Kāpiti Vietnam soldiers honoured at new memorial
Mike Don can’t remember too much about his father. Sergeant Alastair (Al) Don died aged 27 when Mike was one year old – killed when his Land Rover was blown up by a Viet Cong landmine in 1965.
Don was one of the first two Kiwis to die in action in the Vietnam War. After learning the veteran had family living on the Kāpiti Coast, the Paraparaumu RSA decided to honour Don’s service, including his name on a plaque on the Memorial Arch in Paraparaumu which will be unveiled on Anzac Day.
Mike and Don’s great-granddaughter, Hawaiki Don, said they were honoured. Hawaiki will read out the names listed on the new plaque – that of her great-grandfather and also Sergeant Richard (Dick) Grigg.
Grigg, from Reikorangi, was killed in a separate Viet Cong explosion in 1965. His family has gifted the New Zealand flag used to cover Grigg’s coffin. Parading at the ceremony will be gunners of Dons unit, 161 Battery of the Royal
New Zealand Artillery and a large turnout of 163 Battery which holds the Freedom of Kāpiti.
Chris Turver, who worked as a war correspondent, said he was with Don in his final moments, and was the last survivor of the fourman crew they were both in.
Turver said they had been part of a “huge convoy” of Australians, New Zealanders and Americans heading from the base camp into an area heavily guarded by the Viet Cong.
Within two hours Don and another Kiwi had been killed by an explosion, leaving others wounded, showing how close they were to the action, Turver said.
He said Don had been killed immediately: “Mike’s father would have known nothing.”
RSA President Karen Wemyss will also attend the event. She said it was a “significant” occasion for the two families of Don and Grigg.
Don’s body was repatriated to New Zealand in 2018, after he was interred in the military cemetery in Terendak, in Malaysia. He is now buried in Awa Tapu cemetery in Paraparaumu.