Graveside vigils for Vietnam War dead in Warrnambool, Camperdown, Cobden

It was a knock at the door that forever changed the lives of 523 Australian families.

Four Western District families were among those for whom death came calling, robbing them of sons, brothers, husbands, fathers and fiancés.

Now, half a century after the end of the conflict that ripped families apart and divided communities, the scars still run deep.

This year marks 50 years since Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end, closing a chapter that began a decade earlier.

On Thursday, August 3, the 60th anniversary of our nation's entry into the conflict, families, friends and comrades of the 523 who died will hold graveside vigils across Australia to honour their memories.

At 11am at the Warrnambool cemetery as a lone bugler sounds the Last Post, privates William Carroll and Graham Warburton will be honoured for their service, as will Private Ian Scott at Camperdown and Private Ralph Niblett at Cobden.

Fifty-eight years have passed since that early morning knock at the door delivered the news that left 19-year-old Lorraine Williamson (then Carroll) a widow and her six-month-old baby son David fatherless.

Like her husband's service number, anniversaries and birthdays, it's a day forever etched in her memory.

Private William 'Bill' Thomas Carroll, 1RAR, service number 37010, died on June 26, 1965, three weeks and two days after arriving in Vietnam where his infantry battalion was attached to the US 173rd Airborne Brigade.

He was one of three Australians killed after a grenade accidentally detonated at Bien Hoa air base. At 21, he was Australia's first 1RAR soldier to die in a combat zone.

The news was delivered by the local policeman early the next morning to the Dennington home of Lorraine's in-laws, Bert and Dell Carroll where she was living at the time. With baby David stirring in the cot beside her, Lorraine heard the knock from her front bedroom.

"I knew straight away," she recalls. Bill had died on his father's birthday, also his grandfather Tom's birthday. A day never to be celebrated again.

Two weeks later Warrnambool came to a standstill as Bill was laid to rest with military honours in a funeral that cost $10,000 paid for by his Dennington footy club and a private donor.

Now 77, Lorraine said so divisive was Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War that she rarely told outsiders the circumstances of Bill's death, finding it easier to simply let them believe he had died in a car accident.

"It was so political, even we kept quiet about it," she says.

Although she remarried and had three more children, Lorraine was at pains to ensure that David grew up knowing as much about his father as possible.

"I was always frightened that David was going to forget his father."

David was in his teens before he fully grasped the situation, but it's only in later life that he has gained closure around his father's death after being embraced by the US 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Since 2010 he has attended three brigade association reunions and is proud that his father's name is etched on a war memorial at Fort Benning, Georgia; the first time in history that foreign soldiers have featured on a US war memorial.

Like many other Aussie Diggers, Warrnambool's Graham 'Nugget' Warburton turned 21 in the jungles of Vietnam, courting danger as a forward scout with 10 Platoon, D Company 5RAR.

Just three months later, on October 1, 1966, the popular gun marksman stepped into a clearing and into an enemy sniper's bullet. He passed away on the chopper ride to hospital.

Graham wasn't meant to be forward scout that day, but he'd agreed to fill in for a mate, according to his sister Judith McKenzie.

A priest knocked on Ron and Ella Warburton's door early that Sunday morning with the news every parent dreads. It was a devastating blow for the family, coming 20 years after Ron's twin brother Ossie died a World War II Japanese POW on Ambon.

The church was overflowing, bands played, soldiers marched, guns saluted and a police motorbike escorted the coffin as Graham was laid to rest three weeks later with full military honours on a muggy spring day in Warrnambool.

But when the fanfare was over, so was the compassion.

"As a family, we shut up shop," says Judith, recalling being "treated like lepers" by a public divided.

"Even though we were so proud of Graham and what they (the troops) were doing there, we weren't game to talk about it because we didn't want the controversy. You didn't know how people would react, but you knew it wasn't going to be good."

Judith often wonders about the life that her brother might have led.

"Everything was just coming together for him. He was enjoying his job as an apprentice painter, he'd bought a car, he had a steady girlfriend and he was ready to step up to the seniors with South Warrnambool football club."

Graham, who was in the first intake of National Servicemen, would be 78 now. His name lives on in a mountain range in Phuoc Tuy Province near Nui Dat. Officially called the Nui Dinh Hills, the range was nicknamed The Warburtons or The Warbies after Graham by a mate as a play on a popular song of the time, Wolverton Mountain.

After working in the bank for a couple of years after leaving school, Camperdown's Ian "Scottie" Scott regarded the prospect of compulsory military service as a bit of an adventure, according to his sister Pat.

Ian turned 21 after his passing out parade at Puckapunyal, was posted to North Shore and then Holsworthy with the 12th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery and then on to Vietnam in May of 1968.

Four days later he was dead, leaving behind a gutted family and his bride of four months, Marlene.

Gunner Scott was killed on May 13, 1968, one of 25 Australians who lost their lives at the Battle of Coral and Balmoral between May 12 and June 6 of that year; actions regarded as Australia's most costly and protracted battle of the Vietnam War.

But his name, and that of another Coral casualty, Chris Sawtell, live on in Vietnam with a bar built by his unit dubbed The Scott Sawtell Club. Pat Scott, 73, has devoted most of her adult life to keeping her brother's memory alive and treasures the letter he wrote home from Nui Dat just two days before his death, telling them that he was "going bush" for a few days.

"Don't worry about me while I'm in the bush," he wrote. "Anyway, by the time you receive this I'll probably be back in camp".

Ian never made it back to camp. Two weeks later Camperdown residents lined the streets and shopkeepers and workers stopped to pay homage to the town's first Vietnam War casualty with full military honours.

The Scott family was all too familiar with the horrors of war. Ian's father Pat had served in World War II and his three uncles had served in both world wars, one at Gallipoli.

Ralph Niblett was just weeks from going home to Australia when his tour of duty came to a fatal end as one of the last Diggers to be killed in Vietnam.

The popular South Purrumbete lad had been working on his parents' dairy farm when his birthdate number came up in the national service ballot in 1969. He started his service in January the following year, the same month he turned 21 and became engaged.

Ralph had been in Vietnam since May 1971. By September he was looking forward to coming home and getting married, according to his sister Pamela Taylor.

Tragically, on September 21, he and four other Diggers from D Company 4RAR were killed in the last big battle of Nui Le.

Critically wounded, the keen football fan is reported to have told his platoon commander Gary McKay that he was going home but didn't think he would make it to the VFL grand final just a few days later.

He died shortly after in the medivac chopper.

Pamela's parents, Jim and Gwen Niblett were at home in the kitchen reading their son's last letter when "a big black government car" pulled into the driveway.

"Dad was a World War II veteran. He knew straight away. Mum knew too, but she went and locked herself in the bathroom because she didn't want to hear it," Pamela recalls of the moment their lives changed forever.

Pamela, who was working in Melbourne for the ACTU at the time, learned of her brother's death from Bob Hawke, then ACTU secretary and future prime minister.

Private Niblett, 22, was buried in Cobden on October 1 with full military honours. With more than a thousand mourners turning out to pay their respects, the funeral was held in the town's civic hall to accommodate the crowd. Pamela says her parents never recovered from the blow.

"To the day they died they did not get over the loss of their son Ralph."

IN OTHER NEWS

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: