Memorial day, August 16, 1998
Speech by Air Vice Marshall Mac Weller AM (Rtd)

Salutations; The Hon Tim Fischer, Deputy Prime Minister; The Hon Bromwyn Bishop, Minister for Defence Industry, Science and Personnel; The Hon Bob Debus, State Member for the Blue Mountains; Honourable Members of Federal and State parliaments; Lord Mayor and Mayors; General Pearson; Representatives from the Armed Services of Australia, New Zealand and the United States and the NSW Police Force; Mr Ian Humby, Vice-president Blue Mountains Vietnam Veterans & Associated Forces; Mrs Field, Mrs Jewry, Mrs Barnes; Other dignitaries and ladies and gentlemen; And of course my colleagues, those very distinguished and special people - the veterans of Vietnam.

Can I also add a special welcome to the youth and children - it is indeed quite moving that you, the youth of our nation, join the veterans of a nasty war - veterans who, I can assure you, once were young - we need to remember that it is the young of a nation who bear the brunt of war - and Australian history points that Australia's young bear that brunt every twenty odd years.

The Vietnam conflict and the Australian commitment evokes very powerful feelings in this nation - and why indeed not - It divided a nation, it sent its young men off to a foreign war - it augmented its defence force through conscription and it left a legacy of broken lives, health problems amongst its veterans. Only twenty odd years later did that divisiveness become reconciled - sadly, never can the human cost of war's veterans be set aside - but thanks to the Department of Veterans' Affairs and particularly our volunteer ex-service organisations and the efforts of Vietnam veterans themselves, at least those deep and abiding legacies are now being mitigated. And in that respect particularly, I congratulate the Blue Mountains Vietnam Veterans & Associated Forces Inc. - organisation for their continuing supportive efforts to the cause of the veterans of the Vietnam war and of course their initiative in continuing to promote this quite impressive ceremony.

World War I was a very significant commitment overseas where the nation lost the flower of its youth in 1915 to 1917 - think of the West Australian light horsemen who went to their death almost to the man in three suicidal waves from the trenches of Gallipoli across a small piece of land known as the Nek. Where mates, stubbed their cigarettes out, shook hands, said goodbye and climbed out to be gunned immediately down. World War II was again a hugely significant overseas commitment for extremely justifiable means as Nazism and Japanese expansionism threatened the world.

In terms of justification of the commitment of Australia, many would think World Wars I and II were clear enough - defence of the free world, defence of the British Empire. But I think at times, the commitment of Australians sometimes is a matter of our geographic isolationism and almost a desperate need to be seen to be part of the larger world - if that is so, it's a bit perverse to buy ones place in the world through commitment of its young to war. So as a matter of course, Australia will have to fight overseas and don't believe your military strategists if they say we won't. But we should also think of the ways and strategies of war by which our youth were committed to war and in fact how ready the nation was, in terms of preparedness, for war - I hold World War II as a classic case of Australia being unprepared both in strategy and force capability.

Remember, in that era the military strategy was Imperial defence, that is, Australia would commit its forces to the Empire, to be used as the Empire requires and in so doing, Australia will automatically be looked after. Well really, what it meant in World War II was for our forces, all three services to be required to fight well away from Australia to the point our own country was under dire threat from the north, Asia was left undefended, Singapore fell, and the flower of the youthful generation spent four years as POW's and we had to commit under trained militia to the immediate defence of New Guinea. The RAAF alone lost more than 4,000 aircrew over the skies of Europe. Eventually and reluctantly, Britain agreed to the return of our trained armies.

And I have got to say, particularly in the RAAF, that our forces were not prepared - our aircraft were outdated and the force was too small in numbers. Our people were not adequately trained; I must remind myself of the air raids on Darwin where some inexperienced RAAF personnel simply went south in the Daly Water stakes.

Returning to World War I, preparedness was a bit thin there too, think of the Cooee marches from the New England to Sydney to simply drum up the volunteers needed for the Gallipoli campaign. But in both world wars, our leaders perhaps had some excuses. In World War I, they had just federated, in World War II, they had just come out of depression - I am not sure that we have too many excuses now that would justify an inadequately prepared defence force. This continuing lack of preparedness has led to recurring problems in raising forces and it has led to frequent divisiveness in the nation's commitment to particular conflicts.

World war I was a good example, where conscription became a very emotional issue to the point that two referendums were held and of course I hardly need to mention Vietnam and conscription. Vietnam veterans understand what it is to be a nation divided and the emotional effect of conscription. I wasn't a conscript, as a regular RAAF serviceman, for Vietnam was part of my job - not so for thousands of young Australians who by the fall of a marble, went to a nasty war. But I remember a divided nation; I remember standing in uniform at Tullarmarine with a four year-old-son trying to assure him that despite the media reports and demonstrations, daddy was involved in a noble cause. Now, it is axiomatic that a small nation such as Australia cannot afford to maintain a large defence force in peace and it must augment its forces in time of war. But it is equally axiomatic that the core must be strong and ready and a contingency plan must exist by which forces can be raised quickly by means other than conscription.

Sometimes, I think the permanent force is considered by some Australians to be tolerated and sanctioned but come the real war and the bugle is blown, volunteers will come flooding to the cause. As an aside, General Monash, our most able General, had a rather dim view of permanent soldiers; I quote

'There is something about permanent military occupation which seems to confine a man's scope'.

Needless to say, I don't agree with all of Sir John Monash's view of life despite my admiration for him, he was after all, an engineer. Sometimes, I am not sure that our military leaders come out all that well from an assessment of their roll in conflicts - even Blamey, when he sacked the hapless General Sir Sydney Rowell in New Guinea as the General who had fought valiantly and indeed stemmed the tide of the Japanese advance across the Owen Stanley's - must attract criticism - in the RAAF in World War II, there was a disgraceful public feud between Air Marshal Sir George Jones as Chief of the Air Staff and Air Vice-Marshal Bill Bostock, the RAAF commander in the islands.

Some of the heroism of our troops exemplified by the account of WOFF Wheatley tending a wounded mate and staying with him to face certain death with grenade pins drawn. For some, it might just be the Vietnam wet and the canvas and the rubber trees of Nui Dat; for others, the dust and loneliness of an isolated fire support base in Phuoc Tuy Province. For my part, I remember a young blonde Tasmanian helicopter pilot, Pilot Officer Ron Betts who died from gunshot wounds as he maneuvered his gunship between friendlies and the VC to drop some smoke grenades, Flight Lieutenant Lofty Lance, an experienced Ex RAF South African pilot whose Iroquois loaded with ammunition crashed in the north of Phuoc Tuy. I remember and LAC Bloxom who sat next to me on the Qantas flight over to Vietnam - he was killed in an Iroquois as he laid down covering fire as a crewman.

So despite those memories, I ask you to think about the nations larger role in the conflict and to never again let our leaders get their fighting men in such a situation. Our young fighting men, indeed now our young fighting women as well, deserve much better. The nation owes much to its veterans, for defence of the nation, for sacrifice - I say it owes them for committing them in the way that it has - often under-prepared, often with divided loyalty and support. As an election looms, I hope that there will be more to debate than GST; I hope a strong Defence debate takes place and I hope you will have an opportunity to listen and question policies on defence.

Will our Defence Force be prepared adequately, is its peace time complement ready for expansion - is it big enough - is the share of the GDP for defence reasonable and do expansion contingency plans exist for force expansion. How will they augment the permanent force when the inevitable time comes to expand and meet threats overseas?

So that never again will a conscripted force endure a divided nation of a nature that we, the Vietnam veterans, endured. Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend this important ceremony and thank you for listening.