It is with mixed emotions that Williamstown Vietnam veteran Roger Cheal looks at the green and gold award he has received for bravery 50 years after the war’s largest and bloodiest battle for Australians.
Mr Cheal recently attended the 50th anniversary and commemoration of the Battle of Coral-Balmoral at Townsville with his 1st Royal Australian Regiment infantry battalion.
Australian Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove awarded his and eight other units a citation for “extraordinary gallantry”.
English-born Mr Cheal was 20 when he was called up by the Australian Army.
At 22, he was deployed with the 1RAR of the 1st Australian Task Force to fight against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong about 40 kilometres from Saigon.
The month-long battle of Coral-Balmoral in 1968 claimed the lives of 26 and 100 were wounded defending Saigon.
When he returned home to Australia, Mr Cheal said veterans like him were vilified.
“It’s very hard to understand, ourselves, 50 years of not being recognised,” he said.
“Suddenly, in some places, we are, but it feels surreal.
“Everyone knows about the battle of Long Tan, but few have heard of Coral.
“When I came back from Vietnam, I was living in Flemington and I went to a local RSL and they said; ‘Go away, you’re not wanted’.”
Mr Cheal said most Vietnam veterans experienced this rejection.
“We felt that we were doing the right thing and the fact that people didn’t recognise it afterwards, we were worried that we’d wasted our time,” he said.
“Sometimes, you think of America and other allies, they walked out of Vietnam, left the people in there.
“Some of our platoon tried to find the South Vietnamese Interpreter [Phuc, pictured] who worked with us for some months.
“We had been told he was wounded but were unable to find out any more. There’s probably hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese who lost their lives because they supported us.”
Mr Cheal said it was not his place to discuss the rights or wrongs of any battle, or even of war itself.
“But I say that people will, even must, fight a regime they judge as evil,” he said.
“Comparisons … are inevitable after one battle gets more unbalanced honour than another … comparing Gallipoli and Fromelles or Long Tan and Coral is meaningless.”
