Former national serviceman Ken Cumming of Warrnambool expects to make an emotional return to Vietnam in a few years. 

Among the places he hopes to revisit is the village of Hoa Long in south Vietnam where he did “civil aid” work for local Vietnamese as part of his role as a medical and dental assistant with the Regular Aid Post health clinic for 7RAR Infantry in 1967.

He hopes to find out what happened to a young Vietnamese boy his fellow soldiers called “Rabbit.”

The young boy was nicknamed “Rabbit” by Australian troops because he could run fast and did so on two occasions to warn Australian troops at their nearby Nui Dat army base that there were enemy Vietcong troops in Hoa Long, his home village.

The warnings put the Australian troops on alert to prepare for enemy contact. 

The friendship that Mr Cumming made with Rabbit when working in Hoa Long was helped by the fact that Rabbit was poor and hungry and Mr Cumming and other Australian troops regularly distributed food from their own ration packs as well as money to Rabbit and his fellow villagers.

The villagers were often hungry because their food was stolen at night at gunpoint by the Vietcong.

Mr Cumming said Rabbit put his life in peril by informing on the Vietcong but must have decided he would side with the soldiers who were feeding his village and providing basic medical care.

He said the Vietcong were difficult to tell from local villagers because they dressed the same but Rabbit knew when there were strangers in his village of about 200 people.

Mr Cumming said Rabbit “was as light as a feather” but “very smart for such a little boy.”

On one occasion, Rabbit requested a photo with Mr Cumming who was happy to oblige. The resulting image is on the front page of this week’s “weekender.”

Rabbit was obviously not camera shy and another photo of him being held by Australian Army nurses is in the Australian War Memorial’s collection in Canberra.

Mr Cumming said that in 1967, the Vietnam war was starting to build up intensity and he hoped Rabbit was able to survive the conflict that became much more deadly.

The next year, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong launched the Tet offensive, the largest military operation conducted by either side up to that point in the war.

The Tet offensive had a profound effect on the American government and shocked the American public that had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the North Vietnamese were being defeated and incapable of launching such an ambitious military operation.

By that time, Mr Cumming has returned to Australia after completing his two years of national service.

Those two years included about 11 months of training and his eight months and four days tour of duty in Vietnam.

“I went to Vietnam on May 4, 1967. It’s date I will never forget,” Mr Cumming said.

In 2011, he told the story of “A Boy called Rabbit” to the state government’s “In Our Words: Stories from Victorian Veterans, Warrnambool” oral history project, done with the help of students at Emmanuel College.

He has also searched on the internet for details about Rabbit, who gained some local fame among the Australian troops at Nui Dat, but without Rabbit’s real name has had no luck.

Mr Cumming said his civil aid work with Vietnamese villagers was the most rewarding aspect of his national service in a war which ended up being futile.

He said he had initially regarded his conscription at the age of 21 “as a bit of an adventure” but that changed when he landed in Vietnam.

“It was a hell of a culture shock to see the poverty and the madness of war,” Mr Cumming said.

Mr Cumming said some of the American soldiers were “crazy” and irresponsible, doing dangerous things on patrol such as smoking and listening to music on radios when resting.

The Americans also treated the south Vietnamese, their allies, with contempt, he said.

Now aged 72 and close to 50 years after he landed in Vietnam, Mr Cumming is planning to take his extended family back to the scene of one of the defining times of his life.

In 2019 when he hopes his grandchildren will be able to remember the trip, he and his sons and their families are planning to visit south Vietnam, including Rabbit’s village of Hoa Long.  

Mr Cumming met his wife to be, Julie, in Sydney a few days before he flew to Vietnam and returned to Sydney to eventually marry her. They returned to Warnambool in 1977 and Mr Cumming worked at Nestle at Dennington for 23 years. 

A faithful collector for local Anzac Day appeals, he cherishes the friendships he made with fellow soldiers during his national service.

Among the friends he made was Peter Thompson of Melbourne, with whom he shared a four-man tent at Nui Dat.

They catch up each Anzac Day, alternating the catch up venue between Melbourne and Warrnambool.

“He’s coming to Warrnambool on Monday,” Mr Cumming said.

He said he thought each Anzac Day of the four soldiers from the south-west who died in the Vietnam War, William Carroll of Dennington, Graham Warburton of Warrnambool, Ralph Niblett of Cobden and Ian Scott of Camperdown.