Author disputes Vietnam 'mythology'

NZ forces in action in the Vietnam War 1965-1968. Photo / Supplied

Since the end of NZ's involvement in the Vietnam War, battle lines have been drawn between veterans of the conflict and the New Zealand Government which, they maintain, treated them badly.

In New Zealand's Vietnam War, Ministry of Culture and Heritage war historian Ian McGibbon debunks most of what he terms the "mythology" involved in veterans' grievances.

Unlike those who served in both world wars and in K-Force in Korea, New Zealanders serving in Vietnam were not exempted from income tax.

The Government eventually buckled and instituted a tax-free allowancethat roughly offset the tax they paid while serving, but this did not prevent many feeling hard done by.

McGibbon disputes the claim that the New Zealand Government treated the returning Vietnam veterans as something of an embarrassment, flying them home in the dead of night and forbidding them to wear uniforms in public.

Soldiers returning from previous wars never received a "welcome home" as such, he says; flight schedules dictated the time of arrival. And those lamenting the lack of a welcome home ignore the parade up Queen St and civic reception held for 161 Battery.

Even the failure of veterans of other wars to welcome Vietnam vets into RSAs had more to do with intergenerational dynamics than anti-Vietnam sentiment, McGibbon says.

He downplays the hostility encountered from the general public of which Vietnam vets occasionally complain. There were a handful of anti-war activists, who were occasionally vocal and visible, like when they lay down in front of the men of 161 Battery as they marched up Queen St and splattered themselves with tomato sauce to represent blood.

"That's become a kind of mantra for Vietnam veterans," McGibbon says. But as he points out, the protesters were only a handful: Queen St that day was lined with people who applauded the Battery.

McGibbon was an anti-war protester himself, he's happy to reveal. "I held a placard at the back of a march. "

He doesn't believe his personal disapproval at the time has coloured his perception of the veterans or our involvement.

"No one was telling me what to write. No one even reviewed the text."