Alan Cooke worked as an earth moving contractor in Cohuna when he was called up for National Service in April 1966. The 20-year-old had no idea where Vietnam was and didn’t think he’d actually go, but by the time he was discharged in 1968, he had spent 285 days there as a Sapper in the 1st Field Squadron of the Royal Australian Engineers

Alan did 10 weeks of basic training at Puckapunyal and 12 weeks at the School of Military Engineering at Casula, New South Wales. “That’s where we learnt how to do booby traps, build bridges, look for mines, how to set and defuse a mine,” he said

He was moved to Holsworthy, where he drove a colonel to and from work, and when he did jungle training at the Jungle Warfare Training Centre in Canungra, Queensland, he knew he was going.

“That was pretty tough. We had to go out and camp at night and in the early hours of the morning, some other people would come in and ambush you. It was scary. You didn’t get much sleep. They taught us what to look for. We had to jog 5km every morning. We’d go around 5km, then it increased to 10km, then come back and go under a barbed wire tunnel and finish up climbing a tower and jumping into a river.

“They taught a lot of discipline. That was one good thing with the army – they did discipline you and made a man of you – they took the boyhood out of you.”

After saying his goodbyes, fearing he wouldn’t be back, Alan flew to Saigon on June 2, 1967, where reality hit. “Coming into land there’s all these huts and aeroplanes and tanks, and I thought geez, I’m not going to survive here.”

He was flown to Nui Dat in a Caribou, shown his quarters and given an Owen gun. The next night, it was off to his first job 10-15km away, guarding a freshly laid minefield called the horse shoe. It rained constantly and the sound of gunfire was heard throughout the night. They discovered a couple of mines missing in the morning when checking to see if they’d captured anyone. “The Viet Cong would disarm them, take them away and set them up somewhere else – on a road.”

Alan worked a fork lift for a month in the sawmill, wrapping and loading timber onto a truck that had been cut and dressed to build houses for the locals, who Alan said were good people. “The only trouble was you didn’t know one from the other. During the day they were with you and at night they were against you. You didn’t trust anybody.”

When Luscombe Airfield was extended, Alan was put on a McDonald roller. “I just had to go backwards and forwards all day, just compacting the dirt and settling the dust. I didn’t mind it.” He felt safe working within the compound. There are two incidents that have haunted Alan to this day. One was during a 3-night stint with the infantry men. It was on his one-hour shift manning the gun at night. “I’m sitting there, about 2 o’clock in the morning, and I’m starting to see things. I’m waiting, waiting. Next thing, I heard a noise behind me and something rolled down to where I was. I thought it was a grenade. I was shitting myself. Nothing happened – no explosion or anything. I thought I was gone.”

The next morning when they discovered a dead dog, they realised it had tripped the wire and triggered a rock to roll down towards Alan.

The second was filling sandbags just out of Nui Dat. Vietnamese kids – one a 16-year-old they nicknamed Noggy – sold Coca-Cola and would watch the men at work.

“One day, we went out there and we got pulled up by the army people. There were five bodies on the side of the road.” Asked if they could identify them, they discovered one was Noggy. He had been caught setting up a mine and shot.

“I was 21 and that was the first body I’d ever seen. It was upsetting because I’d buy a Coca-Cola off him one day and he’s dead the next.

“That’s where you learnt never to trust anybody.”

Looking for mines in rubber plantations and on roads was another job of Alan’s. Two men would sit on the front of a slow-moving APC (armoured personnel carrier) scanning for mines with a mine detector. “If you heard a noise, you’d put your hand up and they’d stop, then we’d get down there with a probe and see if there was anything in there. You had to look for fresh dirt too as you were going along, just in case they buried one.

“Every day I was thinking I’m gonna die. It’s horrific. You don’t know what you’re going to do every day. You don’t know if you’re going to stand on a mine or get shot, or your mates,” a thought reinforced by the many now 3-legged cattle they saw.

“Another time I was put on a bulldozer to dig a big hole for a mass burial. There must have been a big dust up a day or two before and they had all these bodies. I just had to dig a big hole and they threw them in and covered them. They were Viet Cong.”

Pits were dug around tents for protection and night drills were held monthly. Alerted by a siren, they would grab their rifle and jump in, only returning to bed when signalled by a flare – after around half an hour. One night, Alan noticed movement in the pit and discovered a snake the next morning. After that, all pits were to be covered with a sheet of tin.

In his vicinity were Americans, New Zealanders and a few English. They mixed with the Kiwis but not the Yanks – they were “too loud”. “The Yanks had radios blaring all night, lighting up cigarettes; and when they were out in the bush, they left their food behind.”

Despite all the physical work, apart from the cooking, the soldiers did everything themselves from washing and drying their three uniforms to making their bed – with perfect envelope corners. They slept in 4-man tents (Alan managed to claim the only mattress) and Alan got on well with his tent mates who were all engineers, one of which he is still in touch with.

Breakfast was cereal, toast or porridge, lunch was tinned meals taken along on jobs. “You got tins of fruit, chocolate and all that – enough to keep you going until night. Sometimes, they’d bring dinner or lunch out to you and you could carry on with what you’d been doing.” Tea on base was spam and dehydrated food eaten at the canteen (which also sold smokes for 10c a pack). Other food might be treats sent from home like fruit cake or big tins of fruit which would be shared with their tent mates.

On his one Christmas in Vietnam, he enjoyed a meal of turkey, veggies, plum pudding and two cans of beer. For his 22nd birthday, he bought 20 cans of beer to share with a few blokes at his hut, but they all had to be opened. “I had to go past this bloke on the sentry, making sure that we weren’t Viet Cong and we had to give him a password. He saw me carrying this box of beer and asked what I was going to do with them.” Alan was told he couldn’t take them past but managed to bribe the sentry with two cans, and proceeded to his birthday celebrations with his mates.

When they did get downtime, Alan played cards, watched a movie, walked around looking at machinery or projects underway and if they could scratch up enough players for a 10-aside team, they’d play footy. Occasionally, concerts were put on and Alan saw Denise Drysdale, Lucky Starr, Bev Harrell and Normie Rowe (also serving). On days off he might go to the beach and shopping complex at Vung Tau and get his hair cut.

Other day-to-day aspects weren’t great – like having to get rid of the flies before using the earthenware pipe toilet dug into the ground.

The weather also made it difficult. In the monsoonal season after heavy rain, water would be everywhere but would dry within a couple of hours. In the dry season, it was the sweat from humidity combined with dust that became the problem. “You’d get mud from sweat. You’d be sweating and with the dust collecting on you, you had to keep wiping the mud off.”

With his two years up in 1968, Alan was flown into Sydney at night to avoid protestors. “They’d abuse people getting off the boats and planes, spitting on them, so they brought us in the early hours of the morning. We got off at Sydney and I caught another plane to Melbourne where my parents were there to meet me. As soon as we got through customs, we headed off home.”

He was discharged just in time for his sister’s wedding.

“No counselling, nothing. Goodbye. I never heard from them again.”

Alan’s wife Cheryl, who he married nine months after returning, said to Alan, “They didn’t debrief you or anything – didn’t look after you, didn’t talk to you. It was terrible the way they got treated. Even when you got home, no one said welcome home, good to see you – they treated you like you hadn’t even been to a war. It was a terrible, terrible time.

“You have always said to me the treatment you got when you got home affected you more than actually being there – the way the government neglected you, the army neglected you. Locally, people never acknowledged or welcomed you back home.”

Cheryl says the Alan she married was not the same Alan she knew before Vietnam. “He was very fun loving, sense of humour, outgoing. He came back a loner, pretty quiet. Didn’t want to mix with people, lost his sense of humour. He’s got it back now, but it’s taken years.” Alan tried to return to his pre-Vietnam life. “When I came back, I still played cricket and football for a little while and then gave everything up.”

Even the RSL wasn’t welcoming.

“The RSL gave me a 12-month membership and at the first meeting I went to, two Second World War soldiers said ‘that wasn’t a war’. Well, that was it. Mates are supposed to help each other, not condemn you.”

Alan hasn’t been back since. He goes to the services, although doesn’t march – apart from the year his daughter Sonia, her husband Jason and family donated a monument to honour Vietnam veterans, something he’s very proud of.

Diagnosed with PTSD and prompted by his GP 15 years ago, he finally got counselling.

“You look alright on the outside, you’re not damaged or anything – but inside, you are damaged,” his GP told him.

“I’m getting better now,” Alan said.

Alan and his family have visited Vietnam and Alan appreciates what the Vietnamese went through during the war, and still do. 56 years after his return, he feels a sense of acceptance and value – but the journey continues.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 22 August 2024.