Encounters with two Vietnamese men shaped by war raise an uncomfortable question for Australia’s older, wealthier generation: what are our priorities now?
Growing up, the Vietnam War was on the black-and-white TV, largely incomprehensible to this 5-12-year old (1966, and Long Tan, through to 1973, Whitlam and withdrawal).
What wasn’t so hard for a kid to work out was the level of distrust, if not outright hatred in our happy, well-off suburb.
The Vietnamese were indistinguishable from the Chinese or Japanese or anyone else north of Darwin, it seemed. They were “the hordes” referred to in unprintable terms, both adjective and noun.
At the same time, another kid, only slightly older, was growing up next to the Australian base at Nui Dat. He didn’t need a TV to see what was happening, losing his elder brother in the celebrated Battle of Long Tan.
“What had the Australians been like?” I asked the now 69-year-old last week through tour guide Kim Colbie.
Good, inasmuch as their generosity with medicines and kindness to little kids.
Bad, in that civilians were killed if they happened to stray near the operational hub for the first Australian Task Force.
It didn’t seem appropriate to dig much further, given this was a whistlestop on a day-long tour but perhaps he would have agreed that those young Aussies were “caught between the sticky rice and the bean”. The expression is an old one, mentioned in Denise Chong’s The Girl In The Picture. The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph and the Vietnam War.
Families in the area could be with the southern government by day as its troops moved through villages and, by night, service (by choice or not) the Viet Cong guerrillas who knocked on doors whispering demands for sustenance for themselves or first aid for their wounded.
A couple of days later, again through the agency of our guide Kim, we met a Mekong delta farmer born in the same year as me.
When my biggest challenge was adapting to boarding school for Year 11 in 1977, he was signing up for the Vietnamese military to fight the murderous Khmer Rouge, then trying to attack Vietnam, which had just seen off the French and Americans over 30 years of resistance wars.
“That must have been tough for a teenager?” I ventured through Kim.
My interlocutor quickly presented a commemorative tray, presented it seemed during the recent 50th anniversary celebrations of reunification.
It featured the farmer in full uniform amidst the omnipresent banners and propaganda of the government, all set against a background of Hanoi’s imposing Military Museum.
He was clearly very proud of his service all those years ago.
So, had the child soldier been well-treated by his government as a veteran?
He answered in the negative, though without any apparent bitterness, save for the rankle of having to fork out 100,000 dong ($A5.50) for the tray. Not much? That’s about 4-5 per cent of average weekly male income in Vietnam. In Australia, that percentage would work out to be a bit over $100, for a souvenir of sideshow-alley tinniness, but of infinite personal value to the farmer, and his family.
The two Vietnamese gentlemen were all grace, taking us into their homes and listening patiently to what may have been impertinent questions.
Later, under further questioning from us, Kim relayed with an ironic laugh that Vietnamese men don’t need superannuation because they work and then drop.
Full health is supposed to accompany them on average to only 63, a mark beaten by both my explainers but their overall life expectancy remains close to a decade less than mine.
The social pension in Vietnam begins at 75; in special circumstances at 70.
Life expectancy is 72.5.
Both men who spoke to me were obviously proud of their families and their self-sufficiency.
While they might not have received what they deserved materially for their sacrifices, they did not have to endure the indifference (at best) that the returned Australian combatants received. As Don Walker put it in Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh: “There were no V-Day heroes in 1973.”
As everyone knows, recognition was all too delayed and too slight, including for those in the Battle of Long Tan where the Australians were mightily outnumbered, but overcame, notwithstanding that it was the single costliest Australian engagement of the war (18 dead, 24 wounded).
Both sides lived through events most of my age cohort couldn’t imagine, the Aussies praised for their care of kids and the Vietnamese pride in family abundantly obvious still.
Why then, do so many in our cohort seem to think that the biggest issue of the times is if we might suffer a slight trim to our superannuation millions rather than have it go to just a little bit of assistance to help house and educate younger generations?
Andrew Fraser began his journalistic career in 1979 and has been practising criminal law since 2008.