NERVES wrack An (Andy) Nguyen’s body. Sweat trickles down his face as he leads his men through the jungles in Vietnam’s central highlands.
It’s early 1973 and Mr Nguyen, now a Footscray-based accountant, is at the head of his first patrol in command of an experienced but battle-weary platoon down to a quarter of its original strength.
As they move forward, probing for enemy positions, shots ring out from an enemy bunker in jungle and he calls his men forward.
Through the lenses of reading glasses, he mistakes the specs of bright light crowding his vision for sun glare and charges headlong towards the enemy position under a hail of machinegun fire.
The action, his first, lasts little more than 15 minutes. Most of the enemy forces flee, the rest are killed.
“My men thought I was very brave and I didn’t care about the machinegun fire,” Mr Nguyen tells the Weekly. “It wasn’t because I was brave, it was because I didn’t know what was going on.
“I was freezing, I was sweating and I thought ‘hey Andy, you nearly died’.”
His final action would come in a three-battalion-strong night-time attack on a large enemy base in late 1973. By then, he had risen to rank of 2nd lieutenant
“We didn’t know who was enemy and who was friend so to find out you had to touch each other.
“The Viet Cong carry their ammunition bag on their chest, we carried it on our waist. If you touch a man and he had something on his chest it was a Viet Cong soldier.
“When we reached the [enemy] tunnel, trying to capture the artillery I was wounded. When I woke up I was in hospital. I felt it [hit me] … then that was it. “
A piece of shrapnel entered his chest above his right breast – he still bears a large scar –
ending his war close to the end of 1974. “Not long enough,” he says solemnly.
His wounds were serious enough to qualify for discharge and he returned to civilian life as a solicitor.
He survived the communist ‘re-education’ campaign in which thousands of former South Vietnamese soldiers died, and the perilous boat trip to Australia in 1981.
Now a Footscray-based solicitor and accountant, Mr Nguyen will march with the Australian veterans from Footscray RSL this weekend.
“I will be there. To prove that we were soldiers serving our country and to march alongside our heroes.”
Asked if he would like more Australians to know about the actions of the South Vietnamese soldiers, Mr Nguyen said there was a lot of propaganda at the end of the war.
“The US said Vietnamese troops did not want to fight, they were bad troops.
“But with us we were fighting with all our courage and we’re proud, even though we lost the war.”
Yet for all his bravery, it’s the Australian troops sent by their government to defend his country that are his heroes.
“If I protect my country it’s common sense. But someone comes to protect your country, even if they were sent by their government but they still came and they are heroes.
“I tell them they are my heroes in my mind.”
