Vietnam Links
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This site contains a detailed database listing names of veterans who have passed away since return from Vietnam.
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AUSTRALIAN SERVICES PERSONNEL WHO GAVE THEIR ALL IN THE VIETNAM WAR 1962 - 1973
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The Vietnam Veterans Museum is Dedicated To Preserving & Exhibiting Memorabilia From Australia's Longest War !!
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Photographs by Australian Veterans of the Vietnam conflict
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Australian Veterans supporting Veterans
Veterans Support and Advocacy Service Australia Inc.VSASA, The Veterans Support and Advocacy Service Australia(Inc) is a Federal and State registered benevolent institute. Founded by veterans for veterans and owned and operated by veterans on a purely volunteer basis. This organization is for the benefit and use of all veterans of all conflicts, including members of the Australian Defence Force.
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 Pte Ray
Kermode -
9RAR
K.I.A
19/07/1969
South Vietnam
THE LONELY FORWARD SCOUT
Each man has his duty
Yes, each man has his job
And each one takes the chance
That he will stand before his God
But ask of any soldier
What he thinks of the scout
The one that leads the others
The lonely forward scout.
He's the first one into danger
The first to face the shots
He sees and hears what other miss
And reads right on the spot
For none may walk beside him
While he's up front, the scout
He's known as both the eyes and ears
The lonely forward scout
But man is man and life goes round
And returns to form a ring
The whispering of the leaves may mean
That death is on the wing
The rifles boom, the rockets crash
Many lives hand deep in doubt
His chest now but a crimson cloak
The lonely forward scout
And now there lies in our sunburnt land
Deep down beneath the earth
A boy who died a soldiers death
For all this it was worth
We were hit from every side it seemed
Just able to get out
But there up front, alone, he died
The lonely forward scout
written by:
S.A Evans WIA 19 July 1969
Eulogy for Ray Kermode
Killed in Action
Long Kahn Province, 19th July 1969
Mate of Don Tate
Webmaster of One Man's War
One Man's War -
The Perspective of a Baggy-Arse Infantryman
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A Bloody Disgrace -
Shellharbour Commerative Project
Lend your support against pathetic administration here
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Minefield of Misery
 The soldiers worked silently, spread out along the centre strip of the minefield.
The ground around them was pockmarked with hundreds of small mounds, revealing the deadly pattern of the mines they were arming.
Fifty metres away on either side a double row of fences stretched into the distance across the scrub and rice paddy fields. To the west, the Long Hai hills loomed over the flat landscape, their caves and jungle-clad slopes harbouring a Viet Cong base.
It was May 30, 1967. The wet season would soon arrive and the rush was on to finish the minefield.
Arming the mines was demanding and dangerous work. A momentary lapse of concentration could prove fatal.
When triggered, the American M16 anti-personnel mines - called "jumping jacks" - sent their high explosive charge to waist height before detonating.
Soldiers in the mine-laying teams were rotated through the tasks of arming, carrying and digging to prevent them becoming "stale" or careless.
After working for about an hour, three soldiers in the engineer team stopped for a smoko and gathered in the centre line. They chatted and smoked for 10 minutes and then returned to work.
As the group broke up and walked away one soldier, Sapper Terrence Renshaw, suddenly jerked backwards apparently realising that he had accidentally triggered a mine. He threw his arms outward. A split second later a mine bounded a metre into the air in front of him and exploded. Sapper Renshaw was killed instantly. The full force of the blast struck him in the upper body, the shrapnel tearing off his flak jacket. Another soldier was also wounded by shrapnel - The third man in the group was unscathed, Renshaw's body shielding him, but he suffered shock and blast effects. Renshaw's death went largely unnoticed by the public as just one more in the steadily mounting toll from Vietnam.
Within days his remains were returned to Australia and buried in Wangaratta cemetery.
Almost 21 years later, on April 25, 1988, the town finally commemorated Terry Renshaw's sacrifice. On that day Australian veterans of the Vietnam War took part for the first time in Anzac Day ceremonies in Wangaratta.
Before a large crowd at the Wangaratta cenotaph the local RSL president presented an Australian flag to the dead soldier's aged mother, Mrs Jessie Renshaw. She wept as she received it from her wheelchair. This flag was one of 500 carried by veterans in the welcome home parade six months earlier in Sydney on October 3, 1987. Each flag represented an Australian who died in Vietnam. Of the 500 Australians who died almost 100 were victims of mine incidents.
Terry Renshaw did not want to be a soldier. The 22-year-old national serviceman from Rutherglen was the youngest of six children.
He went to school in Wangaratta and served his apprenticeship there to become a cabinet maker and joiner.
In February 1966 he was called up for National Service and, after training, was posted as a sapper to 1 Field Squadron, Royal Australian Engineers.
Although originally reluctant to go into the army, once serving he wanted to go to Vietnam. His father later recalled: "Terry knew that there was a job to do and he wanted to be part of it."
In Vietnam the young soldier, nicknamed Butch, was well liked and popular within his unit. A non-drinker and non-smoker, he was regarded as an outstanding soldier by his commanding officer. In April 1967 Sapper Renshaw's troop was assigned to work on the construction of a barrier minefield in the south of Phuoc Tuy province.
On May 19 Renshaw wrote to his parents: "For the past month we have been laying a minefield. I didn't tell you before because I knew you would only worry, but now it is finished and I am back in camp. We have got two days off now, as we were working from 7 in the morning till 6 at night, so we more than earned them."
He also mentioned that he had been close to a terrible accident. "The fellow that was killed had only been up here 2 months", he wrote. "Also he had only been married a short time. The fellow that stood on [the mine] came up with myself, he is all right, or as well as could be expected, he lost his leg and one hand.
"I hope I never see anything like it again. Also just after we finished one section, two Yanks walked into it and one was killed and one lost his leg, so all in all it was a bad job and thank God that it's finished."
But the job was not finished. Renshaw's troop was soon
back to the mine-laying task. Less than two weeks later he was killed.
One soldier later recalled that on the day he died "Butch in his quiet way had told us his opinions on our job in Vietnam: he said that it was a job which needed doing and so he'd do his best at it.
If I get killed over here, he said, I'll die doing my part but I hope I
don't because it would sure hurt my parents. It will sure be good to get home and see them again."
Terry Renshaw was the fifth allied soldier to die during the laying of the minefield. A further eight were also wounded before the task was completed.
Renshaw ended his last letter to his family by remarking on the mounting toll of "friendly" casualties from the mines.
"So all in all it has been a very expensive kind of a minefield," he said. Worse was still to come.
The barrier minefield claimed many more Australian lives over the following years and it came to be widely regarded as the Australian Army's biggest blunder of the Vietnam War.
When completed by June 1967, the minefield ran for liken and contained almost 23,000 M16 antipersonnel mines within a 100m-wide strip of cleared ground between a double row of fences.
More than half the mines were randomly fitted with anti-lift devices, consisting of an attached M26 hand grenade, to prevent enemy interference.
The minefield was constructed to deny the Viet Cong access to their main re-supply and recruitment areas and to isolate their stronghold in the Long Hai hills. For almost six months it was successful in containing the Viet Cong. Communist Vietnamese histories acknowledge the difficulties the minefield posed. But undertakings between the Australian and South Vietnamese forces to secure the minefield soon proved' ineffectual.
The minefield was not effectively patrolled nor was it covered by fire, especially by night.
Local Viet Cong forces breached the minefield and then removed large numbers of the mines.
They displayed great bravery and ingenuity - about 30 National Liberation Front members died in their attempts-and soon learned to lift the mines and redeploy them against Australian forces.
The minefield became a source of supply for the enemy, enabling them to practise their own form of mine warfare.
The continuing existence of the barrier minefield became an enduring dilemma for Australian soldiers. By mid-1969, Australian casualties from enemy-deployed mines - many of them apparently lifted from the barrier minefield - reached crisis levels.
The minefield had long outlived its purpose and had to be destroyed. That created further dangers and difficulties. After two unsuccessful attempts by army engineers, in July 1969 they finally invented an effective means of destroying the minefield.
Not until the end of May 1970 though - three years after it was completed - was the minefield at last declared cleared.
By the time the last Australian soldiers left Vietnam 18 months later, it was widely believed that more than half the Australian casualties from mines had been "caused by our own mines".
Ashley Ekins is a military historian at the Australian War Memorial. This account is based on On the Offensive. The Australian Army in the Vietnam War, January 1967 - June 1968 by Ian Mcneill and Ashley Ekins, published by Allen & Unwin in Association with the Australian War Memorial.
Book available from
This story appeared in the Herald Sun August 16, 2003
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