John Thurgar's veteran story

John Duncan ‘Jack’ Thurgar SC MBE OAM RFD was born on 29 March 1950 in Scone, New South Wales.

In February 1970, John deployed to South Vietnam. He served with the 1st Squadron, Special Air Service Regiment (SASR).

John’s time in Vietnam wasn’t always about fighting a war. Instead, building relationships and respecting Vietnamese culture brought soldiers and civilians together during difficult times.

Once, John won a 5 km foot race to celebrate Hùng Vuong (the Hung Kings’ Temple Festival). Other soldiers (Australian, New Zealand, United States and Vietnamese) and Vietnamese civilians were his competitors.

In 1970, less than a year after his deployment to Vietnam, John was evacuated to Australia with minor injuries from a detonated landmine. Returning home was a challenge. John was dismayed by the hostile reception many Vietnam War veterans received.

After discharge from the Regular Army, John continued to serve in the Army Reserves.

John started working for the Commonwealth Police Force (later the Australian Federal Police, or AFP). Among other police postings, he served 4 tours of duty with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). In his last deployment there, John was the Officer-in-Charge (OIC) of the Australian Civilian Police (AUSTCIVPOL) detachment in Nicosia. He served under the operational control of the Commander Sector 4 (Nicosia) LTCOL Ian McNabb CD, the CO of LdSH (RC).

During increased tension in Cyrpus on his last tour, a confrontation developed between the UN and Turk military. During that period, a Greek Cypriot farmer accidentally entered an unmarked mixed-barrier minefield separating the belligerent forces. The farmer’s tractor simultaneously detonated an anti-tank mine and an M16 (jumping jack) mine. He was severely injured and lying in no-man’s land within the minefield. As a combat veteran, John’ well knew the danger of entering the mixed minefield’. He moved some 80 m into the minefield, gave life-saving first aid and carried the man out of the minefield where the anti-tank mines posed the greatest threat to their lives.

Later, as the senior investigator for Unrecovered War Casualties – Army, John helped locate and repatriate the 6 Australian men listed as missing in action (MIA) in South Vietnam. He also successfully investigated MIA cases from World War II and the Indonesian Confrontation.

John contributed immensely to Australia’s veteran community. He was an inaugural volunteer and active member of the Australian Vietnam Forces Welcome Home Parade Committee, which organised and fund-raised the 1987 Welcome Home parade.

The Welcome Home committee morphed to form the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial Committee, which fund-raised and oversaw the international design competition, construction and 1992 dedication of the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra.

John Thurgar (Australian Army), Operation Aussies Home

Transcript

"Vietnam, it's only part of my life, but the physical and emotional and psychological impact remains. But, you have to learn to live with that, you know, leave that in a box and try not to let it out."

John Thurgar served as an SAS trooper in Vietnam in 1970. Like many, his homecoming was bitterly disappointing.

"I went to the RSL for my first Anzac Day in 1971 with my father, there was a World War Two veteran and, I was accused by a World War Two veteran of being a baby killer and, you know, he was against the war and so I got up and left. It took me a very, very long time to ever go back to an RSL and also, to be forgiving."

John became an integral member of the group of veterans who organised Australia's Welcome Home Parade. It took place in Sydney in 1987.

"The Vietnam veterans put on buses from all over Australia so that veterans who didn't have any money could just hop on a free bus. And wonderful stories where families just picked up the veteran and went and put him on the bus. Said, 'You're going. Here's your bag. We've already packed it for you. You're going.' You know, I mean that was not an uncommon thing, where the families forced the veterans to go and it had a great psychological release."

The success of the parade led to the building of a dedicated Vietnam War memorial in the nation's capital. Visiting the memorial became the stimulus for John's greatest service to Vietnam veterans.

"My experience was that I'd go down there, two o'clock some mornings, just you know, try to approach the memorial, but there'd always be someone else there! It didn't matter whether it was two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, there was always another veteran down there, or a group of veterans down there.

And then I started to realise that blokes were actually taking ashes of their mates down there, and putting them in the memorial, into the moat. And so it started to become a very important place for a lot of veterans. And of course, the place to sit was on the three seats with two names on each of our six missing in action. And I always wondered what had happened to them."

John became the senior investigator charged with locating Australia's six missing in action. Working with the army alongside the group, Operation Aussies Home, the remains of four of the six MIAs were located and returned to their families in Australia.

"It was for the sake of the families. What has been proven is that the families suffer from grief and then there's inherited grief. The children bear the grief that the parents did just as much. And then that's passed on to their nieces and nephews and grandchildren."

The last two missing men were the crew of a Canberra bomber that was lost in 1970. After exhaustive detective work, a possible crash site was located.

"We started to get pieces that were British, because you see the B-57 and our Canberras were essentially the same but there were differences. And so I had to find the bits that were different. And when I found enough of the bits that were different, I was able to convince air force "" this is our aircraft. I'd done the investigation and then I needed to bring all of that information together to the Vietnamese Government where I could convince them using our anthropologists and our other specialists that these remains were our men."

In August 2009, the remains of Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver were returned to Australia.

"There are so many things that enter my mind every day, because that's the problem with getting older you know, you look back and have regrets, you look back and think, could I have done something differently, but I think back and I can still see the faces of the dead and I still cannot... I don't have any... I find it very hard to forgive myself."


Last updated:

Cite this page

DVA (Department of Veterans' Affairs) ( ), John Thurgar's veteran story, DVA Anzac Portal, accessed 26 December 2024, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/stories/oral-histories/john-thurgars-story
Was this page helpful?
We can't respond to comments or queries via this form. Please contact us with your query instead.
CAPTCHA