Gunnedah RSL Sub-branch is calling on ex-service persons to show their support for those who fought in the Vietnam War at a commemorative service on Sunday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"[We] have decided that 2019 is the year that we stand with the Vietnam vets and show that we care and remember the men and women who died on those far-off fields of Vietnam," RSL Sub-branch president Peter Kannengeisser said.
Read also:
Mr Kannengeisser said the traumatic experiences of ex-service persons were "as diverse and varied as Lady Luck dealt each veteran their individual hand".
"Some veterans had a relatively minor role to play during their tour of duty ... while others were engaged in patrols and/or fire fights over and over again, where a minute seemed like an hour and the actions they witnessed and were engaged in is forever imprinted in their minds until the day they die," he said.
"Traumatic as the theatre of war was the more lasting wound lay waiting for these men and women for when they returned home and tried to digest the rejection of a substantial and influential section of the RSL, politicians and a noisy and malicious minority of the population for just being in Vietnam doing the job they were trained and ordered to do, just as their fathers, grandfathers and uncles did in previous wars.
"For most of you, this is nothing that you did not already know. What disturbs me is the fact that those of us who have worn the uniforms of any Australian Defence Forces have done nothing in Gunnedah, since 2006, to join our Vietnam Vets commemorate their day at the Gunnedah cenotaph.
"I invite any person who ever wore the Australian navy, army and air force uniform ... regardless of whether you were posted overseas or not, and you, the general public, to join us at the Gunnedah Water Tower Museum murals at 11am on Sunday."
- The museum will be open from 9am, with musical items by the Gunnedah Conservatorium to precede the service.