By Dongyun Kwon
Lilydale RSL president Bill Dobson shared his experience of the Vietnam War prior to the 2025 Anzac Day.
2025 marks special milestones of war history, in which many Australians were involved too.
It is the 110th year since the landing at Gallipoli and 80 years since the end of World War II.
It is also the 85th year since Australia entered World War II, the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Borneo, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the 35th anniversary of the Gulf War beginning and the 10th anniversary of the Royal Australian Air Force strikes in Syria.
The Lilydale RSL president started the interview with Star Mail by clarifying the meaning of Anzac Day.
“Anzac Day is a day not to glorify war, but to commemorate and remember all those men and women who served their country during times of war,” Mr Dobson said.
From 1962 to 1973, more than 60,000 Australians served in the Vietnam War.
Mr Dobson was deployed in the war from January 1969 to February 1970.
“I was in a combat supply unit, and I was at the front line at Nui Dat,” he said.
“From there, we did various things. Sometimes, we went out with engineers and other times we went out with infantry. We also worked for civil affairs where we were rebuilding homes for Vietnamese communities.”
The local Vietnam War veteran was conscripted through the birthday ballot at the age of 20.
The birthday ballot was like a lottery, in which numbered marbles or wooden ballot balls were placed in a hand-spun barrel, a pre-decided number of marbles were drawn, and those whose birthdates matched the numbers drawn were then called up for compulsory national service.
After over 13 months of service in Vietnam, he returned to Australia and got back to the printing company he had worked for before he got called up.
“As part of the government‘s law, the employer had to put a person back in the same job after they came out of their service in the army,” Mr Dobson said.
In August, the local Vietnam War veteran will travel around Vietnam, the areas where he served, with his chap.
“There’s a chap who went to all the same places I went to, and he’s now a military historian,” Mr Dobson said.
“He’s got a lot of information about various things, a lot of people don’t know about. It’s going to be very interesting to learn about the enemy side of things and how they went about things.”
