By Brian John Pollock, Brighton, VIC
In 1966 I was called up for a two year stint of National Service in the Australian Army. After six months basic training I was posted to C Squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment. I spent the next 18 months as a crew member of a Centurion tank. I served in Vietnam in 1968. This is the background to my poem below.
Called up for National Service in ‘66
Training for a task no-one could fix.
Conscripted in the prime of life
At just twenty one yet to take a wife.
They broke me down and called me a dill
Taught me how to maim and kill.
But you’ll never see the whites of their eyes
No, you’ll never see the whites of their eyes
They handed me a rifle and said, “It’s not a game”
But an instrument of death clearly plain.
Young men from all walks of life they came
Mostly non-entities but some of fame.
I learn’t to shoot and developed skills
Got fit by running up the nearby hills.
But you’ll never see the whites of their eyes
No, you’ll never see the whites of their eyes.
Before long off to the Vietnam war
On a path I’d never travelled before.
But this war was different, unsurpassed
Not hand to hand like in the past.
My war was fought using tank machines
Killing from a distance stifling the screams.
So you’ll never see the whites of their eyes
No, you’ll never see the whites of their eyes.
I saw things that made me wince
Things wrongly disclosed by the son of a Prince.
When my tour ended in ‘68
I returned home to be confronted with hate.
My fiancee and family welcomed me back
It was now time to get my life back on track.
And I never saw the whites of their eyes
No, I never saw the whites of their eyes.
Glad you got through. I can’t imagine being a young bloke suddenly trained to kill them after doing a tour coming back to civvie street and people expecting you to be the same.
I’n glad you got through too. Let’s hope something like that does not happen again.
Hi big brother I remember the day your number came up i was out playing and told to come inside. The night you flew back into Essondon airport mum and dad and Lyn anxiously waiting. Mum said you looked like a bag of bones. We read your letters you sent nervously. How you managed to squeeze into the tank being so tall always amused mum. Regards
Andrew
Brian thank-you for your compelling stories and poems about your life as a solider in Vietnam… such important stories to tell and ones that have largely been unacknowledged. I remember the shock of realizing as a six year old that my beloved big brother could be conscripted and sent away to war. My best friends brother had already died in Vietnam. Only much later did I understand the terrible fallout for the young men whose number came up. Thank-you again for your writing.