AUSTRALIAN MILITARY

Interviews with over 100 veterans of the Vietnam War.

First Edition.

No war is pleasant, but that in VIetnam in the 1960s-70s, was particularly vicious and brutal, and often extremely unpopular in the nations giving military support to South Vietnam. Australia was one and for those Aussies going off to fight they left proudly, believing they were defending democracy, but there was little to celebrate for those coming home from a lost cause. For this book Rintoul selected more tha 100 extracts from interviews with Vietnam veterans. Their recollection are of how they went to South Vietnam, as a serving regular or later as conscripts, training, the departure, arrivel in the war zone, experiences there, the return home and the aftermath. This is a distrubing book, but given the nature of the conflict anything else was improbable. The stories are told without emballishment, but otfen with shocking detail and candour. Betweem 1962 and 1972 Australia sent nealy 50,000 personnel to that war and 501 of them were killed, with 2400 physically wounded and “.most of them were scarred.” With a previous proud record of soldiering those coming home were further shocked by the reception they recieved returning from Vietnam,of which the author says they found themselves “the untouchables, almost the unmentionables of Australia society.” The decision to support South Vietman was nationally supported in the early 1960s but by 1970s the involvement was vastly unpopular and the subject of mass protest demonstations. Rintoul says that many veterans “. retreated into a world of almost hysterical bitterness, disillusionment anger, grief, gilt and illness.” The lives of many vets were marked by problems, including psychological, and sickness when rehabilitatiing and still later faced the “Agent Orange” controversy, highlighted by “numerous and varied birth defects in the chjildren of some Vietnam veterans.” Sad consequences arise for any war, but those from Vietnam, outlined here by those who were there, certainly makes for depressing reading and perhaps a salutory lesson for leaders considering involvement in such conflicts. 

• xxiii, 246 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 25 cm. #060324/131124
• Vietnam War, 1961-1975 — Personal narratives, Australian
• History

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