The undergraduate scheme
For quite a while we lived at West Wyalong in New South Wales, but then moved to Manly, also in New South Wales, where I did my education. My father was a World War Two veteran, but he died in 1945, so that left my mother in a fairly difficult circumstance but she was a really tough woman and she had to sacrifice, make a lot of sacrifices for us and I distinctly remember her saying, "The only thing I'm ever going to give you children is an education." And of course I value that a lot. I always wanted to do medicine.
I don't know when that idea came into my mind, but we were mindful of the financial difficulties that were going to be involved with that and so when I started in medicine, I was like lots of other students, we had jobs. I worked in a variety of jobs, I worked with the Shire Council. I worked for the Darling Harbour good yards, I worked as a cleaner but I got to the point where things were really getting tough, and by this time I'd done my national service and during that time, I'd learned of a scheme that the Defence Force was putting up, an undergraduate scheme whereupon they would finance your undergraduate education for return of service. So reluctantly at the time I applied for that and to my surprise, I was selected. So that's how I got into the Army and that's how I got through medicine.
National Service
It's an interesting thing, I was quite bewildered by the whole thing really. I was 18 and the experience was good. I really enjoyed it, you know, the camaraderie and friendship with the fellows was good. Interestingly enough, I was trained, we all did the basic training as infantry soldiers, so I was quite familiar with all the weapons and reasonably good at using them, I think, and it was interesting that when I joined the regular army and went to Malaya, then to Vietnam, at no time was I asked had I had any weapon training and finally, when I was required to carry a weapon in Vietnam, I chose the Owen because I was very familiar with that weapon and I liked it.
I don't know that it was a very effective weapon, certainly not at long range, but it was easy to carry, easy to use, and I was familiar with it. Yes, it was quite, it used to make me chuckle a bit that while I was doing all this stuff with an infantry battalion, I don't ever remember being asked had I had any military training … I don't think the regular army was in really good shape. They had, numbers were down and I, they had an infantry battalion on service in Malaya and I'd just come back from there, but they were, I think they were pushed, hard pushed to keep an infantry battalion in Vietnam and that's, of course, when national service, the second national service came in.
But that initial service was vastly different to mine. It was for two years with the likelihood of being posted to Vietnam, as many of them were. So, yeah, I just carried that experience along quietly and I think it was very well, I mean, we had a beehive and out in the bush, not make a fool of yourself or get in the road and I think you, you learn, you learn pretty quickly anyway.
Early posting to Vietnam and confronting the problem of malaria
When I went to Malaya I was posted to a British Army medical unit, which was a great experience and I learned a lot and one of the important lessons I learned was that malaria was drug resistant to all the known agents that we had at the time, that hadn't been generally accepted around the world but it was, in fact, it was well approved in Malaya, and I was a small cog in the wheel and that machine that was investigating it and so I had that experience and, also, I was able to fly from Malaya to Vietnam for a short period of time, you know, for a look see. I think we were, I think we, the business, we were getting soft intelligence, you know, for instance, my, one of the things I did was look at the Army Republic Vietnam hospital system which was pretty haunting, you know, it was not very sophisticated and so, but I also met up with members of the Australian Army Training Team, went out to a couple of their posts.
So I had a fair idea of what was going on in Vietnam before I was posted there. My looksee was I could go where I liked when I liked for the period I was there, in bounds of safety but when I went up to Vietnam, I was posted to the Army Force Vietnam. I was not posted to one area, but everything was so disorganised and it was quite an experience. I used to use the word shambles to describe it, and the medical officer that was posted to the battalion, a nice young black guy, only been in the Army for a very short period of time, he was carrying a quite a significant medical problem and that annoyed everybody, including the commander.
This young man was unfit to be there and, in fact, he didn't last a week. He was very embarrassed about it, but he had to go home. So for a period of time I was doing both jobs or going out. I was acting as the Senior Medical Officer to the force and I was acting as the RMO of the battalion and I carried their own throughout the time they were there.
I think I probably did about 50 per cent of their operations. So yes, it was a very busy time. I that year just vanished. It was, you know, if I wasn't in the bush, I was in Saigon doing all the administrative stuff that was required. We were confronting the problem of malaria, which was probably the biggest manpower waster right through the war I would have thought because any fellow who got one form of malaria, the falciparum variety became so ill that they just, and they lost so much weight and physical condition, they just weren't fit to return to duty so they had to be evacuated back to Australia.
So, I knew I had that experience before I left. I think, you know, we, one young man died from malaria and in a lot of ways I think we were fortunate, we were lucky not to have more and that problem existed until I think about 1969 when a new prophylactic Dapsone was introduced and that just stopped the problem. It was a, I like to say the graph fell off the cliff. It was a vertical from a big incidence to almost zero in a very quick time. So that problem was solved. Yes, that was a very interesting aspect of being in Vietnam for me.
Quality of the Australian soldiers
I was mightily impressed by the American logistic support system. It was just overwhelming. We had absolutely no experience like that in Australia and it was vast and, I mean, they were so generous. If we required anything, it was available and as far as working with 173rd Brigade, that was the unit to which we were attached or inserted when I was part of it, I think the soldiers were aware that they had been better trained, that our leadership was probably better trained and more experienced and I think our blokes, they were pretty good. They were better than the Americans, I'm pretty, I think it's a reasonable comment to make. I think if you ask them, they'd probably express it in a bit more expressive terms than I just did.
Dust offs
This was a big innovation that the Americans had dedicated helicopters for as well. The ambulances and their name was dust off often was how they got that name, but didn't get the satisfactory answer but it meant that when a casualty was taken, occurred, the battalion could call on heli ambulance support, which was prompt, very prompt, and so that the, our people, our medics in the field would do their first aid on the casualty.
In a very short period of time, a heli ambulance would arrive, the dust off would arrive, the bloke would be loaded on board and off so he could be in a hospital in a matter of hours, sometimes less. It was truly a remarkable thing and we had no experience with that at all. It was a game changer and that was right through the whole of the Vietnam War. The Americans, but eventually had an independent unit, a medical brigade, and they were responsible for all in-country evacuations or wounded casualties and they were then handed over to USAF for out of country evacuation and it was controlled.
Once a helicopter picked up a load of casualties, a medical regulator who was in charge would directed them to which hospital they would go. It was just so good. If the helicopter crew, for instance, reported they had a man with a gunshot wound or a head injury, they would direct them to a neurosurgical hospital. It was really an important factor in the management of our casualties.
Tropical medicine study and return to Vietnam
After the first trip, I went to England to study tropical medicine, amused me a bit. I'd been in Malaya for a couple of years in Vietnam for one year, the Army decided to send me to England to do this training. I didn't mind that at all. I was aware that there was a very good school of tropical medicine in Sydney but they chose to send me to the London School of Tropical Medicine, so I accepted that and when I completed, as well as doing that study, I was able to visit and be attached to a quite a number of British army units in England.
One of them was the Parachute Field Ambulance, and I learned a lot there and then I returned to Australia and I was promoted and I was in charge of the 2nd Military Hospital in Ingleburn and that was, again, an important experience because that was the reception hospital for casualties returning from Vietnam. So we were seeing what was happening and more than that, our surgical staff was getting experience in the sort of wounds that were being incurred by our people.
So, I was happily posted there for a couple of years and then up to Vietnam again and eventually posted to 1 Australian Field Hospital and that was probably the keynote experience of my military experience. I was in charge of a wonderful team of people who were very dedicated towards the cause, very dedicated to looking after our wounded people, our sick people. They were a very good team.
Improvements to the Field Hospital (Vung Tau)
I was very surprised at the progress that our people had made when I RAR arrived. We were given a virtually a manager of a field and "That's where you live men", so we had to construct the, all the engineering, health engineering to live comfortably and safely but that was all in tents. The battalion worked very hard. They would do an operation and come back, have a, only a short spell and then out again and so it was tough work for them.
Just before I left, Bill Rogers had arrived in country with 2 Field Ambulance and they were going, they were located in Vung Tau. So I went down there with Bill to have a look at the site. It was virtually on the beach on the South China Sea, you know, in some ways a good location, pretty difficult to operate a field hospital or a camp, a Field Ambulance on the sand under tents. So they had difficulties but when I arrived back there a few years later at 69, there was virtually an Australian town.
Everything was there, including, you know, the hospital was functional, it was air conditioned. It was still being developed but everything was under control, roads, airfields, a swimming pool, everything. It was, not for at the hospital, in the area. So everybody was living, every man or woman that living in the Vung Tau area lived in some form of hutted accommodation with all the facilities to live comfortably, or reasonably comfortably. It was a major change. I was really surprised. The engineers must have worked really hard for that period of time.
Teamwork
I was still very interested in tropical medicine, that was a feature in the medical wards but I became more and more involved in the mechanism of receiving badly wounded men and resuscitating them and getting them into the operating theatre, so, yes, I worked with that. I had a really good support in the administrative staff and I could communicate with them all the time. It wasn't a problem, I don't think it was a problem. The unit was really a self-starting outfit. Nobody needed to be pushed.
They knew what they had to do. They wanted to do it and did it well. The nurses were only twelve in number, 10 or 12 in number and was a 100-bed hospital. Take the operating theatre, for instance, I would, there was a staff of 12, but only one nurse, the rest of them were known as operating theatre technicians, good lads. Some of them were national servicemen, probably half of them were national servicemen.
So it meant that their journey, in one year, they had been inducted into the military, they'd been trained at best in basic military training, then they'd been trained as army medics and then gone on and trained as operating theatre technicians. All this in one year and the next thing they were in Vietnam at the coalface. Now that put a lot of pressure on the nurse who was running the operating theatre.
She had, she was responsible for maintaining the standards and it was a classic example of how they worked together as a team. I knew that lady pretty well, actually, and I'm sure she'll talk about that later, but it was great teamwork. The lads really looked up to her and that was generally right through the whole hospital. Some people have mentioned there was a bit of antipathy towards the girls when they first came up because the men had been doing the work and they, there was some resentment. I didn't see any evidence of that.
The girls were really responsible for maintaining the standard, and to do that they were required to do on the job training to get the skills up that they required and in general terms, they succeeded in doing that very well. I would think in today's situation, an operating theatre with 12 people running it, that would be 12 nurses, all trained, one nurse and the lads, the theatre techs. Some of them were regular soldiers and had a fair bit of experience but, as I say, some of them were national servicemen. They had no experience. So it was really a remarkable achievement.
Receiving dust offs
The first thing would happen would be that we would get a communication from a helicopter carrying wounded, that they were inbound. They would tell us how many they had on board and they would then tell us how many minutes before they were going to arrive. So that meant that our little hospital had to come to a state of readiness.
We used to send off a siren, which used to be, would stop you in your tracks, not only for the hospital. Everybody in the logistic support group area could hear that and they realised that once again, wounded people were on their way in. So they would arrive at our Helipad, our call sign was vampire, and so they'd arrive on the helicopter. We would do a rapid assessment of how badly injured the man was.
We would make sure that he had no weapons on him, especially if they were wounded prisoners of war, make sure they were unarmed and not going to cause problems. They would be then hand-carried down to the triage area where they would be examined carefully. We used to strip off their clothes. This was done while on a stretcher on the floor, strip of their clothes and then they would be lifted bodily off the stretcher on to an examination trolley, resuscitation trolley so we could examine the under surface of his back and his buttocks and all that, make sure there weren't wounds on the back that we couldn't see, didn't want to miss them.
And so then he'd be laid down and the process of pain relief when resuscitation would take place. We became pretty good at that. New techniques were developed, especially as far as pain relief was concerned, a very important thing to do and the process would proceed until the resuscitation was brought to the point where he was fit to go into the operating theatre to have surgery done on his wounds.
Some of the wounds that these fellow suffered were very severe, horrific and there's no doubt in my mind that if we didn't have the heli ambulance support available, under conventional methods of transport that were experienced in previous wars, many of those men would not have arrived alive at the hospital, no doubt about that at all. In saying that, it meant that the pressure was on us to look after badly injured people and I think it's a, we were very proud of the fact that, I can't remember the exact percentage, but the boys at reunions remind me that 98 per cent of the people who arrived alive were saved, which is pretty good.
Informing the patient
Many of them were as a result of mine, anti-personnel mines and devastating injury to the lower limbs and the frequency of amputations of limbs caused concern. I can remember a couple of the surgeons became very emotional about the fact that they had to do that procedure and so we decided we'd have a committee of three people, me, well, the CO and the surgeon and one other person, one other doctor and we'd say, yeah, we agree that this man is to have that and then we would take it in turns to inform the bloke what was going to happen and they generally knew, I mean, they knew that they were in a bad way and I can remember, I can't remember the exact fellow, but it's always in my mind that when I went over there to one young bloke to say, "Look, your limb is pretty badly smashed", he said, "Yeah mate, I've have had a dekko. It's rat shit, isn't it?" And he knew it had to go and, you know, they were interesting people, tough, tough guys.
Surgical capacity
We had one bloke who is a vascular surgeon and good, but he was a good general surgeon too, and, as I say, they were all members of the ADF as reservists and so they used to come up mainly for a period of three months. Some of them, quite a few of them stayed for six and they had the advantage of understanding the sort of surgical procedures that they might have to be involved with and they used to go around the various hospitals in their city and, you know, do a bit of thoracic surgery.
Nothing heroic as far as neurosurgery was concerned, but how to enter and decompress a brain but, having said that, you have to understand that by the time, we're talking now, 69, 70, the Americans had very specialised units around. So, if we had a man who had a severe head injury, probably we wouldn't expect to receive him. Probably he would go to a neurosurgical hospital but if we needed to transfer him, no problem, it was that sort of interconnectedness that made things really work.
It was a special, the Americans could produce a specialised burns unit, everything, thoracic unit and as I say, a neurosurgical unit. So, we were all operating together. One of the things that I probably should have said is that the medical regulating officer that I have spoken to you about, he was regulating the heli air ambulance support, he also wanted to know the working capacity of our hospital. So, if we were working hard, he would probably try not to send more casualties to us. He would send casualties to a hospital that was probably not working as hard and so that was part of the deal, part of the process of looking after the casualties.
Blood transfusions
I think we all, a lot of us became skilled in resuscitation, you know, airway management. Some of the equipment that we had was pretty basic but it improved while we were there. For instance, I think, you know, if you go into a hospital now and have an intravenous line put up, you wouldn't even, nobody would even think about the equipment that they're using but it was only in Vietnam that they first introduced that sort of intravenous catheter. Simple things like that which made such a lot of difference, so much easier to use so, you know, quicker.
So we were pretty good at resuscitating people. One of the things that was innovative was that we were concerned about the blood supply through the system, by the time we got the blood through the American system, I always understood it had been mainly collected in Japan, but by the time we got it, it was pretty old and so we were running into certain complications and we thought it would be better if these young fellows had fresh blood. So, we decided to collect blood from our own people in the Vung Tau area, in the logistic support group.
And the young people, they just, you know, after a while, when they knew casualties were coming in, they could hear the siren they used to collect, ready to offer their blood. They'd even form up in blood groups and some of the blood that we got from, taken from those young men didn't see the inside of a refrigerator and I make the joke that depending on the time of day it was collected, there probably could be a reasonable dose of medicinal alcohol as well but it, we thought at the time that that really did improve the outcome for our people getting fresh blood.
I don't know whether you could do it today. See, we didn't know some the hazards of, for blood transfusion that are available now, that are present now, like hepatitis B and C and HIV, they were not around at the time … It was innovative, no doubt about it. I can remember one of the criticisms or potential criticism, it wasn't a criticism, was a query, "Have you considered perhaps one of these donors might have syphilis?"
We had considered that and along the line of the treatment, a lot of these blokes were getting quite large doses of penicillin, so if there's any hanging around, it would have been promptly dealt with. No, we didn't and it, syphilis wasn't a prevalent disorder in Vietnam troops and we didn't have, we thought about it but we didn't think that was a problem.
Managing mortally wounded patients
I remember one boy died virtually as soon as he arrived. He, I mean, there was no conversation, nothing. He just died before we could do anything but I remember another lad who was really badly injured, and he knew. He knew, too, and I said to him, "Perhaps you need a, your minister of religion more than you need us." He agreed. He knew and he accepted that and so he died very quickly and with his priest with him and I think that in that circumstance, that was the best we could do.
I remember one female prisoner of war, she was a mine lifter and the mine had detonated while she was lifting it. So her injuries were horrific and she was blind and there was no chance of survival. So, we made her comfortable and allowed her to slip away, which didn't take long again, either, she died very quickly. And it was a tribute to the fact of how quickly people could be picked up and put into you from the casualty scene to the hospital.
They were so rapid. Sometimes it was under an hour or an hour or something, you know, as short as that. Mainly it was a bit longer, but it was in terms of hours, not days and that time in Australia, right now, today, that time can't be achieved. So, you know, it was really an important factor in the survival of wounded people but having said that, we were conscious that some of these people had terrible trauma and we were aware that their rehabilitation back in Australia was going to be difficult and, indeed, some of those people underwent surgical procedures for quite a long period of time when they got back to Australia and we were always concerned about the psychological aspects of that, but our job was to do the best we could to keep them alive and that's what we did but we were conscious, very conscious, and we've met up with a lot of the people who were badly injured.
I'm not sure whether I should mention names, but there's a bilateral amputee from Western Australia who entered parliament, as far as I know, he has led a good, happy life and I think a lot of the men did do well. I met a lot of other men that had suffered serious injuries and they picked up their pieces pretty well. I think in general, the support back in Australia, apart from a few aspects of returning to an unfriendly sort of a community in some aspects, was pretty good.
We were pretty distressed that, and I witnessed this back in Australia both before I went to Vietnam for the second time and when I got back, there were people in the community who would abuse the wounded. I felt that was disgusting. One or two pollies, I reckon if they were around within a metre, I think I probably would have had to deal with them. It was, it was pretty hard, I think, and I've often pondered whether that sort of thing had had much of an adverse effect on the psychological health that had on many of our veterans. I think probably, I think it would be a significant factor.
Exemplary behaviour of the nurses
They were young, feisty women, let me tell you, having been the commanding officer of the only unit that had eligible young women around had a few challenges, but not serious ones. No, they were good girls and they worked hard. You're, right, they worked long hours. They were supposed to work long shifts, I think it was in the order of 10 hours a day, six days a week, something like that. We relaxed as much as we could. We had a, the girls were highly respected and we did what we could to relieve the pressure on them but it was, you know, we had the advantage of the beach.
The girls could go down there if they wished, they could go for a swim and, as I say, they were young people, and they were living their life to the fullest under the circumstances and I think they did it very well and appropriately. As far as psychological concerns for the girls was concerned, I think, really, we looked hard at that and we did evacuate two of our nurses with psychological problems, but they were more related to social issues than their experiences at the time in the hospital but I'm aware of the fact that a lot of the girls have had problems since they returned to Australia.
You used to get some sort of an inkling into how upset they were when it came time to evacuate people back to Australia. We used to have a, the RAAF used to put in a Hercules evacuation aircraft every fortnight, more often if we needed it and so we used to get these young people lined up ready to fly back to Australia via Malaya. Before they left, everybody that wasn't doing anything, even if they were doing something, would assemble to sort of say goodbye.
It was a fairly emotive and social occasion and I was aware that some of the girls who were present for that sort of occasion were very concerned about how these young people were going to be able to deal with their life back in Australia and it was no surprise to me that when we got back to Australia to learn that some of the girls were indeed suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but unless we were, no, I don't think we missed it.
There was no real evidence of any serious psychological disorder amongst the girls at the time. In fact, I'd say the morale of the unit was pretty high … They lived in a compound that was surrounded by a fence, I don't know that the fence would have done any major protection but, I forget what they used to call it, but one of the nurses could probably remind you of that.
They were highly regarded and they were cared for, and nobody, I would think that anybody who behaved badly towards them would have been dealt with fairly harshly by the soldiers themselves and apart from, as I say, there were a couple of social issues where I think people behaved badly, I don't know that there was any real problem, you know, the girls themselves behaved very well, I mean, they were sensible, they were fun loving, sure, but they were sensible people who behaved properly and that's about it. As far as I was concerned they were not a problem. They were just good, hard-working people that we were used to working with anyway and there was no, you know, no, as far as I was concerned, no administrative difficulties at all. There was never any discipline troubles. They behaved very well indeed and worked hard.
Treating casualties from Operation Hammersley
That particular operation was a bit of a disaster, and there were a lot of serious casualties. I can't remember now how many casualties we received, but they just seemed to be coming, kept coming and I know that we had to work for a long, I know we, I think we were going for about 36 hours or something like that, and it meant that we had to make sure that the surgeons were getting adequate relief. I remember, one of our surgeons, I said to him, "Peter, we're going to send you up for a rest." "Oh, no" he said, "No, no, I'm okay" and I said, "No, please do what you're told." "Okay."
So a couple of the lads took him up, and they reckon he was asleep before he was horizontal. Four hours later, he's back bright eyed, bushy tailed, and ready to get into it. We just had to do the job and I think in their life in general, surgeons are used to doing that sort of thing. The support from the unit was great, you know, I can remember at one point feeling pretty tired and all the rest of it and what happens, I think it was in the early hours of the morning, I can't remember, in comes the Bay Marie from, you know, from the cooks providing food and drink and sustenance for you to have a meal break and get on with it and it was that sort of community spirit that just kept us going and, yes, the memory of that period is even though it's 50 years ago, it's still fairly strong, how well the, it proved to me how well our unit could work. It was really great.
Denis Gibbons, war photojournalist
Well, Denis, interesting man. He was in country in 1966 when I was in country, but we didn't meet and I didn't meet him until I came back to the hospital in 69 and Denis, very flamboyant, outspoken man who had been there for a fair while. Sixty-six he arrived, I think, and I was advised that he should not be permitted to use our officers mess and I was a bit surprised at that and that wasn't the only piece of request that was made to me that I didn't follow up on. So I just do what I normally do, met up with Denis and said, "Look mate, you can use our mess as long as you behave like a responsible citizen.
You you'll have no problems." And we had no problems with Denis. He was a charming bloke. He was an interesting man. He was a botanist and I found that intriguing that here he is, a botanist running around with a camera, getting himself into all sorts of troubles. He was intelligent and he behaved like a gentleman with the ladies and with the officers of the hospital. I don't know that anybody ever had anything but admiration for Denis.
We were all intrigued by the fact that he used to go out on operations with the men. We were always aware, or I was aware that he had a terrific rapport with the soldiers, the average soldier. They used to come to Denis for advice I think that used to bother me a bit. But no, seriously, he was a good bloke and I enjoyed him and one of the things that I don't think we realised at the time, that Denis was compiling a record, a photographic record which we now understand to be outstanding and I think it was, I'm not exactly sure when, but he came and said, look, he's got a commission from a magazine in Australia, I thought it was Woman's Weekly, but that might be wrong to do an article on the nurses.
And I said, "Go for it." But I said, "Look, Denis, while you're at it, how about you photograph the hospital?" Well, I didn't realise what that meant. Denis photographed the hospital, every aspect of it and now is a terrific record. Without that intervention, without that effort by Denis, we would never have had the record that we've got. It's invaluable and I'm glad that Shaun's got hold of it and is looking after it properly.
Specialist medical staff and leave to Australia
We had a specialist in medicine as a general physician, we had a psychiatrist, a pathologist and two surgeons and two anaesthetists. We had two surgical teams, and they were all reservists, and most of them stayed for three months because they were, you know, they had busy practices and things like that. Some of them, a couple I can think of, some for six months and there was one example, one fellow who, he'd taken the opportunity of knowing or researching the sort of injuries that were being handled in Vietnam.
And he'd done some work, you know, he'd prepared himself by going to various specialists and, you know, thoracic surgery, you know, and he came up and he did some really, he was well prepared to do some really tough surgery and I remember, drew the admiration of the American consultant surgeon and it was, no doubt it saved the bloke's life, it was really very good work.
So, yeah, we were well served by our specialists, I think we would say that almost without exception they were very highly proficient and did a good job. I was all set to get home at one point and I was advised that my replacement was ill. I never ever found out who he was but would I be prepared to stick around for another six months? So I agreed to that and an interesting thing happened when the commander of the force learned of it, or he approved it, he said, "But you're going home for some leave, young fella."
So I actually went back to Australia for a couple of weeks then went back again. I was, I wouldn't, I don't know whether you'd say enjoying it was the right expression, but I was quite prepared to stay for another six months. It was a, you know, we, it was a really good unit and it was a very rewarding experience to be with the people that were there.
Return to Australia
We just knew that the thing was winding down and I just resumed what you normally do and as a medico back in Australia. So there was no big difficulty for me and I went to St Vincent's in Sydney and did some extra work, extra training. No, I just slipped back into my usual life pattern. Don't think it's changed much.
When I got to the point that I thought procedure work was a bit too onerous and you need to be on the ball I decided to stop hospital work and ended up my time as a semi-retired doctor working with the Defence Force and I did that until I retired … I left the Army in about 78, I think, yeah, and, no, I was happy I had done enough and, you know, things were looking good. I just had a comfortable life. I was happy doing what I was doing.
Character of Denis Gibbons
Denis, look, he was, he had an illness. I mean he was in hospital a couple of times. If he was a soldier, he would have been evacuated. I told him that, didn't get much ice. No, he was wounded a couple of times. He just, look, some people didn't enjoy Denis but they didn't understand him and I can remember one officer in particular, a commanding officer of an infantry battalion whom I knew very well, but only met him there but we established a good relationship.
I said, "Meet the bloke, talk to the bloke, lay down your perimeters and you'll find you've got a mate." So the next thing Denis is happily ensconced with that mob. He actually lived at the Task Force. He knew lots and lots of soldiers. He'd been on many operations not only operations with the Australians, he'd been on operations with other people, Americans and I think in some ways there might be people who envied that experience, the broadness of his experience.
Dennis, was, you know, he wouldn't stand back, he'd tell them, he told them what he thought, one of the things I liked about the bloke. He was a very vibrant, interesting man and I don't think there were too many mean bones in Denis's body. He was a very generous, very friendly fellow. He was extremely polite to people who treated him well but I would imagine that if Denis was in conversation with somebody who'd said something ridiculous, he would be very quick to point it out and there's not much wrong with that.
