MONDAY’S Vietnam Veterans’ Day will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Operation Babylift and the symbolic end of the two-decade long war.
The Swan Hill and District Vietnam Veterans Association Australia (VVAA) invite the community to join them in remembrance of their fallen comrades and to show support for those still surviving the ongoing effects of the war at the Swan Hill Cenotaph at 11am on Monday.
Vietnam Veterans’ Day is held on the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, where 17 Australians aged between 19 and 22 lost their lives and 25 were wounded in three hours of combat in 1966.
VVAA wellbeing advocate Peter Franklin joined the Australian Navy at 16 and served in the Vietnam War on HMAS Sydney and HMAS Brisbane transporting weapons, supplies and soldiers and providing armed support to troops on the ground until 1971.
“It was the experience of a lifetime, coming from inland Moulamein to be a sailor on the seas,” he said.
“I went to train at the base in Leeuwin in WA for six months and basically went back to school, got brainwashed, and from there did a course in engineering.
“I worked up to be a Chief Petty Officer working as a machinist, running the engineering on the lower deck, then the Chief Stoker as the administrator of the engineering branch, running the boiler room, engine room and the generators.”
As a career navy sailor serving for 20 years, Mr Franklin was reticent to call himself a Vietnam veteran until a fellow vet told him of the impact naval support had for the army men.
“It was hard work around the clock on those voyages; when we arrived in Vietnam we unloaded the fuel, ammunition and supplies onto barges, there were divers checking our anchors for mines that could have got caught up in the lines, and by the next morning we were out of there,” he said.
“We spent nights firing five-inch shells into the warzone and I always wondered what damage we did on the ground.
“One of the guys told me that was rubbish when I mentioned I wasn’t a veteran in the same way as the army men, he said the night that us blokes fired all around them all night kept them alive and stopped the North Vietnamese soldiers getting through to them.
“It made me feel like I was doing something, that our activities in the navy saved some of our fellows and helped them come home.”
As a transporter, Mr Franklin saw the difference in the boys going to war to those going home, and the reception they received by the public after they were dropped off at the Garden Island Royal Australian Navy Base.
“It wasn’t pretty to see fellows who had just met their families on their return, be greeted by the people waiting outside holding placards to protest the war,” he said.
“What stands out to me, is as we left the shore in Vietnam with the soldiers who were going home, all the soldiers stood on the upper deck and wouldn’t move until Vietnam was out of sight, like they couldn’t feel safe until they couldn’t see it.
“We were doing what we were told, what the public had wanted us to do at the start of the war, but they got sick of watching on their TVs at dinnertime.”
The echoes of the Vietnam War are still felt as the world watches violent conflicts unfold in real time.
“It’s the same today watching Palestine and Ukraine under attack up close, the horrible starvation going on there, and the world is slow to react,” Mr Franklin said.
Mr Franklin is a founding member of the VVAA in Swan Hill 28 years ago, seeing the need for an organisation dedicated to getting Vietnam veterans the support they needed.
“It was a great cost for the government to send us away to war, and a great cost to the people who were sent,” he said.
“We served Australia and gave our physical and mental health, and many of our 71 Swan Hill and District members are still dealing with the leftover health issues 50 years later.
“It affected every town in the Mallee, with someone who went to Vietnam, was hurt or was killed.
“Chris Sortell is one of the fallen, we used to play on the river when we were kids.
“People are still suffering because of it, a lot of our people have committed suicide, even with the support of Open Arms which Vietnam veterans started up which has saved a lot of lives.
“In 1997 we didn’t think the RSL was helping, so Vietnam vets put the systems in place to support vets and lobby to get change for greater support at a higher level.
“We are now under the wing of the RSL and VVAA will finish up, but we will still be here as the Swan Hill Veterans Centre, still doing the same work.”
VVAA will gather for an informal full service at the Swan Hill Cenotaph on McCallum Street at 11am.
The centre is open to anyone needing support, 9am to 3pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
To make an appointment, call 5033 1909 or email admin@shadvic.com.au.Breakout: Operation Babylift
AS South Vietnamese capital Saigon came under siege by the North Vietnamese forces, the US military evacuated more than 3000 Vietnamese babies and children to Western nations including Australia through April 1975.
While Vietnam veteran Peter Franklin concluded his service in Vietnam in 1971, he remembers the historic fall of Saigon.
“It was on everyone’s TV at the time, just planes full of children and the Viet Cong tank breaking down the gates of the Independence Palace,” he said.
“A lot of the children were just given up to get them out of there – it was just panic.
“They were convinced the Viet Cong was going to kill them all, the servicemen’s babies particularly, as the Viet Cong was known to kill those who were friends of US or Australian soldiers.
“Planes were loaded full of children, they were flown out on helicopters to ships, people were just handing babies up.
“It’s the last of the 50th anniversaries as it symbolised the end of the war.”
