The Vietnam Experience and the Australian Folk's New Legend

Abstract

In 1979 I saw the film, 'The Deer Hunter'. As long as I can remember, I've had great personal difficulty with violence in any shape or form and this movie was extremely violent, based in large measure on the effect of the Vietnam War on a group of American friends. An early scene in the movie saw the ominous 'thud, thud, thud' of several helicopters coming through the jungle clearing, and the sound reverberated through my being. It was unnerving, frightening, terrifying and this was the mere suggestion of things to come. The initial impulse was to walk out of the theatre there and then, but I forced myself to stay believing that I had some sort of duty to know something of the horrors of war. This is what it's like for many 'baby boomers'. They have had no experience of war. At the conclusion of the movie I walked back outside into busy George Street, into the brilliant Sydney sunshine, trembling inwardly and shaking outwardly, incredulous that the city was carrying on regardless and quite oblivious to my fractured psyche. How on earth was it for the actual people who had experienced such terror? Barry Heard's book 'Well Done, Those Men', has a similar profound effect on those who read it.