They Never Saw Me Coming RarbgXG-Central is the place where you can find the best XG-MIDI composition, made by the best worldwide XG-composers. Swearing they'd never go back, many veterans now call Vietnam's Vung Tau home. Raymond Low says he saw the first body fall from a grey helicopter that swooped low over Vung Tau beach, where his RAAF squadron mates were drinking beer and barbecuing Australian steaks under an awning. Low was bobbing up and down on a surfboard in the choppy waters that humid day at the height of the Vietnam War in 1. US Navy commando undergoing free- fall training. Swearing they'd never go back, many veterans now call Vietnam's Vung Tau home. My wife is a great flirt. With me, with her friends, with an audience. She knows that flirtation isn’t just for people you’re just getting to know. Flirtation is. If you’re desperate for distraction or want to get your friend’s kid something that they’ll love but their parents might hate, an on-trend fidget toy is the way. DVA * DEFENCE MEDIA * ' ON THE RECORD' * MINISTERIAL: THE AUSTRALIAN * SMH * THE AGE * CM * ABC * ARMY: Ghosthawk brings the JSF to life in Australia 19 Sep 17. However, as a US Navy patrol boat circled nearby, no one surfaced where the body splashed into the water. Play Video. Don't Play. Australian soldiers in Flanders. Play Video. Don't Play. Previous slide. Next slide. Veterans living in Vietnam. Veterans living in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans now call Vietnam home. Living on old battlegrounds the move has laid their ghosts to rest. Australian soldiers in Flanders. Play Video. Don't Play. Australian soldiers in Flanders. Australian soldiers in Flanders. In 1. 91. 7, the Hunter brothers marched through the town of Ypres in Belgium with the 4th Division. Vision: Australian War Memorial. Lithium, the driving force of the 2. Play Video. Don't Play. Behind Morgan Huxley's murder. Behind Morgan Huxley's murder. Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Dukes cracked the Morgan Huxley murder case, with an assembly of compelling circumstantial evidence that led to the conviction of Daniel Kelsall for Morgan Huxley's murder. Behind Morgan Huxley's murder. Play Video. Don't Play. Behind Morgan Huxley's murder. Behind Morgan Huxley's murder. Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Dukes cracked the Morgan Huxley murder case, with an assembly of compelling circumstantial evidence that led to the conviction of Daniel Kelsall for Morgan Huxley's murder. Coming down the Franklin. Play Video. Don't Play. Coming down the Franklin. Coming down the Franklin. The Good Weekend Magazine participated in the 8 Day Franklin River Rafting Expedition with Australian conservationist Geoff Law. The art of the shoe. Play Video. Don't Play. The art of the shoe. The art of the shoe. John Karandonis at the School of Footwear in Leichhardt reflects on his years as a shoemaker. Kakenya Dream. Play Video. Don't Play. Kakenya Dream. Kakenya Dream. One extraordinary Maasai educator is working to ensure that future generations of girls escape the terrible fate that defined her own coming of age. Supplied video)Veterans living in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans now call Vietnam home. Living on old battlegrounds the move has laid their ghosts to rest. Low says he doesn't know whether it was an American or South Vietnamese helicopter, but minutes later it returned, swooping over the beach at a height of about 4. I saw a second body fall," he recalls. This time I noticed there were no flailing arms or anything like that. The man's hands were tied behind his back."Then a leading aircraftman in his early 2. Sydney, Low recalls sitting on the surfboard thinking, "What kind of a war am I in?" Low says he learnt later that suspected Viet Cong infiltrators were sometimes taken on deadly helicopter rides for interrogation. The practice was to push one of the suspects out of the door, screaming to his death, as a way of convincing others to talk. General view today overlooking what was known as the Back Beach in Vung Tau. Photo: Kate Geraghty. He spent only nine days in Vietnam during the war, working on Caribou aircraft at the airstrip at Vung Tau, a city in southern Vietnam wedged between two mountains on a strip of land jutting into the South China Sea. Back then, Vung Tau had an airstrip, logistics base and about 1. US and Australian forces on rest- and- recreation leave during the war. Almost half a century later, sipping a beer in the Australian- run Tommy's, a bar and restaurant near the same waterfront, Low says that when he flew out of Vietnam that year, he never thought he'd return. I was profoundly affected by what I saw. I couldn't talk about it for years."Now 7. Low is one of about 5. Australian veterans of the war who have returned to the country of their former enemy and settled in Vung Tau, a prosperous regional city of more than 4. Nui Dat, the wartime base for Australian forces. Scores of other Australian retirees, most of them divorced from Australian women, have followed the veterans, with high- rise apartment buildings and luxury hotels catering for a booming tourist industry and workers on oil rigs off the coast. Its beaches are packed at weekends with residents from crowded Ho Chi Minh City, two hours' drive away. But Vung Tau also has a seedy underbelly and is a single man's paradise for many of the Australians frequenting bars with names like Sweethearts, Red Parrot, Hot Lips and Bearded Clam, where young, scantily clad Vietnamese prostitutes vie for their attention. Some spend their days drinking $1 beers, complaining about how bad things are in Australia, in sometimes sexist and racist rants. I can't even call a waitress 'love' without offence being taken over there," says one veteran. Glenn Nolan, 5. 8, a war historian and former soldier who served in 6th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (RAR) after the Vietnam War, says some Australians who arrive in Vung Tau after going through a bad divorce at home fall in love with the first girl they meet in a bar. Nui Dat, Australia's wartime base, some 3. Vung Tau. Photo: Graeme Cuscak"He sees love, she sees ATM. I've seen houses gone and fortunes lost. If they take their time, they can meet some very nice Vietnamese ladies outside the bars who are absolutely beautiful. But for others, it's Groundhog Day. They go to bars at 1. It's pretty sad to see some of them."The veterans here have an unwritten code of conduct. Anyone disrespecting Vietnamese women is bluntly told to behave or leave town. Some with drinking problems who lose control are escorted to the airport and put on a plane back to Australia. One Australian who spread a sexually transmitted disease among prostitutes was ordered out of town. Locals working in nearby rice paddies. Photo: Graeme Cusack. Ho Chi Hoang Kim, 2. Belly's Watering Hole, often sings Úc- dai- loi, Cheap Charlie, a song made famous during the war years about stingy Australian soldiers from the country of "big rats" (there is no word in Vietnamese for kangaroo). Sure, some of the Aussies are Cheap Charlies but they are good men," she says. You see them help poor people on the streets all the time."Some Australians living in Vung Tau have happy long- term partnerships with local women. Dozens work in charities, helping impoverished local families, and in an orphanage where children have deformities believed to have been caused by Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant sprayed by the US military during the war to eliminate forest coverage for North Vietnamese troops. Graeme Cusack, 7. Battalion, RAR, 1. Photo: Kate Geraghty. Some, like Nolan, conduct tours of the former battlefields for Australian tourists, including Long Tan, 4. Vung Tau. It was here, on August 1. Australians and three New Zealanders fought off wave after wave of Viet Cong fighters in a battle that came to symbolise Australia's 1. Vietnam War. Raymond Low, who spent 2. RAAF in Australia and overseas before leaving the service in 1. Vietnam. He says he then began making frequent trips there, booking into a cheap hotel in Vung Tau for weeks at a time. Rod Harlor, 6. 8, mortar platoon, 9th Battalion, RAR, 1. Photo: Kate Geraghty"Every trip was better than the previous one," he says, adding that he now lives in Vung Tau for months at a time, but travels back to Australia for business and to deal with health problems, including a lung condition. Medical treatment in Australia is free for veterans receiving TPI – Totally and Permanently Incapacitated – pensions.) "The people are generally friendly, although in any developing country you find people who will scam you if they can. I've made good friends here. The cost of living is low. And I feel totally relaxed … this is where my heart is now."Some of the stories Vietnam veterans tell about the war are recycled, embellished; old Asia hands are sceptical, for instance, about Low's account of bodies being thrown from a helicopter, especially over an area where troops went for R& R. But Low insists the story is true and he has a US magazine article with a photo of a suspected North Vietnamese infiltrator falling from a helicopter. Russell Hutchison, 6. RAN, 1. 96. 5 and 1. Photo: Kate Geraghty. Peter Taylor, a machine- gunner with 5th Battalion RAR, left Vietnam in March 1. HMAS Sydney, marking the end of his 1. Australia's Nui Dat base. I remember sitting on the back of the boat watching [Vietnam] disappear and saying to myself, 'I will never return, never ever,' " he says. That lasted 3. 5 years."Taylor, 6. It takes a lot to get rid of some of the terrible things you did and saw," he says. He's sitting with his partner of two years, Chau, 3. Belly's, which serves lamb shanks and is an unofficial clubhouse for many of the veterans. Raymond Low, 7. 1, aircraftsman, 3. Squadron, RAAF, 1. Photo: Kate Geraghty. For decades after the war, living in Canberra, Taylor hated the Vietnamese. We'd been told all the propaganda … that they were bad buggers and we should kill them. That they eat babies and sell their sisters, all that stuff. But it was wrong. They're a beautiful race of people and they need our help."Taylor, who has three adult sons from two marriages in Australia, returned to Vietnam in 2. Long Tan. He wanted to leave after two days. The smell was still here; everything like that," he says. But he stayed for several weeks and, after repeated trips, now calls Vung Tau home. Peter Taylor, 6. 8, machine- gunner, 5th Battalion, RAR, 1. Photo: Kate Geraghty"There is no pressure here as long as you keep your nose clean and don't get into any trouble with the police, or anything like that. If you want a taxi, you just walk out and get one – unlike in Australia, where you have to wait an hour. And I don't like the way Australia is changing. I just don't agree with the people they are bringing to Australia these days.
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