Re: Australia's Forgotten Six

Date: April 26, 2004

"Our inaction is a shame
By TONY RINDFLEISCH

THE families and Digger mates of Australia's "forgotten six" Vietnam servicemen, whose bodies were never recovered, have called on the Federal Government to bring the lost men home.

Relatives and veterans who have been living with grief for more than 30 years have appealed to the Defence Department to try to finally find the men's remains.

Diggers who fought alongside the lost servicemen have been haunted for decades because they were forced to abandon their fallen mates in the heat of the battle.

Robert Gillson, 38, who never met his father, Peter, an infantryman in the first combat unit to fight in Vietnam, said Australia had a responsibility to find any trace of the men who had paid the ultimate sacrifice.

"He's over there in some place in the world he shouldn't be," said the Melbourne accountant.


Mr Gillson was born four months before his father was shot by the Viet Cong in 1965.

"The soldiers went to represent the country," he said. "The country should represent them now to find what they can."

Mr Gillson said he appreciated it would be difficult and costly to trace remains of the lost servicemen but he would rest more easily if authorities made an effort.

Former Vietnam veteran Jim Bourke, who served in the same battalion as Pte Gillson and another lost serviceman who was killed in the same battle, Lance-Cpl Richard Parker, said authorities had been recalcitrant and insulting in their lack of action.

"The Government has been slovenly, callous and unpatriotic," he said. "It is a matter of national shame that they are washing their hands of these men."

A government mission in 1984 visited the sites where some of the six were lost but found no new information.

Mr Bourke said he believed the mission was a token gesture motivated by improving political links with Vietnam.

He said Australia should follow the lead of the United States, which has teams of experts searching for remains of all lost American servicemen from all wars.

Requests by the US Army's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) for DNA samples from Australian relatives were initially rejected by Australian authorities because they did not want to upset servicemen's families.

The Americans wanted the DNA to exclude the possibility that the remains of any Australians were among those of about 100 unknown servicemen stored in Hawaii.

Mal Brough, the Minister assisting the Defence Minister, later backflipped and vowed to ask the families if they wanted to provide DNA.

The US search teams were now working on Australia's behalf and any credible new information would be investigated, Mr Brough said.

A 113-page report on the Gillson and Parker cases, compiled over two years of research, was sent by Mr Bourke to Mr Brough earlier this month. It is being evaluated by the Defence Department.

Australia's "forgotten six" Vietnam servicemen were: Pte Peter Raymond Gillson, 20, of Brunswick; Lance-Cpl Richard Harold John Parker, 24, of St Leonards, NSW; Lance-Cpl John Francis Gillespie, 24, of Carnegie; Pte David John Elkington Fisher, 23, of Balgowlah Heights, NSW; Pilot Officer Robert Charles Carver, 24, of Toowoomba; and Flying Officer Michael Patrick John Herbert, 24, of Glenelg.


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