Our minds travel back in history to the days of the Vietnam War and the soldiers who fought and died there.

One such soldier was a Sergeant Tom Birnie who served with D Company 2RAR in 1967-68 and again on a second tour in 1970-1971. 

He was nine months into operational service when he was killed.

He penned this heartfelt poem, during his second tour, which captured the weariness and strain of infantry operations in a war zone and, longing for the tour to end, to be once again with his family and friends.

I think of the long hill home

Laid in the jungle’s thick brown loam

Youthful lips long ceased to moan,

Shattered and tottered and so alone

Never to walk the long hill home

One of many, before and to come,

His life’s blood joined with the others to run

In a torrent of red to unsated seas

Empires are built on the bones of these

Never to walk the long hill home

What care they for their country’s fate

They who neither love or hate?

Their bones are white, these posthumous great,

White as the Empire builder’s plate

Never to walk the long hill home

Their epitaph by quirk of fate

Stands dumb in country town and state

The unknown soldier! His gift was great,

Unknown they lived, unknown they died

Never to walk the long hill home

I stand atop the long hill home

With wife and son, we three alone

And far away in the jungle’s mould

The bones of my youth lie stiff and cold

Never to walk the long hill home.

LEST WE FORGET

The Gloucester community is invited to attend the Remembrance Day service at the Memorial Clock Tower in Gloucester Memorial Park at 10.50am on Sunday November 11. 

Ex-servicemen and women and serving defence force personnel may wear their medals, and relatives may wear their deceased members medals on the right side.