He turned 21 that year when he and many other National Service draftees shipped away to the war after months of training to condition them for the challenges of conflict.

Less than an hour of that war has indelibly etched itself into the mind of the local man. The incident has caused Jim to reflect upon a war he eventually felt was without purpose.  

“Right now, I can visibly recount the setting and the incident,” Jim said in a gentle, steady voice.

A member of the 7th RAR battalion, Jim and his platoon followed in an other platoon to surround a Viet Cong encampment.

The people had dispersed or been killed, and as Jim settled into a defensive position as machine gunner, he said he witnessed something 15-20 metres away which has dwelt in his subconscious and conscious mind for years.

“There was a little bunker complex, and this Viet Cong must have been caught on top of the bunker complex, because he’d been shot; shot, killed,” he said.

“And he was lying on the ground and he’d been shot in the head, and his skull was split open and his brains were sort of lying on the ground, and there was a camp dog there, eating his brains.

“It’s an image, I suppose that’s haunted me for a long time,” and Jim sat forward, studied the table and went on.

“It’s taken me a long while to come to terms with it, and I still get very emotional about it.”

He sought support for the lingering distress he experienced at that moment which considered not himself, but the dead soldier before him.

“I can remember thinking, right at that moment, ‘That poor bugger, was only doing what he was told to do’, what I was doing,” Jim said in a fragile voice.

“You know, what a waste of that person.”

Jim said he imagined he and that enemy soldier probably had some belief at that time in what they were doing, defending their respective countries; a man, like himself, doing a job.

“To see a person’s life, sort of end that way, and to be so degraded, and since it’s always been a sort of poignant moment to reflect on the whole reason why we were there.”

He believed the experience at war and that moment in the camp has offered much to reflect upon.

“Just the whole concept of war, and how futile it seems to be,” he said.

“It just seems to me that the world has gotten more and more violent, and we try and solve issues with violence, and it just gets us deeper and deeper into an endless...it’s a Catch-22.”