Soldier’s battle to expose Burchett

AFTER graduating from Duntroon in 1944, Phillip Greville served in Borneo before studying civil engineering at Sydney University.

Almost predestined for a military career, Phillip Jamison Greville was born on September 12, 1925 at Queenscliff, where his regular soldier father Sid was serving as a coastal artillery signaller.

1RAR’S assault pioneer platoon commander, Greville was captured while laying wire on the night of

August 30, 1953, during the Korean War.

Phil Greville also served in Vietnam, becoming on retirement a brigadier, a respected military writer and columnist.

Greville particularly targeted the avowed Australian communist sympathiser who masqueraded as a journalist during the Cold War, Wilfred Graham Burchett.

Burchett was born in Melbourne on September 16, 1911. Imbued with communist sympathies by his Methodist lay preacher father,

Burchett travelled pre-war to study European communist regimes.

Reporting on the Korean War from North Korea, Burchett described the “utopian” conditions in which prisoners were held.

Although Burchett always denied it, Phillip Greville claimed Burchett was present and participated when he was interrogated by his North Korean captors.

Greville also claimed they resorted to torture to extract information. Burchett came to the attention of ASIO and was banned from returning by the Menzies government, which declined to renew his Australian passport.

Burchett also reported on the Vietnam War from the North Vietnamese perspective.

Burchett was later “rehabilitated” when the Whitlam government was elected, the then PM forbidding the still serving Greville from repeating his accusations on national TV.

After unsuccessfully suing his critics, Burchett, again denied an Australian passport, lived in Bulgaria denying he had ever been an agent of Russia, China or North Vietnam or that he had interrogated allied prisoners including Australians.

He died in 1982.

Phillip Greville vigorously maintained Burchett’s involvement in such activities until his own death in March 2011. This gallant soldier outlived his nemesis, never forgetting, never forgiving.