Moment of silence dredges up painful memories
‘You go back to that time when you were struggling and when you lost your mates’
Mackay
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THEIR stories were separated by three decades, across three countries and two conflicts but the Australian soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder in silence on Remembrance Day.
Vietnam veteran Ken Higgins and Afghanistan veteran Mark Preston were among 150 people who waited in silence under the shade of the Jubilee Park fig tree waiting for the bugle's call.
Both men were only 20 when they were called onto the battlefields for the first time, Mr Higgins as a two-year conscript and Mr Preston fresh from high school.
Mr Preston, who lives in Blacks Beach, said he signed up looking for adventure and soon found himself at the heart of an Australian-led peacekeeping mission in East Timor.
"I knew my job, so I went out and did what I was trained to do," he said.
But when Mr Preston returned to active duty as a mission support officer three years later, in 2006, the sphere of war had shifted to Afghanistan.
"It was completely different theatre to East Timor," he said.
"The East Timor airfield was smaller than the one in Mackay.
"Suddenly I was in a huge operation … one of the busiest airports in the world with military and civilian aircraft."
Mr Preston said at the Kabul base evening rocket attacks became a way of life.
"It was a danger that was there, but you didn't think about it," Mr Preston said.
"You didn't worry about it, you had more important things to worry about."
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Mr Preston said by working on the military aircraft he would watch his friends and colleagues leave, not knowing what could happen to them.
And on May 30, 2011 one of his team did not return.
Mr Preston said 27-year-old Australian soldier Lieutenant Marcus Sean Case was killed when he was thrown from an Australian CH-47D Chinook helicopter.
"I was working in maintenance on that aircraft," Mr Preston said.
"That knocked me around a bit."
Mackay sub-branch president Ken Higgins teared up at the Remembrance Day ceremony thinking about the friends he left behind in Vietnam.
"What comes back to you, you go back to that time when you were struggling and when you lost your mates," Mr Higgins said.
"The emotions of fighting for your life, it never leaves you."
Mr Higgins said he was conscripted for two years in Vietnam.
"Conscripts who were dragged off the streets … and six months later you're fighting for your life," he said.
"I had my 21st birthday in Vietnam in the bush with no grog, just nothing," he said.
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Mr Higgins said the moment that haunted him was the death of his friend, Robert 'Jock' Buchan, who was killed in an ambush on December 11, 1969.
"We remember him all year round, but particularly today," Mr Higgins said.
"He'll never be forgotten.
"This is a time to reach out to our friends, and the ones that never came home.
"And the ones that are wounded, both physically and mentally."
Mr Higgins used his time at the ceremony to not only memorialise the past, but to remind the crowd of the current needs of Australian servicemen and women by calling for the RSL sub branch to be given a home.
"We need a roof over our heads," he said.
"We deserve our own home, our own museum and our own memories.
"We need to close ranks to look after these younger ones."
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