The Mount Evelyn RSL will pay tribute to local Vietnam War veterans on the 50th anniversary of their deaths.
They started with Mount Evelyn man Michael Hannaford, who was killed on 14 December in 1968.
They honoured him with a service at the Mount Evelyn War Memorial on Friday 14 December.
Sub-branch president Roger Boness explained that the RSL and others across the Yarra Valley had been marking 100 years since the deaths in World War I of those listed on local war memorials over the past four years.
Secretary Anthony McAleer said Michael Hannaford was born on 24 January 1947 at Diggers Rest, the second of five children to Frank and Faye Hannaford.
He grew up in Gladys Grove, Croydon, and his father managed Norm Oliver’s butcher shop in the main street.
He went to Ringwood Technical School and then worked as a truck driver for Shelson Tiles in Beaufort Road, Croydon.
Michael played football for Mooroolbark, mainly as ruck, and ‘he often got the worst of the physical clashes with bigger, more heavily-built ruckmen, but he always picked himself up and threw himself into the fray again’.
He was awarded the club’s best and fairest for the 1968 season.
Michael was called up for compulsory military service in the National Service ballot and reported for military training on 12 July 1967.
He did basic training at Puckapunyal and remained there for his corps training, when he was assigned to C Squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment, Royal Australian Armoured Corps.
He was trained to be part of a crew of Centurion tanks.
He married his fiancée Margaret Warner and they moved into a home in Mount Evelyn, before he left Australia for Vietnam in August 1968.
His regiment was based in the Bien Hoa province.
In November 1968, Michael was driving a Centurion tank in a seek and destroy operation when it hit a mine believed to contain 40 pounds of TNT.
An Australian soldier riding on the tank was killed and several others, including Michael, were injured. He suffered severe shock as well as minor back and head injuries.
After a brief stay in hospital he returned to duty in time for Operation Goodwood.
“On this day 50 years ago he was at the controls of another Centurion tank taking part in an action against the Viet Cong when this tank also hit a mine,” Mr McAleer said.
This was a much larger mine, estimated to have contained as much as 500 pounds of TNT.
“Michael was badly injured and rushed to the military hospital in Bien Hoa,” he said.
“He died there an hour later as a result of the wounds he’d received in the explosion.
“He was just 21 years old.”
Michael’s body was returned to Australia for burial and he received a full military funeral at the Anglican Church in Toorak Avenue, and then a full military procession from the church to the Lilydale Cemetery where he was buried.
For a time the Mooroolbark Football Club had a memorial trophy named after him, and in 1997 the Darwin gunnery training centre for tanks was named in his honour.
The next commemorative service to honour a Vietnam veteran will take place at 11am on Wednesday 24 July at the Mount Evelyn War Memorial.
