‘We don’t deserve to be spat on’: Vietnam vets march with pride 50 years on

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A commemorative march along Murray Bridge’s main street on Vietnam Veterans Day has marked the 50th anniversary of Australia’s withdrawal of troops from the war.

August 18 is the date when the Battle of Long Tan, one of the major conflicts in the Vietnam War, began in 1966.

For a long time, Australia’s involvement in the war divided the country, and many Australians who served in Vietnam returned to a hostile reception.

Yet the 50th-anniversary march and service in Murray Bridge were respectful, with many adults and children lining the streets to honour the returned servicemen, who wore their medals with dignity.

One of the key speakers at the service was RSL Care SA CEO Nathan Klinge, who spoke about how the Australian community had often treated the Vietnam veterans badly.

“A mate of mine was spat on as he got off the ship,” he said.

“They also spat on him at the rugby – a bloke who was sent home having his arm nearly severed from a bullet.”

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Mr Klinge thanked the Vietnam veterans, who he said had “changed the game” over the past 50 years in terms of how servicepeople were received back home.

“I served in the Iraq war, not a particularly popular war – we were searching for weapons of mass destruction that we didn’t find … not once did anyone have a go at me personally as a veteran for that war,” he said.

Father Neville Connell, who was a Citizen Military Forces chaplain in Vietnam in ’72 and ’73, also attended the service at the war memorial in Sturt Reserve.

After an RAAF flyover, Father Connell told Murray Bridge News that even other Australian war veterans didn’t initially respect the Vietnam vets.

“I know how some of the men felt and the sorts of things that were said to them by the World War II men: ‘that wasn’t a real war, boys’,” he said.

“So a lot of the men wouldn’t join the RSL because of the way they were treated.

“About 10 years later they were all coming to the Vietnam veterans and saying, ‘Would you like to join the RSL? We need leaders, and we’re all too old’.”

Murray Bridge resident and Vietnam veteran Anthony Pahl endured terrible treatment when he returned to Australia in 1969 after serving as a helicopter gunner in Vietnam.

“In October ‘69 was the opening of parliament in New South Wales, so we got guards of honour, we got all dressed up and got our rifles and our medals on, and marching into Martin Place, these protesters were there,” Mr Pahl said.

“They had water balloons full of urine and paper bags full of faeces and buckets of yellow paint, and we were pelted by these balloons and paper bags, and they went up behind us and painted a yellow stripe down our back.”

“And I was spat on a few times, but that killed me.”

Mr Pahl said that after the parade, it was only the servicemen’s discipline that made them keep marching.

“It was just as well we were disciplined because we had fixed bayonets and ... we could have used these bayonets on these people, but we didn’t even fight them,” he said.

Mr Pahl said that he and his fellow veterans were so upset by the protesters that they were “yelling and crying and shouting”, but his warrant officer told the men to go to a pub to recover.

“We absolutely wrecked the place,” Mr Pahl said.

“We didn’t want to wear our medals anymore, so we used them as targets for darts.”

“We didn’t want to acknowledge that we were there either; there was no pride in being a Vietnam veteran in those days – no pride you could display in public.”

Like many Vietnam veterans, Mr Pahl has suffered from PTSD, but one of the many medals he can now wear with pride is the Order of Australia Medal, for encouraging veterans to use writing to help work through their PTSD.

“I’m also a poet,” he said.

“I set up a website, and veterans contributed their writings, and it’s been accepted in about 30 countries as part of PTSD treatment.

“My aim is to help others – that’s who I am.”

Another part of restoring the Vietnam veterans’ mental health is the fact that the Australian community’s attitude to the vets has changed dramatically, as shown by Friday’s march and service in Murray Bridge.

“I’ve got two feelings about the change,” Mr Pahl said at the Murray Bridge RSL, where no diggers had to pay for anything that day.

“One is that I’m very proud that it has changed, and the other is seeing the kids and people lining up.

“It’s almost a justification of ‘Yes, this is what we deserve; we don’t deserve to be spat on’.”