Long journey home

By Kath Gannaway
LANCE Corporal Richard Parker, Private Peter Gillson, Private David Fisher, Flying Officer Michael Herbert, Pilot Officer Robert Carver, Lance Corporal John Gillespie.
These names will be known to the Vietnam veterans who gather in Lilydale on Sunday to commemorate Vietnam Veterans Day.
They are the men who were left behind in Vietnam but who now rest on Australian soil, thanks to Operation Aussies Home.
Boronia resident Jim Bourke, president of OAH, will be guest speaker at the Yarra Valley Vietnam Veterans Day Combined Service which will be held at the Lilydale Cenotaph at 10.45am.
Mr Bourke has been the driving force behind OAH which he started in 2002.
He arrived in Vietnam in June 1965 as platoon commander in charge of 30 soldiers and in January 1966 was one of the casualties during a battle in which half of his 22 men were either killed or wounded.
It was a meeting with an American soldier in 1968, Sergeant First Class Anastacio Montez, that ultimately sparked unflinching resolve, described by some as ‘pig-headed’ and ‘obsessive’, to bring Australia’s missing six home.
Montez was killed in May 1969 but Bourke did not find out until the late 1990s that his body had not been recovered, and decided to investigatge the likely whereabouts of the body of his old associate.
In the process he learned that six Australian soldiers had also never been returned to their families and that the Australian Government was not interested in their recovery.
Mr Bourke says he now has a better understanding of the various reasons why the Australian Government did not initially support his efforts.
OAH persevered with scrupulous research which included talking with Australian and Vietnamese soldiers for first-hand accounts which ultimately led to recovering the remains of Parker and Gillson in April 2007.
Government interest was sparked and, with continued pressure and assistance from OAH and the families, the remaining four men were recovered over the next 27 months.
Working with the families and comrades of the six soldiers has been gut-wrenchingly emotional at times and Mr Bourke says it is still not easy to talk of some of the things he and the OAH members have been through at home and back in Vietnam over the past nine years.
“If I have been through some emotional times, just think of what these families, and their mates, have been through,” he said.
He tells of one soldier who has counted every day, one day at a time, since the day in Vietnam when he left his mate on the hill.
“We have to understand how the families and comrades go through this, what they need and, believe it or not, it appears that what they really need is a body … and a proper funeral.”
Mr Bourke is currently doing research with Victoria University on bereavement and grief in an MIA context to gain a better understanding of how the families and comrades coped in the years where they and their missing loved ones and mates were in no-man’s land.
He says the actions of OAH and other private researchers, such as those involved in the recoveries from Fromelles, have had a considerable impact on the government which created in July last year, a unit especially to cater for unrecovered war casualties.
The Yarra Valley Vietnam Veterans Day Combined Service is an initiative of the Vietnam Veterans Community, Outer Eastern Sub-branch Vietnam Veterans Association, Healesville, Lilydale, Upper Yarra, Warburton and Yarra Glen RSL sub-branches and the National Serviceman’s Association.
Veterans are asked to assemble at 10.15am at the old fire station on Maroondah Highway, Lilydale for the march at 10.45am and service at 11am.
A lunch and fellowship will follow at Lilydale RSL.
Members of the public are invited, and encouraged, to attend.
For further information Contact Eric Dosser on 0427 040 838, Dennis Reeves on 5966 2667 or visit www.yarravalleyvv.au.com.