By Bronwyn Hastings

The Wimmera’s Vietnam War veterans are inviting people to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan on Vietnam Veterans’ Day.

An 11am service at Horsham’s Sawyer Park on August 18 will be observed before lunch is served at Horsham RSL.

Veteran Peter Hay said the battle was one of Australia’s most significant.

“The Australians hadn’t been there very long when all this happened, so they weren’t very well prepared for it,” he said.

“I think we lost 60-odd – there were 105 Australians and something like 2500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese,” he said.

“But they held their own and the enemy withdrew.”

Mr Hay said he toured Vietnam during his 20-year army career from which he emerged as a Major, and along with fellow soldiers was not well-received when returning home.

“When the early battalions came home, they had parades, but I was there in 1970, and that’s when the people were not so happy about it,” he said.

“I think we lost about 521 Australians altogether, and Australia was a bit sick of it by then.

“I was regular army, and we weren’t allowed to wear our uniforms to work after the war because we weren’t very well received. We were just doing what we were told to do by the government. It’s something a lot of people have never, ever, got over. 

“We’ve got folk in our group who just think, ‘what did we do wrong?’ – some people have a different view.”

Mr Hay trained at Duntroon from 1965 to 1968, alongside Kevin O’Brien who wrote the book ‘Long Tan – Memories, Myths and Realities’, and former Victorian Governor General Peter Cosgrove.

“Peter was one of the few who stayed in service, and he did really, really well,” he said.

“He’s a terrific guy, and when he was governor general, every time we had a reunion, we did that at government house, which was good.”

Horsham RSL hosts a Vietnam veterans’ group for the district’s returned soldiers – its 40-odd members enjoying regular walks and activities such as chair yoga – as well as soldiers returned from Malaysia, Cambodia and more recent wars.

“We get together as best we can, but some of us are now getting a little older and finding it much harder,” Mr Hay said.

“But I think most of us enjoyed our time over there and I think the Aussies did very well, as they do in every campaign.

“They’re trying to live up to what happened at Gallipoli, the Anzac experience, and 99.9 per cent of the time, they do.” 

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