off both physically, and mentally, than those civilians of the same age who failed to be selected for National Service. Health sudies have shown that to be the case every time such studies are undertaken. However, if its considered that Vietnam Veterans were the cream of the crop, and now have a less than average chance of reaching 70 years of age, it is obvious then that but for their service in Vietnam they would have a much higher likelihood of reaching 80 than the rest of the community.

Yet the DVA seem begrudgingly obliged to accept that Vietnam Veterans deserve any compensation for their service to their country. Even going to great lengths to deny that compensation by manipulation of the Veterans Entitlement Act to suit their own agendas. Governments have tried to sneak through legislation that would further impede the veterans right to access due recourse through the repatriation system. It is no wonder then that Vietnam Veteran Organisations around the country seem paranoid at their dealings with DVA. Of all cases, where the determining officer of DVA rejects a veterans claim, 93 percent are won on appeal at theVeterans Review Board. So one is entitled to ask why the determinations are, so often, so wrong in the first place.

For most it is like continuing a war that will not go away. National Servicemen trained to perfection to hunt and kill, then thrown back into civilian life without being retrained, or debriefed, found that civilians did not measure up to the qualities they had learned as part of a team. Some found that routine mechanical application of going to work, to complete mundane tasks every day, was difficult. Many have a history of changing jobs repeatedly, citing the inability to accept a task, their work colleagues, or questioning instruction. Many veterans turned to drinking heavily to overcome situations at home and work, or to simply help them sleep without being awakened by nightmares about the war.

Quite suddenly, and at around 45 to 50 years of age, the veteran will hit a brick wall. His world will appear to be falling in around him. This is a time when the exuberance of youth will desert him, and the veteran's subconcious efforts to block out the war and get on with life can no longer be tolerated. Something will trigger a reaction, or a warning from a close family member or friend, will hit home. The veteran will finally admit that he needs help, and that in all probability his problems began all those years ago in Vietnam.

Government knows that when it sends its armies off to war that a percentage will be killed, that a further percentage will return with dilapitating injury, and that others will return with psychological disorders. They also know that some of the returnees will pursue to be compensated for their war-caused disabilities. The Veterans Entitlement Act was passed by legislation of Parliament to meet that purpose. It clearly defines that a government, sending troops into battle, must be prepared to reward those who serve their country, (and return worse off because of that action), and they should be compensated.

When a govenment and the departments responsible to carry out that legislation fail to act in the best interests of the people it sent away to fight for Australia, it must be fought with the same vigorous energy expended in battle by the veterans.