When Vietnam Veteran Bill Murray put on his medals and headed to the Mudgee Anzac Day Dawn Service it was for the first time ever – and something that would’ve been unthinkable in the five decades since his discharge.
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To understand the significance of this we need to go back to the start.
Mr Murray joined the army in 1962 and was sent to North Borneo in 1964.
“I came back when I was 20 and wasn’t old enough to to have a beer in the pub in Queensland. Seven weeks later I was heading to Vietnam – because we didn’t have the troops,” he said.
As a Sapper with 3 Field Troop Engineers he was one of the first of the ‘Tunnel Rats’ – who had one of the most dangerous jobs in the conflict.
They were responsible for mine and booby trap detection and clearing, tunnel and bunker searching and demolition, plus bomb disposal. And as the first ones Mr Murray said, “we learned as we went along”. His 12-months in Vietnam took him up to “two years and 41 days in the jungles of Asia”.
He got out of the army in 1968 and not long after that his medals were stolen from his then-home in Brisbane.
This at a time when the Australian public wasn’t welcoming of returning Vietnam Veterans – in their minds they didn’t separate their objections to the country’s involvement in the war from those sent to fight it. So Mr Murray withdrew.
“Back in those days we were going through a stage when Vietnam Veterans had a lot of hate against us for no reason,” he said.
“They didn’t realise we were just regular bloody soldiers doing what the country told us to do. I kept away from it all because I didn’t want to get into a fight with anyone any more. I turned off, a lot of veterans turned off.”
A chance meeting with the Mudgee RSL Sub-Branch’s Vicky Pearse, who said “he had the thousand-yard stare” when they met, helped bring him back around.
“It was only lately with the help of Vicky that I got back on my feet,” he said.
They then started work on getting new medals made of the three that were stolen (two from Vietnam, one from North Borneo). But they were in for a surprise when they found out he was also eligible for three more medals for units he served in.
“When I got the letter back I got a shock over all of the other ones I was supposed to have,” he said.
This led to Mr Murray wanting to go to his first Anzac Services, beginning at Dawn, and with those medals on his chest he said “I was proud as hell”.
“And it was their help getting these [medals] back that made me that proud that I wanted to sit up there today.”
Mr Murray also thanked Pip and Rohan of Lone Pine Medals for mounting his medals at no charge.
