[Vietnam veteran John Haward] I spent about nearly two weeks in hospital in Vietnam, and I remember when I got out of hospital, I went round to see a mate who was in the band that I played in, both his parents were schoolteachers, one secondary, one primary. And they were like a second family to me before I went in the Army.
Anyway, I rocked up at his place, and normally I'd just walk in and say, “It's John here.”
The door was locked. So I knocked on the door and my mate’s father came and stood behind the fly wire door.
I said, “How are you?” And he said, “Oh you’re back.” And I said, “Yeah, is Steve home?” And he said, “No, he’s not home.”
And with that my mate’s mother come and stood behind the father
and she said, “You're no longer welcome here. We don't allow baby and women killers into this house.”
After a few expletives, I never, ever saw them again.
[White text on black background] John was conscripted into military service in 1968. He was 19.
[John Haward] The worst spot in the tank is the gunner. He sits right down in the bowels of the tank. Right next...on the right hand side of the gunners, you're looking forward. And if you were to extend your elbows out either side, you'd be hitting the gun with your left elbow and the side of the turret with your right elbow. And there was there wasn't a lot of room.
You might go in, at say 8:00 in the morning, and you wouldn't get out until maybe 4:00 in the afternoon. A lot of the time you didn't even know where you were going because you had such a small, narrow opening to look through.
If you went through, say, some of the bamboo thickets in the jungle, often there were big ants nests up in the...big green ants nests. And if you hit...if the tank hit that bamboo thicket the nest would often drop down on top of the turret and all the ants would be crawling around you. You sat there in a lather of perspiration the whole day.
Near where we were based at Nui Dat, there was a village called Ba Ria. We used to take all our laundry and the village made some money out of it. The V.C. found out that the village was doing the Australian’s laundry.
So they came in to the mayor of Ba Ria and said to him yhat if he didn't stop doing the Australian’s laundry, he would kill them.
They would kill him and his family. For a period of about two weeks, we had a squadron of tanks, four tanks and infantry, surround his house.
He had quite a substantial house. The very night that the Australians left,
The V.C. came in and they cut all their throats. The mother, the father and all the children, and put them out in the street so the locals could see if they didn't do what they were told, that's what would happen to them.
That made me feel, you know, this is Vietnamese killing Vietnamese and they were innocents. Okay, they were trying to make a quid, out of doing the laundry. But V.C. didn't see it that way.
That made me feel as though we were there doing some good.
[white text on black background] on 16 February 1969, John’s unit leave base to investigate a possible North Vietnamese weapons cache drop.
[John Haward] I was in the centre tank and there was a tank on the right and a tank on the left. The two forward scouts from that group moved into the jungle and they got in about maybe 150 meters into the jungle. And we heard two very loud explosions. One scout was blown to pieces, nothing left, just a body bag job.
The other guy lost an arm and a leg and half his face and he was still alive and was screaming. We could hear him.
So we were told to move into the jungle. Two V.C. I didn't see them, jumped out of the bunker with an RPG7, which is a rocket propelled grenade.
The first round came through just below the barrel in the front, blew our driver’s head open. And he was unconscious in his compartment, so we couldn't back out either because we couldn't get to him. The next one came through on the left hand side where my loader was and cleanly took my loader’s kneecap off.
But then the third one that penetrated, came through on my right. All the upward explosion blew the seat apart and took all my crew commander's hamstrings, glutes away, just blew them away. As if a big shark had bitten him.
And I copped it where I was sitting, in my back. So I copped all that hot metal and shrapnel in my back. And I knew I got hit, I could hear it sizzling.
They put me on a stretcher and slid me on into the into the Huey on the floor. There was one stretcher above me, and that was the bloke, the infantry guy that was badly wounded.
But I looked down at my chest and I ended up...I could see a pool of blood on my chest, because I didn't have a shirt on. I said, “Jesus, the shrapnel
has gone right through. And the medic said, “No, no, no, it's your mate above you.” His stretcher was just full of blood and they were canvas and it just leaked through onto my chest.
We'd been in the air for no more than 15 minutes. And he came down to me, the medic, and he said your mate’s dead. I didn't even know the infantry bloke.
[White text on black background] John was airlifted to Vung Tao military hospital and returned to Australia after serving 10 months in Vietnam.
[John Haward] Being a part of a team in the Army is similar to being part of a team of a football club.
You've got to stick with your mates. Be there to back them up if they need it. Show leadership. Show a bit of strength and courage.
And of course, the number one thing is mateship.
If you’re mates, you'll work together as a team a lot better.
Our experiences coming back from Vietnam, where we were hated when we came back, by just about everybody other than our families and people who knew us and some of our friends. For that reason, a lot of Vietnam veterans didn't tell anyone other than those that knew they went before they went. They never talked about it. And they didn't want people to know that they were a Vietnam vet, which I think is such a disgrace.
You know, I'm proud to be a Vietnam vet. We're not there to glorify war. I hope there’s no more.
But at the same time, some good things come out of it. My best mates still are my Vietnam vet mates.
I had a lot of mates beforehand with the band and footy and cricket and all that, Very, rarely see them. My Vietnam mates, I do.
[White text on black background] John worked for 30 years in public service after the war.
He never returned to music.
End of transcript.
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