It’s nearly six months since we started on the road and still nothing. It all looks so bloody hopeless. If it wasn’t for the bit of good we’re doing, I reckon I’d chuck the whole thing in. I’ve got this monster dose of the shits and I’m feeling right sorry for meself and seriously thinking of giving up when we pull into a tiny little town named Daintree, near Port Douglas in Queensland. There’s not a lot different about this place, a bit greener with rainforest and a nice beach with a few surfers and hippies about, bludging, on the dole no doubt. It’s what Lawsy calls a place in the sun for shady people. Shit, why should I care, good on ‘em, my kid’s gunna die, she’s never going to crack a wave, bludge on the dole, feel the warm tropical sun on her back, salt on her skin. What’s more, my own health isn’t all that grand neither and I’m worried, Wendy doesn’t need a big useless bastard like me about, she’s that bright she proved she could make it on her own. I know how loyal she is and that’s getting to me as well. I’m scared she’ll stick with me and in the process fuck up her own life. I’ve seen what’s happened to some of the vets we’ve met on our travels, the human wrecks, grog, drugs, you name it, they’re fucked and they’re not coming back, you can see it in their eyes, they’re living somewhere else. It’s like seeing me own future. I’m sitting on a rock looking out at the ocean, gulls careening above me, hoping for a free feed while I’m thinking all this shit. ‘Better give it away, Thommo, time to go, mate,’ I say aloud. ‘When Anna goes do the deed, hey.’ I tell myself Wendy will be grieving for her daughter, best to double up, so she can get it over with as quickly as possible.
‘Hey there, Thommo!’ It’s Bongface come up back of me. ‘How ya been then?’ he asks. ‘Nice day, hey?’
He must have sensed something because then he shuts up and comes to sit down beside me and is real quiet for a while, the both of us looking out at the ocean, young blokes on their surfboards, sun shining on wet shoulders. Then he lights two fags and hands me one and we smoke, looking and saying nothing. After a long while he says, ‘Met someone today, reckons you and her are related.’
I don’t bite and it’s silence between us again.
Then, after a while, ‘She saw yer ugly mug on the box, reckons you’re a dead ringer for her father, only you’re a whitefella.’
‘She one of your mob then?’ I say, not too interested.
‘Yeah, but she’s got your name, Mona Thompson.’
I take a drag and exhale and look at him squiffy-eyed through the cigarette smoke, ‘So? It ain’t exactly the world’s most unusual name.’
‘True, but that’s not all. She give me this picture, photograph.’ Bongface laughs, ‘I could have been lookin’ at you, only darker complexion.’ He looks at me again, this time I can see he’s dead serious, ‘Thommo, it was fuckin’ you! I’m tellin’ ya, mate.’
My heart begins to beat faster. Now I remember, Mona is a name used in our family from way back. I don’t want to hope, but I can’t help myself. ‘My great-grandfather’s brother went walkabout with an Aboriginal woman not long after they arrived in Currawong Creek.’ I look at Bongface. ‘Couldn’t be, though, that was before the First World War.’
Bongface shakes his head, ‘Can’t say, might be, might not, who knows?’ He flicks the butt end of the fag onto the sand below us. ‘All I know is, I took her in to see Marlene in the Anna-mobile to take a test. Marlene says it’s the best yet, a damn good match, though, of course, she can’t be positive until the blood sample goes to Sydney for further analysis.’
I grab him by the shoulders and shake him, ‘Mate, what are you saying?’
Bongface smiles the Bongface smile, ‘I think maybe we’ve got her. We’ve got the bastard!’
Epilogue
It is Anzac Day and I’m at the dawn service at the Cenotaph in Martin Place, Sydney, and I’m crying. It’s a good place to cry because there are others doing the same, older women and old-timers from earlier wars. I’m just the latest crying recruit, one of the younger ones crying for Vietnam. Crying for what it’s done to our lives. I’m clutching the little Vietnamese doll and wearing the medals Thommo never wore.
I can’t say our life with Dad was easy, far from it, Vietnam saw to that. But what I can say is that Mum and I were loved every day of our lives. No matter what happened, we knew that big old cranky bear loved us.
Sometimes during my childhood Thommo would lock himself up in the bedroom and I’d ask Mum why. ‘He’s fighting the ghosts of the past,’ she’d say. Once when I put my ear to the door I could hear him crying. The only time I actually saw him weep was when I was seven, not that long after I’d had the bone-marrow transplant, when he heard that Shorty had incurable cancer. ‘He knew all along! He knew all along!’ he kept saying over and over.
Five months ago, at the ripe old age of fifty-four, Thommo was also diagnosed with cancer of the bowel. The Ghost of Vietnam had come to claim another good man.
During the last few weeks of his life Mum and I would visit Thommo in Concord Hospital every day. Then one day, when he seemed a bit better than usual, he said to me, ‘Baby, get one o’ them tape recorders, bring it with you next time you come. I’ve got one more thing to do before I die. Bring lots of tapes, you hear? A man wouldn’t want to run out in the middle of his tale now, would he?’
Almost every day he’d give me a completed tape, though some days he was too weak to talk. ‘Sorry, love,’ he’d whisper, ‘I’m too crook to talk into that thing, I must be getting old.’ The nurses said the tapes kept him alive weeks after his time was well and truly up. ‘It’s your story I’m telling, darling, I want you to know what happened, what a clever mum you’ve got,’ he told me on one occasion.
Then on the fifth of September he gave me the last tape. ‘The bastard’s done!’ he whispered, typical Thommo. He was terribly ill and only just able to talk, my big old dad, so thin you could see the veins and the shape of his bones through his almost translucent skin.
On his arm was a tattoo of a gun. ‘What’s “Mo” mean?’ I’d ask as a child, seeing the writing on the butt. He would always give me the same answer, ‘It’s just one of those stupid things young blokes do.’ Then, when he handed me the tape, he held my hand a long while. My big, beautiful dad was so frail I could barely feel his grip. His words, when they came, were painfully slow, ‘Anna, on Anzac Day I want you to go to the War Memorial in Hyde Park and find Mo’s name on the wall, tell him you’re Thommo’s daughter, introduce yourself.’
My father died in the early hours of the following morning with Mum holding his hand. I’ve transcribed his story just the way he told it on the tape.
The sun has just risen on a lovely early autumn day, shining down on us through the long, cold grey canyon made by the tall buildings on either side of Martin Place. A lone bugler is playing the Last Post. It’s for Thommo and Mo and all the other brave warriors of Vietnam, telling them we remember.
Anna Thompson, Anzac Day, 2000
Acknowledgements
The Australian experience in the Vietnam war was very different to that of the American one and so this book has been a very personal journey for me, an intellectual fact-finding tour that leaves me extremely proud of the way our boys accomplished a difficult and controversial job in Vietnam.
Vietnam was a very different kind of war and one we probably shouldn’t have been involved in. Be that as it may, our nation’s reluctant acceptance as worthy warriors of the young men who returned from Vietnam simply wasn’t justified. A revision of our negative attitude towards their Vietnam experience is long overdue.
I hope you enjoy the story, which, of course, is a work of fiction. My eleven platoon characters are also wholly fictional and do not in any way portray any of the infantrymen who fought at Long Tan and who remain alive. However, the effort undertaken to portray the Vietnam experience is as close to the truth as, I believe, diligent research could make it.
A great many people need to be thanked for their help in getting the hard facts right and in sh
aring their experiences for my benefit. First among these is Celia Jarvis, who accomplished a remarkable amount of research in a short time and did so with admirable patience and good humour. My special thanks to Graham Walker, a Vietnam veteran himself, for his counsel and guidance throughout.
Others, in alphabetical order, who were generous with information and who gave their permission to use their own Vietnam experiences, written or otherwise, are Bob Buick MM, Wayne Cowan, Rod Cozins, Owen Denmeade, Peter James, Terry Loftus, Tim McCoomb, Mike McDermitt, Gary McMahon, Ross Mangano, Ern Marshall, Stanley Morrie MBE, Harry Smith MC, Keith White, Tony White, Barry Wright and Admiral E.R. Zumwalt Jnr.
I especially thank the Granville office in Sydney of the Vietnam Veterans Federation who were enormously helpful in organising for me to interview a number of veterans, all of whom I thank for speaking so candidly about their post-Vietnam experience. Also, the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia for making available various papers and submissions to the government on the effects of Agent Orange and other veteran health issues.
For the marijuana/cannabis information, my thanks go to Robert Long of the Nimbin Hemp Embassy and to the authors of various websites on the Internet. For the information on bone-marrow transplants, I am grateful to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, Sydney.
I also thank those authors who have gone before me and who have written so well on the Vietnam war. Bob Buick and Gary McKay, All Guts and No Glory; Terry Burstall, The Soldier’s Story; Lex McAulay, The Battle of Long Tan; Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1950–1966; and Captain Nick Welsh, A History of the Sixth Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment 1965–85.
All that remains is to thank Robert Sessions, my publisher at Penguin Books, and my editor, Kay Ronai, who, realising this was a difficult story for me to write, helped more than I can say.
Glossary
AK47 automatic assault rifle used by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army
APC armoured personnel carrier
B52 high-altitude bomber
Charlie Vietnamese soldier, derived from Victor Charlie or VC; used to denote the enemy
deep j deep jungle
DLP Democratic Labor Party
dustoff helicopter used to evacuate the wounded and dead from the battlefield
Geographicals veterans who cannot reside in one place for long
grunt popular nickname for infantryman, adopted from American army usage
H & I harassment and interdiction – artillery fire at irregular intervals targeting suspected enemy supply routes and assembly areas
hutchie one-man shelter, tent
M16 automatic rifle used by Australians and Americans
MO Medical Officer
nasho National Serviceman called up for compulsory National Military Service
Noggies, Nogs name for all Vietnamese, used mostly for the enemy
NVA North Vietnamese Army
OC Officer commanding a company of soldiers
Owen gun, Owen machine gun sub-machine gun used by Australians, largely replaced by the M16 by 1968
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder psychological problems caused by major traumatic incidents, in this case the Vietnam war
provost military police
R and R rest and recreation, leave in another country
RAR Royal Australian Regiment
R in C rest within the combat country
RSL Returned Services League, established in Australia in 1916 to provide assistance to those who served in the armed forces and their dependants
SLR self-loading rifle used by Australians
VC Viet Cong
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First published by Penguin Books Australia, 2001
This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2006
An earlier shorter version of this story was first published electronically as Meeting at the Smoke Joe Cafe, 2000
Copyright © Bryce Courtenay 2001
Copyright © Christine Courtenay 2013
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‘Weapons Training’ by Bruce Dawe on pages 68–69, from Condolences of the Season, is reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Australia.
Also By Bryce Courtenay
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