MY COUNTRY
I have killed and I have maimed;
I have done it all in my Countries name.
I have planned and I have plotted
just so my people under communism would not have rotted.
All of this I have done
just so your freedom would not run.
You who live well remember we,
we who have lost our souls so you can be.
Your memories are short.
Do you remember those terrible years between '62 and '75?
How you mistreated the returning Diggers?
Men who did nothing but their duty.
This they did in your name on foreign shores
so you would not know the death and destruction here
they had witnessed there.
You can argue the Domino theory or Asian politics;
It doesn't really matter in the end.
Communism had invaded yet another country
with full knowledge that the people of the West
had no stomach to fight.
This time the Ogre was wrong.
Though small in number,
only 50,000 in total,
Soldiers of the Great Southern Land made their stand.
Battle Honours such as Long Tan, Bhin Bha,
The Long Highs, FSB's Coral and Balmoral,
the many battles of the infamous '68 Tet Offensive
and many, many others are names that should ring loud,
should be held as high as those Honours won by our fathers
at Anzac Cove, The Nek, Paschendale,Ypres, Tobruk,
The Kokoda Track and El Alamein.
These Battle Honours from Viet Nam
you ground into the mud of foreign soil
along with the blood of the Diggers who gave their all.
You called us Baby Killer!
You used you freeborn right to demonstrate,
but you used it against the wrong people.
We were not your enemy.
You lacked the courage and the conviction of your beliefs
to use your freeborn rights against the true aggressor;
those rights won for you with the blood, sweat and tears
of Diggers throughout our history.
You have no Honour,
and I will hate you till the day I die
for what you have done to me and my mates.
To be an outcast
in the very country you fought to protect
is a burden no man can bear and retain his sanity.