Effects of Australian Vietnam Veterans

It was a bitter experience for the Vietnam veterans because after experiencing the gruesome tragedy of war, they returned home to anti-war demonstrations and hostility. This was because the populist idea within the population was the anti-war movement against Vietnam and this led to little support and understanding from the Australian public towards the veterans. As shown in the source below the anger that the public had towards the government was then also taken out on the soldiers, who should have had received this negativity. The source shows the public thinking poorly of the men who went to Vietnam because they were saying don’t go, however it was unfair of the public to make this claim because is they resisted the draft they would have been fined and sentenced to jail, therefore putting them in a tough situation. As a result of the feelings during 1970s there wasn’t a welcome home parade, it wasn’t until 30 years later that they were given the official ‘welcome home’ parade. The Vietnam veterans had a tough time settling back into civilian life when the war ended because they not only suffered social, mental and also physical affects. The Vietnam soldiers returned home to a rather strong anti-war attitude and received miss-treatment and as people spat on many of them on their arrival home. They were also looked down upon by the older soldiers (WW1 and WW2 veterans) because they didn’t consider the Vietnam war to be an actual war, which is unfair/unjust to say because they have endured horrific experiences at such a young age. Many of the veterans were left untreated for post-traumatic stress disorder because the government didn’t think to set up agencies to help the men cope with their struggles. The Physical affect is that the men were exposed to dangerous chemicals in the defoliation campaign such as agent orange and this lead to serious medical problems, and it took years until the government admitted that the Vietnam war policies (defoliation) had caused these problems for the veterans. Therefore the Vietnam veterans did not have an easy experience when returning home from the war, because of the anti-war movements, social abuse, unrecognition from the government, mental affects and physical affects however we are now able to see the errors in our ways and hopefully next time round be more rational and sympathetic to the veterans.