De Anima personifies the problem we vets had with post service re-adjustment, national servicemen in particular who were subjected to arguably the most discriminating piece of legislation in this country - one in 20 young men chosen by ballot on their 20th birthday to bolster depleted military ranks, sent to war, secreted home from war and discharged after two years without a hint of gratitude.

From jungle greens to jeans, emotionally and socially disorientated, uncounselled or demilitarised, we metamorphosed into pariahs. Spat upon and abused by apathy, we became casualties of ignorance.

As we saw in the media coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Long Tan battle, old adversaries become comrades because they are inherently bound by courage and commitment. It was not the effects of war that disenfranchised so many returning servicemen (including aborigines) from making normal way in the democracy that through self-delusion or otherwise they feel they defended, it was ironically, democracy itself.

It thrives on freedom of speech and De Anima has the balls to allow an insight into his thinking process - that democracy knows no taboo subjects. I think a great many Australians feel as De Anima, that an unqualified apology to our indiginous people should be forthcoming, but they had enough grace to let the ball go through to the wicket-keeper on that special day for Vietnam veterans and kept their prejudices hidden. Tennyson got it right when he wrote ‘a little thing would hurt a wounded man’.

Your little cartoon hurt, De Anima.

Firstly, I would like to state that no offence or hurt was intended towards war veterans. Secondly, it is personally pleasing to see readers contemplating the meaning of my cartoons.

My purpose was to focus on the political duality of John Howard at the time when he apologised for the disgraceful homecoming of Vietnam veterans.

John Howard sees himself as an upholder of Australian values. He was not only present, as a politician, during the period of homecoming but was seated in Parliament during the period when young Australians were first sent to Vietnam. He was, I believe, 24 years of age when he entered Parliament, via the Young Liberals, and voted with his party and the American alliance to send his similarly aged fellow Australians to war partly through conscription. A member of Parliament is, of course, exempt from such requirements.

John Howard is ironically dressed in khaki as he never actually joined the armed forces or toured. I would contend he attempts to display empathy, which is impossible. His duality appears even today when he encourages our youth to join the armed forces. In the same manner as America, these young people are usually conscripted from the poorer regional centres such as Tasmania.

I drew medals on his uniform as Long Tan veterans were calling for a review of their issue to non-combative recipients. John Howard declined this request.

His duality continues through his government of Veterans Affairs. For example, war widows, now in their eighties, used to receive subsidised lawn mowing and other assistance. Recent multi billion dollar surplus budgets removed such entitlements.

The tie to the aborigines is also historical to Parliament where John Howard claims, “It wasn’t our generation!” Bulldust. Aboriginal children were fostered into white families up to around 1970. John Howard was in government as a member of Parliament, admittedly with a career to realise. A recent article on The History Wars mentioned the massacre at the Burrup Peninsula. The peninsula contains over 15,000 rock engravings dating back 40,000 years. Woodside Petroleum now wants to develop the Peninsula and the WA Premier together with the Federal Environment Minister warn of the dire consequences if any conservation orders are placed on the site. We are still contemptuous of their rights and in denial of our dark history. If the Aboriginal community were treated equally today, for example with those who died under tragic circumstances, there would be reflective memorials in the parks of many country towns.

In my opinion, these politicians do not represent the community, only their party donors. Any apology is only worth the credibility of the person delivering it. When I say, “Sorry” for any hurt it comes from a person whose father often said, “Anyone who glorifies war was probably a cook.”

Dialogue has the potential to heal but John Howard chooses his conversational partners to his own benefit. If a picture paints a thousand words then we can add ours together.

PS The flag was a personal joke…something crossed between Howard’s patriotic fervour and a pop-gun. No-one would put a real gun into the hands of someone with that bowling action.

Well, who’s getting out their gun these days to shoot down fair comment?

As a fellow-infantryman with 11mths and 1wk in Vietnam out of that 2-yr adventure of Nasho soldiery, I cannot contest the points that Paul Tapp makes and I do not wish to. But I am not on Paul Tapp’s side with the broader issue.

From that experience of one simple yet complicated phase in my life when I wasn’t watching on the balcony, my reaction increasingly, to the old fellas, is “please get over it”.

After Long Tan Day we had a bunch of nice blokes wondering why they they were invited to Government House for a reception but didn’t get a speech or an extra medal or something (“we were bamboozled”, one of the bunch said to Tim Cox on ABC radio).  A couple more had to phone wondering why the complement of HMAS Sydney (in port at the time) didn’t march with them, or do something even better —the Navy could answer their question best but it is known that it was was deeply involved in the day at a discreet distance -  Vietnam was firstly an Army event. Pretty simple.

And in the lead-up to all that, we had a massive media campaign for the issue of special medals for those who fought the battle of Long Tan, an argument that would surely raise the need for hundreds-fold of issues of retrospective medals for “engagements” in the two “world”  wars.

I have a deep and undying respect for my fellow Nashos in Vietnam, yet I know from all the tragic stories that evolve still to this day that there were some (not me!) that found for the first time in their,  yes, young lives, a self-respect, a sense of worth,  and future sense of direction in life that was essentially unknown to them before.

All that bounty out of such a shitty job. I don’t know where they are today, but I am guessing they are not complaining about fate, their lot and their treatment in life but are looking after themselves better than they may have otherwise done in earlier days of magistrate’s parole or woodchopping five days/getting pissed two days lifestyle. 

They had brains: maybe some went back to that way of life, but I tend to believe most stepped onwards, having already stepped up [in their own life]. Let’s rather forget about the past if we are not able tochange anything, or live with the good out of it. Let’s, above all, not feel guilty and feel the need to be a victim because we are still around while some of those with us copped the bullet or the mine, or our empathy for the Vietnamese, who died or lost everything but life and with even less knowledge of what was happening around them that we, the strangers, did.

Better, let’s salute those who come through something like Vietnam and do something good for themselves and the garden of life they stand in —think of the sincerity of Tim Fischer and others.

In my naive and young mind in those bad old moratorium days of ‘69, one of the reasons for coping with a Government demand to suddenly become a front-line soldier - even learning to march when I was rejected in the hokey-pokey at the first high school dance,  to march and dismantle an SLR when I couldn’t shoot rabbits with my dad’s Belgium double-barrel shotgun, was, in good part, that it was all part of the plan of defending a raft of things such as freedom of expression.

If my mind is still young and romantic and hopelessly naive, I’ll live with that.

Fair enough cartoon, unfair criticism.

Having read Paul Tapp’s comments I felt that they could not be passed by without some comment, given that in many respects they encapsulate so much of what is wrong with the way the Vietnam conflict is remembered in this country.
  First, allow me to point out that far from being spat on by the community after service in South Vietnam, veterans were recieved warmly by large crowds, (up to 200,000 in the case of 5 RAR’s return parade after their second tour) which remained a feature of such events from the departure of 1 RAR in 1965 right up until the final returns in 1971. As Stephen Garton points out in his exhaustive study of the subject, “The Cost of War” OUP 1996, these parades, or “welcomes” as they were also known, involved “barrages of ticker tapes” and “blizzards of paper” and perhaps, most importantly, were rarely disrupted by protest (Garton could only verify one incitdent). 
  The problem lay in the fact that national servicemen often left their units before such parades occured (although voluntery extensions of service allowed some to do so). Whilst this is regretable, one must remember that such outcomes were perhaps inevitable when units deployed for set terms of 12 months operational service in a conflict that lasted years.
  Indeed, this situation is in no way unique to Vietnam Veterans. In Tasmania, Veterans returning with the First A.I.F missed out on any mass specticle of public recognition because Troop ship arrival dates were not made available to the administration of the 6th Military District, while in the Second World War, large scale demobilisation began in mid 1944 leaving may a veteran of Tobruk, Alamien and New Guinea in civilian lives when time came to publicly accknownledge and appreciate their collective effort.
  As to the cool reception described in many veterans personal stories, may I suggest that different waves of veterans, at different times have all been viewed with suspcion by some. In 1919 it was a returning hoarde of possible “reds” and potential carriers of the Spanish Flu. In 1965-72 it was a returning hoarde of “political reactionaries” and potential criminals hardened by the barbarities of asiatic warfare. Needless to say, such views were held by a signifigant minority of the population, perhaps as many as believe the moon landing were faked and the masons run the world. The point is that hostility to returned men is and old phenommenon and not restricted to any particular political affilation or social status, but it has never (including Vietnam) been the norm.
I   t has always been my view that the worst abuses of veterans were not to be found on the streets but inside the blokey world of the R.S.L. It was here that the derisive term “odd angry shoters” was coined and it was here that many veterans were confronted by older men who believed vietnam service paled in comparison to their own. I often wonder what would be worse; to be told your war is a bad war, or that your war wasn’t really a war at all. Much of this seems to have been forgotten (or subressed) by veterans today, particularly now Vietnam veterans have controlling positions in the Federal and State branches of the R.S.L, but it is interesting to note that the Australian public is not alone in deciding to remember certain thing and omit others.
  In light of the comments I have made here let me just say that I find Mr Tapp’s view somewhat troubling. The notion of democracy itself dis-enfranchinsing veterans is omminsously close to notion of being, “stabbed in the back by the November criminals.” Democracy did not fail you and your Mr Tapp, that burden rests with Cold war geo-polotics, ineffecient army administration and the reality of society in rapid and agressive change.
  Dr Johson said that, “A man thinks meanly of himself for never having been a soldier.” Perhaps that is an absolute truth. It does not however give you carte blanche to sound off like a member of the Freikorps and expect others to wilt under the burden of guilt you expect others to carry. As a person born long after the Viernam conflict I honestly feel no such complicity in you experience, and as such I find De Anima’s cartoon, and the message it embodies highly apt. I have studied “your” war in some depth, as I agree with you that ignorance is an ongoing act of abuse, but I also believe veterans need to respect the fact that as time passes young eyes with fresh views will appear. They should not be repressed for any reason or by any means.

Couldn’t agree with anon #4 more.

The Khaki arm-band view of history is having the Vietnam war re-written, with soldiers being noble loyal and “aussie” whilst protestors are spitters, vengeful, haters and “unaustralian”.

It’s a shame that wars are not remembered as wars but rather as reasons for pensions and medals and money.

It makes Henry and me sad.

They should not have been sent there and those who sent them there are the ones who should have been spat upon (and worse).

As one who devoted a large part of my energy and time, both here and in the US to subverting and undermining the war effort, I remain proud of the achievements of myself and my comrades, but even prouder of the achievements of the Vietnamese who prevailed against the US imperialists and their Aussie lackeys.

Now the same thing is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, I call upon Australians in the armed forces in those theatres to mutiny.

Paul Tapp’s only criticism seems to be that Mister De Anima’s cartoon shows a relative lack of grace. He also agrees with the general principle of the cartoon and accuses De Anima of having the balls to democratically hold no cows sacred.

This has got to be the most reasonable complaint about a cartoon I have ever read.

Please try harder, Mr De Anima.