I left my heart to the sappers round Khe Sanh
And I sold my soul with my cigarettes to the black market man
I’ve had the Vietnam cold turkey
From the ocean to the Silver City
And it’s only other vets could understand.

I first met Col when we moved here to Bridgetown in 2000. I had worked with his partner Bob in the nineties when I was at Royal Perth Hospital in the capital. Col had quite a few health issues and was on a pension although he would only have been in his early fifties then. He struggled with a stammer but still had a great sense of humour.

Col had been a ‘Nasho’ in the mid sixties. That is a twenty year old who ‘wins’ a ticket from the national conscription lottery to go and fight for the Australian Defence Forces in the Vietnam war. He never talked to me of his experiences in ‘Nam and had only decided to march for the first time in the Anzac Day commemorations that very year.

I was making coffee one morning when Bob and Col dropped by. I switched on the coffee grinder and poor Col almost fell off his chair. He quickly laughed it off but I caught a glimpse of the absolute fear that this man must had gone through.

In 1978 in Adelaide, South Australia, pub rockers Cold Chisel released their first single ‘Khe Sanh’ written by pianist Don Walker. More a country style ballad, it was banned on the national broadcaster for containing the lyrics ‘their legs were often open, but their minds were always closed’. It only reached number 41 on the national charts but funnily enough number 4 on Adelaide’s 5KA – run by the Methodist Church !

Incidentally, the battle of Khe Sanh was fought between the United States Marines and the Viet Cong, January to July 1969, Quang Tri Provence, Republic of Vietnam with only air bomber support from the Australian Air Force.

Over the years that song has gone on to become an Australian anthem, revered as much as Waltzing Matilda or Advance Australia Fair. It was rated in Triple Ms ‘Ozzest’ 100 ‘the most Australian song of all time’ above Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’. Cold Chisel had a series of hits in the eighties and lead singer, Glaswegian Jimmy Barnes, went solo and dominated the Oz rock scene the following decade.

The band, who broke up in 1983 apparently, are doing yet another ‘farewell’, their 50^th Anniversary Tour this November.

Col and Bob moved about 15 years ago. Sadly Bob then passed away and Col had a series of strokes that has rendered him unable to speak.

Though not a witness to this song on it’s first release, I think of Col, his fallen veteran comrades and the lottery that is life when I listen to it.

We will abolish conscription forewith. It must be done not just because a volunteer army means a better army, but because we profoundly believe that it is intolerable that a free nation at peace and under no threat should cull by lottery the best of its youth to provide defence on the cheap.

[Australian Labor Party policy statement, 1972]

(Post by John Allan from Bridgetown, Western Australia – June 2024)