Tuesday was only the second time Andy Bell had attended an Anzac Day service at Camperdown since he returned from Vietnam in 1971.
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The farmer, who was conscripted at a young age and marked his 21st birthday in Vietnam, shared a little bit about how participation in the war affected him.
“I was in Vietnam within the year of going into the army,” he said.
“It was all a bit quick for me. I went to recruit training at Puckapunyal, then I was selected for some reason to go into infantry – that was in Singleton, New South Wales.”
“There was 1200 people there, and 90 needed to leave to Vietnam in February.”
Mr Bell was selected as one of the 90, and he said he felt he didn’t have enough training.
“You don’t know what to expect. It doesn’t matter how well prepared you are, I suppose,” he said.
He spent a year in service working as a gunner.
Mr Bell said people didn’t appreciate what the soldiers had been through when they came home.
“We had a ticker tape march up Pitt Street in Sydney, so that was a welcome home for me. But once I got away from Pitt Street, that was it, nobody even knew where I’d been and what happened,” he said.
“There was all this angst about the war and stuff. We were getting harassed because of it, as though it was our decision.
“It was a bad feeling.”
Mr Bell has spent most of his life in Camperdown on a beef and sheep farm his father passed down to him just a few years after he arrived home.
His father served in the Second World War and his grandfather served in the first world war.
“So we’re three generations of war that have really set us back,” Mr Bell said.
“You come back and you think ‘gee this is good, why would i want anything more?’ It takes the drive to succeed and make money out of it because you’re happy with what you’ve got.
“Without war, I think the drive to succeed is probably much stronger.”
Mr Bell said he felt compelled to attend the Camperdown service because he served with the new RSL president, Alan Fleming.
Ron Billing, who also served in the Vietnam War during the early 70s, was proud to have four of his grandchildren there.
“I brought two to the dawn service this morning,” he said.
“It helps to keep the tradition alive.”
Mr Billing said ‘passion and pride” and his desire to educate the younger generation kept him attending services.