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| Pic courtesy Marlowes Books |
In the process of completing my master's thesis I encountered this archive of videotaped interviews prepared in the early 2000s by the University of New South Wales.
The collection was commissioned through the Department of Veterans Affairs and is a diverse and exhaustive collection of personal military histories.
It is also a remarkable historical resource of information about Australian social and cultural life.
Anybody with any interest in military history will find it of enormous value in understanding the political and cultural history of the time, as the men and women interviewed were encouraged to describe the context of the era, and their place in it.
What fascinated me were the interviews with people who had served in Vietnam across a range of units and corps. Almost to a man (or woman - as there were a few nurses and one physiotherapist interviewed), they described the disillusionment they felt when they compared what they had been told before disembarking with what they encountered in country.
Also consistent within the hundreds of interviews were the reports of the consequences of service on participants for the decades that followed. There was a clear pattern. Initially, on return to Australia, most simply put the experience behind them, and in most cases were happy not to admit their veteran status.
As time went on, many found that they succumbed to a range of problems, which in many cases meant that they were no longer able to function well enough to live productively.
The temptation to continue with research, advancing to a Ph D proposal is strong. This time, I'd like to examine the stories of Nashos who remained in Australia for the duration of their service.
These soldiers were indeed the men Australia forgot.
