Community & Business
13 August, 2025
Vietnam veterans remembered
COMMUNITIES around the country will be gathering to commemorate Vietnam Veterans’ Day on Monday 18 August and the Malanda RSL Sub Branch is planning a moving event at its new location.
All veterans, families and the broader community are invited to attend the service, which will be held at the old CWA hall in Elizabeth St, from 10.45 am for an 11am start.
“We have a community address, and we put the Vietnam Veterans lament in the service, we have a diggers’ address, flag raising ,” Malanda RSL commemorations committee chair Glynn Morice said.
“We have 18 candles to represent the 18 veterans from our region who lost their lives, which are lit by two of their widows, it’s quite moving.
“We also have a stand in the hall, where people can place poppies.”
For Mr Morice, the service makes him reflect, with sadness, on the war “we didn’t really need to be in”. He served in Malaya and was thankful he wasn’t sent to Vietnam.
“It went on for too long, killed millions and millions of Vietnamese, and when the soldiers came back they were not treated well,” he said.
“It was different warfare, underground, unexploded bombs, spikes in the ground. It shouldn’t have been a war.
“That’s what the day holds for me.”
Vietnam Veterans Day is held on 18 August each year to remember the sacrifices of the almost 60,000 Australians who served over 10 years of involvement in the war.
The service also marks the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.
The battle began on 18 August 1966, in monsoon conditions in a rubber plantation south east of Saigon, near Australia’s Nui Dat military base. Australian soldiers held off 2500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese from taking the base, and the enemy troops withdrew.
Services for Vietnam Veterans’ Day will also be held by the Mt Molloy RSL Sub Branch, at 11:00 am at the Cenotaph at Mt Molloy Memorial Hall, and by the Mareeba RSL Sub Branch at 10.45 am at Anzac Park, Byrnes Street, Mareeba.
