It was a grim welcome supplied by a Red Cross medic when fresh-faced Colleen Mealy arrived at her dusty army posting south of Saigon in 1967.
But the 23-year-old lieutenant couldn’t have obeyed, even when she had needed to. As one of many so-called ‘Fab Four’ first Australian feminine military nurses despatched to the Vietnam War, she was there to do a difficult job, beginning instantly.
“We didn’t realise what we were heading into – or what we would be coming back to,” she remembers, referencing the general public hostility confronted by returning Vietnam veterans amid protests towards Australia’s dedication to the battle.
Five many years on, lengthy after the fight ended and the vitriol pale, the previous nurse – now a mom and grandmother, going by her married identify of Thurgar – helps to steer an formidable new mission: to convey a private graveside salute to all 523 Australians killed in that horrible battle.
“Just go and say ‘thank you’ to the boys and let them know they are not forgotten,” says Mrs Thurgar, inviting all Australians to affix the Vietnam Veterans Vigil this Thursday, August 3.
Some of these “boys” and plenty of extra of their brothers in arms had been Mrs Thurgar’s sufferers and comrades throughout a unprecedented 12-month posting to the coastal Vung Tau subject hospital.
Given simply ten days’ discover, the ‘Fab Four” (the nickname bestowed by the media and borrowed from the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania) were flown first-class to Saigon – “I’d by no means seen so many planes, all army,” remarks Mrs Thurgar – then transferred to Vung Tau and that gallows-humour greeting. Amid primitive households, they arrange their quarters and had been straight into it.
“When we first started, we didn’t have shifts as such, we just worked. We would stand-to at dusk and dawn because that’s when most of the casualties occurred. If the casualties occurred overnight, they would helicopter them in at first light. So we would work through until everything was done. Then we could have a break.”
The fixed strain saved the medics too busy to dwell on the horrors they witnessed, says Mrs Thurgar, recalling particularly the carnage wrought by “Jumping Jack” mines and small-arms fireplace. Others introduced with sickness and unintended accidents.
The stoicism and humour of her Digger sufferers – an indicator of the Anzac legend since WW1 – stood out, particularly compared to their allies.
“When I visited the American hospitals there was a lot of noise, a lot of crying out. When our boys came in, there was no screaming or anything. They were just pleased to be here at the hospital.
“If they came in with a limb off or their leg strapped to their rifle, they’d always say ‘Sister, I hope the family jewels are okay’. And even if their leg was hanging off, they’d just say ‘Oh no, I won’t be dancing again’.”
Sometimes her sufferers included enemy prisoners, which Mrs Thurgar might discover confronting, however “then again, I’m a nurse and that’s what you do – you look after patients”.
Among them had been Viet Cong guerrilla girls fighters. “They were as good as the men at fighting,” she says; however as captives they had been “very frightened”, as a result of as soon as they’d been patched up, Australia’s allies within the South Vietnamese military “would come in and take them away and we’d never see or hear of them again”.
She remembers her Fab Four colleague, Lieutenant Terrie Roche, making an attempt to cheer up the terrified girls by giving them lipstick. “She used to say, ‘Put some lippy on them, then she’ll feel good’. I’m thinking the poor woman has never seen lipstick in her life.”
The actuality is, only a few concerned in that brutal battle felt good. Total casualties are nearly not possible to estimate, starting from a million deaths upwards – the bulk Vietnamese – with many extra wounded, displaced and impoverished and the bloodshed spilling over into surrounding international locations. Sixty thousand Australians served and greater than 3000 had been wounded; lots of these returning suffered post-combat trauma; then needed to deal with contempt and worse from a public that had welcomed their World War predecessors as heroes.
Mrs Thurgar, initially from SA and now based mostly in Canberra, remembers seeing crimson paint tipped over one soldier; even the feminine nurses had been flown house at night time and advised to put on civilian clothes, not uniform, to keep away from unfavourable consideration.
This yr marks the fiftieth anniversary of the tip of Australia’s 11-year involvement in Vietnam, with a nationwide commemorative service in Canberra on Vietnam Veterans’ Day, August 18; and a medallion and certificates of recognition for all veterans, all of whom are ageing – lots of whom are not alive.
The Vietnam Veterans Vigil on August 3 – the brainchild of a small group of veterans together with Mrs Thurgar and her former husband John Thurgar – brings a special contact. Aussies are invited to go to a gravesite or memorial at any time for a service of remembrance or to pay respect to the fallen and to indicate solidarity with their households, with a gesture giant or small. Those who participate are inspired to register their go to beforehand then take a photograph and share it.
Among the 523 graves is that of the one Australian servicewoman listed as a fatality, Victorian military nurse Barbara Black, who was recognized with leukaemia in Vietnam and is thought to be a trailblazer for efficiently lobbying for authorized equality in feminine veterans’ entitlements earlier than she died.
“I haven’t got a tick against her name,” muses Mrs Thurgar. “I hope someone is going to visit Barbara.”
There are additionally gravesites in Malaysia and as far afield as Birkhill in Scotland, the place lance corporal Robert Buchan is laid to relaxation and the place a nightfall service might be held.
After leaving the military when she fell pregnant, Mrs Thurgar moved into civilian nursing however maintained her veteran contacts as ACT chair of each the RSL and Legacy.
She continues to go to Vietnam – “I love it there” – and whereas this can be a time of sombre remembrance, she celebrates the bonds she made there and occasional moments of levity.
Asked to share one, she cites the saga of the pink bathtub: how an offhand remark to her father about lacking bathing services was handed on to their native MP, then went proper as much as the defence minister and prime brass.
“A lot of toing and froing went on,” she laughs. “I got carpeted for it!”
Thinking it was throughout, Mrs Thurgar was as surprised as anybody when “out of the blue up turns two pink bathtubs just before I was going home.”
The baths sat within the sand dunes, unconnected till later; however Mrs Thurgar says she went and sat in a single anyhow, having a beer, pondering “Gee, Dad you caused me a lot of trouble”.
For an inventory of gravesites, concepts on tips on how to be a part of the vigil and to register, go to www.vvv.org.au
Source: www.news.com.au
