In the 1990s I was working up on an iron ore mine, I was not drinking on site, I hit the gym hard and read books in my off-time. I was not going down the wet mess much, I was not socialising with the guys, why would I as I spent over 12 hours a day with them. I did not dislike them, spending time alone was good, they drank a lot back then, they drank a lot.

However, I was getting some grief for not socialising, so on a shift change from nightshift to dayshift, I ended up down the wet mess for drinks. I was chatting with the leading hand from the mill control room, there was beer and music on the juke box. He said to me, watch this and went up to the juke box and put the Cold Chisel classic song Khe Sahn on. This 1978 country-rock song is about an Australian Vietnam vet returning home and facing disillusionment to his life back in Australia.

We had this older unassuming 992B loader operator get up and walk out of the room, he returned when the song was over. This was not a toilet break, the favourite song of most Australians young and old had a pretty big effect on him. Clearly this had happened earlier, the mill control room leading hand was a pretty bright guy, he was very observant as well, he noticed something that the other guys had not. He pointed this out to me, he went and played Khe Sahn on purpose, clearly this song had a pretty big effect on him, that was for sure.

So I wandered over to this guy and asked him what just happened, he sat in silence for what seemed like ages and then said “The Australian Government used to pay me to kill Gooks.” Now I apologise for my blatantly racist sentence, for historical accuracy, I needed to write it exactly as he told me. I was sitting there in silence too, my facial expression was enough for him. The term Gook was a racist and highly degrotary term used for the Vietiamise in the Vietnam War, pretty sure it was an American term that was picked up by the Australians too.

I was trying to work out exactly what he had said, the Australian Government sent forces to Vietnam in the 1960s to support the United States in the Vietnam War. I understood that, but the Australian Government was doing exactly what he had stated, sending soldiers overseas to kill the people defending their country. That really surprised me, here was this skinny old guy whom I used to speak to on the job. I was always respectful to him but I never paid him much attention. The other sentence that stuck with me was “you don’t bring ammo back” and this is why I recalled this story was when I was discussing with a lawyer. We were preparing a response and I recounted this story to him, I did not want to hold back, if we had the ammo [we did] then we were going to expend it.

He broke his silence to tell me he was a door gunner on a Bell Huey in the Vietnam War. He spoke about how he fired a M60 machine gun, he showed me the damage to his hands from the vibration and recoil. This was a pretty dangerous job, here you were in the open hanging on the side of a Huey helicopter coming in for hot insertions and extractions, when I say hot, I mean coming in under fire and either dropping off or picking up soldiers and/or wounded. Whilst I was not too impressed with his language, I kept my mouth shut as I wanted to listen to his story, he had never spoken of it before and this was the one and only time he did.