Busselton RSL Vietnam war veterans Glenn Woodward and Peter Dalgleish sat down with our reporters to talk about their experiences in Vietnam, what Anzac Day means to them and what it was like to return home after the war.
“I was only 19 when I was sent to Vietnam,” Busselton RSL secretary Glenn Woodward recalls as he stands alongside fellow Vietnam veteran Peter Dalgleish.
Immigrating to Australia with his parents from the UK in ‘66, Mr Woodward joined the army in ‘68 where he specialised as a medic and was deployed to Vietnam February of 1970.
His role involved receiving and treating the wounded, working in triage and preparing bodies in the mortuary.
“I was just 19 and I think at first, it was more excitement than fright, that was until I got there,” he said.
“We worked all hours of the day and there was no start time. Hearing the siren meant there was incoming wounded, helicopters would land and we would have to sort the wounded out.
“Vietnam was a part of my life, for a year and a week and a day, that I will never forget.”
Mr Woodward said when he returned home, servicemen who had served in Vietnam were treated like “rubbish”.
“I look back at it now and I don’t hold any grudges,” he said.
“I continued as a servicemen for 20 plus years and six months after Vietnam I was posted to Singapore and worked in Malaysia and Brunei and whilst there, I was transferred to logistics.
“I finished up 20 years and six months later as a sergeant major at the Supply Management School which helped me with the rest of my career with oil and gas.”
A full-time member of the Royal Australian Airforce, 22-year-old Peter Dalgleish was deployed to Vietnam in 1964 as a detachment of Squadron 38, maintaining Caribou aircrafts used for carrying cargo in Vung Tau.
Specialising as an aircraft maintenance engineer, Mr Dalgleish said the aircrafts would carry people, ammunition and livestock such as pigs, cows and chicken.
“You name it and we carried it,” he said.
“Most weeks you would work seven days a week, occasionally you’d get the Sunday off and it was down to the beach with beers and away you’d go. You’d be working in shorts most of the time and sweat would be pouring out of you.”
Mr Dalgleish said there were plenty of bad memories he had suppressed for the sake of his sanity.
“Yeah, we saw some pretty nasty things. My birthday we went into a place and when we came back the aircraft had more holes than a colander,” he chuckled darkly.
“You don’t talk about them or think about them or try to remember them, you just put them aside because if you dwell on those, you finish up with all sorts of problems.
“So there you go, that’s a lot of history in 10 minutes. There’s a lot left out but there’s a lot you couldn’t write anyway.”
Ivy James
Journalist for Bunbury Mail, Australian Community Media and Fairfax Media
Journalist for Bunbury Mail, Australian Community Media and Fairfax Media
