I
have written two novels with a Vietnam War background,
Cardinal Sin, and my latest release, Reluctant Father, both
from TWRP.
You can learn more here.
At
the risk of revealing my age, I have to say the 1960’s was
my time. Mini skirts, stilettos (I’ve bunions to prove it),
beehive hair dos, I couldn’t quite manage that, although I
did tease the life out of my hair and regularly put in
coloured rinses, French Plum or Rich Burgundy, were the
colours I favoured. I can remember when the Beatles made
their first visit out to Australia. A couple of girls I
worked with were lucky enough to get tickets to their
concerts, (we hated them, of course), they came to work the
next days minus their voices, and stayed that way for about
a week, because they had screamed so much.
We
used manual typewriters in those days. One original and four
copies of everything we typed. I don’t know how many blouses
I ruined because I got ink on the sleeves from changing the
typewriter ribbon or the black stuff off the carbon paper.
During this time the Vietnam War loomed in the background.
The Australian government introduced conscription. It was in
the form of a ballot, or the death lottery as many called
it. All twenty year old males had to register, their birth
dates were put into a barrel and a certain number were drawn
out, and those young men had to report to the army and
subsequently many of them were sent to Vietnam. This of
course caused severe bitterness and division in the
community, and even though the government denied it, was
subject to abuse and unfairness. Rich men kept their sons at
university so they didn’t have to go. Conscientious
objectors were thrown into prison. Only sons were called up,
yet families with two or three eligible males didn’t have
any of their boys called up.
I
only had one brother, and I can clearly remember my father
(a World War 2 veteran) vowing, that if his son got called
up, he would protest on the steps of the parliament with a
placard on his back.
There were protests marches, anti-war demonstrations, and
things often turned violent. Not that I went to any of the
protest marches, but a cousin of mine did and got trampled
by a police horse. A very turbulent time in our history and
I was right in the middle of it.
