‘It’s not like in the movies where you get screaming’
A Mackay Vietnam War veteran has reflected on his near-death experience but he believes he is lucky.
Mackay
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SHRAPNEL wounds from a dual landmine explosion rendered his body numb while a doctor punctured his chest forcing air into his blood-filled lungs.
But reflecting on the near-death experience, Mackay Vietnam War veteran Leslie Palmer said he was lucky.
"I was wounded but I was alive," Mr Palmer said.
"I didn't feel anything … there's no pain.
"It's not like in the movies where you get screaming and carrying on.
"It's nothing like that, everybody was in shock.
"You've got nine dead blokes laying around and maybe 16 wounded.
"They were our landmines that the enemies used to pinch and they used to bury them into the ground and just have these three little prongs sticking up."
Mr Palmer returned home to Australia after the incident, spending months recovering in Brisbane and relearning how to walk with his wife and newborn son by his side.
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They had married shortly before he left for the jungles of Vietnam, Mr Palmer having been conscripted at age 22 for the 8th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.
"I was married in October and went to Vietnam in November '69," he said.
"They never had enough regular soldiers to fill the quota of battalions going over there.
"(Conscription was) just like lotto … your birthday went into the barrel.
"Mine was the 27th of August and I was the lucky bloke."
He said he "took it in his stride" as a young man keen for adventure but his dad - who dealt with PTSD after fighting five years in World War II - refused to see him off.
"He knew what wars were about," Mr Palmer explained.
"Mum came down, my brother and my two sisters and my wife, over on the wharf at Hamilton (Brisbane) waving hooray to me on the aircraft carrier, but Dad wouldn't come anywhere near me.
"Not that he didn't like me, but he knew what I was going into."
As Mr Palmer sat on the ground pulling the weeds from around the Long Tan Cross at Mackay's Jubilee Park to prepare it for The Vietnam Veterans Day ceremony today, he said his unit's task was to patrol the rice paddies at night.
He described it as a hot and muggy jungle environment perhaps most like Eungella Rainforest if you had to choose a local comparison.
But looking up at the World War I cenotaph across the park, he remarked he still could not imagine what soldiers before him must have went through.
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Mr Palmer, who will lead the ceremony as the Mackay Veterans Group president, said it was important people continued commemorating those who had served or were still serving.
"You've got to remember it, or it's in vain," he said.
Australia fought in the Vietnam War from August 3, 1962 to December 2, 1972.
There will be a small ceremony today for Vietnam Veterans Day starting at 5.30pm near the memorial at Jubilee Park on Alfred St.
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