Vietnam vet lives with bad memories
Pat Blair fought against the Vietcong enemy at close quarters in dense forest on numerous occasions during the Vietnam War.
But the details of those gun battles are not something the 69-year-old Invercargill man speaks about. ‘‘I don’t like to go into the details too much,’’ he says.
A rifleman in the Whiskey 3 infantry company in Vietnam from November 1969 until November 1970, his platoon’s task was to locate the enemy and their bunker systems, and when they did, fighting ensued.
They patrolled dense forest, often with only 2-3 metres visibility, and on several occasions ‘‘bumped into’’ the enemy in the forest which resulted in ‘‘brief and sharp’’ gun battles.
‘‘We had some killed and some injured in our platoon,’’ Blair said during the 2nd NZEF Awarua Anzac Day Service in Invercargill yesterday.
‘‘It was hard ... but you are living with that day to day when you are over there.’’
He endured a wet season in Vietnam in which he and his pla- toon were ‘‘never dry’’ and a dry season in which they had to carry water wherever they went because the local water was contaminated.
Blair said the memories of his time at war were never far from his mind.
‘‘You never lose the memories, I am afraid. They stay with you, you learn to cope with it.’’
He had taken ‘‘years’’ to get back into normal civilian life after the war.
Blair, who served in the New Zealand Army from 1968-71, said Vietnam veterans had a rough ride when they returned home from Vietnam.
‘‘We weren’t very thought of,’’ he said. ‘‘I went to Australia for a bit.’’ However, attitudes towards Vietnam veterans had changed for the better over the decades.
Blair’s grandchildren wear some of his medals on Anzac Day.
‘‘Vietnam is quite the tourist place now,’’ he said. ‘‘I wouldn’t have recommended it while I was there.’’
Also at the NZEF Anzac Day service was Invercargill 77-yearold Ted Lucas, an army man from 1961-81 who who served in Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam, in the 1960s.
Lucas said he loved how the highly young people of today embraced Anzac Day and wanted to learn from their grandfathers and great grandfathers.
One of the things they learned was ‘‘a lot of people didn’t come back home’’.
Lucas, who served in Victor 1 Company - was in the first group of New Zealand Army infantry to serve in Vietnam in 1967, with the group having its 50th reunion next month.
Meanwhile, 94-year-old Jim Sherborne, one of Southland’s few remaining World War II veterans, was at the Invercargill RSA function with his family following the Anzac Day ceremony in the city.
Sherborne served in the Pacific during the war, where he fuelled aircraft and staff.
Sherborne and a comrade, while on duty, went swimming on one occasion and while doing so the Japanese shot a hole through their fuel tanker and the fuel leaked out.
His superiors never found out about his swimming exploits.
He and his allied mates used to raid the American food stores because they had ‘‘fancy food’’ while the allies were on rations, while he recalled scorpions crawling over him in the night.
‘‘I felt sorry for the ladies who were left at home with their children,’’ Sherborne said of the war years. His son, Ian, said his father had only begun speaking about his war experiences in the last decade.
Ian Sherborne believed many veterans had begun speaking out about the war years when their grandchildren had started asking questions. He took his father to the Anzac ceremony each year .
‘‘It’s about supporting my Dad and reflecting on what he and his comrades went through.’’
His father found Anzac Day to be an emotional time.
‘‘It’s hard to forget and it brings back all the memories. ‘‘Many of his friends didn’t come back.’’ supported medical