'I knew it had happened'

Janice Smith knew the moment her husband Bernie had been killed in Vietnam. “I knew it had happened,” Janice said as she shared her family’s story. “One of the boys, I don’t remember which one, woke up crying at the precise moment and I knew something had happened. I’d said to him that if he went, I knew something would happen, but I couldn’t stop him. That was his life and that’s what he had to do and what he wanted to do.”

Bernard Lyle Smith was a sergeant in the Australian Army and had already served one tour in Vietnam in 1966 when he returned for a second in 1969. He was just 29 years old when he was killed in a mine incident after bravely mounting a rescue mission on the 9th of March, leaving behind his 26-year-old wife Janice and his two young sons, five-year-old Stuart and 15-month-old Edward.

The day the police came is a day Stuart will never forget.

“The Catholic nuns from the local school arrived and I thought it was just a good will visit,” Stuart said. “And then one of them said to me, ‘Look, we have some sad news, your father’s not coming home from Vietnam.’ … The vision of my mother’s grief is something that has lived with me all my life.”

Now, almost 50 years later, certain sounds and smells still remind Stuart of his father.

“I have to be careful that I have not constructed memories from black and white photographs,” Stuart said. “But I have smells and I have sounds that are my memories of him. The smell of Brilliantine hair tonic in the morning is a smell that takes me back to an image of him leaving our house to head off to the barracks. The sounds of squeaky army boots, the leather army boots, are sounds that take me back to him returning home when he was back from duty … There’s a special laugh that he seemed to have which sort of drew you in and you wanted to be with that person. But they are the only memories, if you like, that I have. I was too young to remember anything more substantial.”

Bernard Lyle Smith was born on the 2nd of September 1939 in Snowtown in South Australia, the son of Edward Lyle and Mary Ilene Smith. “Bernie”, as he became known, was a country boy at heart who enjoyed being outdoors and playing chess. He was also a talented musician who loved playing the piano and could play music by ear. He tried to join the Army as a “Band Boy” when he was 14, but was unsuccessful, and joined the railways instead.

It was while working as an assistant shunter and porter in Adelaide that he met his future wife, Janice Bain, through his sister Sondra. The 16-year-old Janice was unimpressed when he called her a widgie – “I was no more a widgie than a nun and I was quite upset about that” – but the pair became good friends and soon fell in love. Bernard joined the Army two months after turning 19 and proposed in a letter from Malaya. “I said, ‘No, you can come home and ask me,’” Janice said with a laugh.

He did, and the couple were married in north Adelaide in April 1962 before moving to Holsworthy in Sydney and starting a family.

“It was a lovely wedding,” Janice said. “I’d never been away from home before, or interstate, but I just accepted that. It was my choice to get married and I knew what [Army life] would be like … I’ve never felt depressed or anything like that because of what happened. I just accepted it. I had to get on with life because I had two children. It’s no use sitting there feeling sorry for yourself because of what happened. It was his choice to go over there, but you can’t carry a grudge like that for the rest of your life.”

Stuart remembers Legacy was first on the scene to help after his father’s death, and that a group of Vietnam veterans who served with Bernard stayed in loyal contact with his mother and would watch over her. But for Stuart, who was inspired by his father’s service to join the army at the age of 17, the national Vietnam Veterans Welcome Home Parade of 1987 was a pivotal moment in learning more about his father.

“I was stationed in Singleton as a young lieutenant, and before the parade in Sydney they had laid out these flags to represent each of the fallen from Vietnam,” Stuart said. “I just happened to see on the ground the flag with his name on it and a person was going to pick it up and I said, ‘Do you mind if I take that one because I knew that person.’”

It was while marching in the parade that Stuart looked back along the line of marchers and saw a man he knew was a good friend of his father.

“He introduced me to a group of other people who served with him, and that day they told me so many stories about his character and about his service,” Stuart said. “That was the time that I probably gained the most insight into the sort of person he was: that 1987 Welcome Home Parade in Sydney … One of the chaps I met later who served with my father in Malaya said that when he came back to the camp, he’d hear a song on the radio and he’d play the tempo of that song with his hands on the side of the table to keep himself in practise. While a fellow who was a radio operator who served with him in Vietnam talked about my father’s love of rice and the ration pack. They would compete to see who could accumulate the most rice sachets by trading other ration items with members of the platoon. I understand my father cornered the platoon rice sachet market, so to speak … Those sorts of small stories give you an idea of what he was like as a soldier and as a human being, and I really valued those stories.”

Stuart, who is now retiring as a Major General after more than 36 years in the Regular Army, shared his father’s story at a Last Post Ceremony at the Memorial on Vietnam Veterans Day. “I think that it’s a wonderful completion of the circle,” he said. “I enlisted in the army because I was certainly inspired by my father. Now I transition from the army simply reminding the community of his service as I exit from my service.”

Stuart’s brother Edward, who the family says is the spitting image of his father, wore Bernard’s medals at the ceremony and laid a wreath with his mother. Edward’s children have inherited their grandfather’s love of music and dance, and he lives just a few streets away from his mother.

“It probably changed my path dramatically I would think,” said Edward, who was too young to remember his father. “The assistant coach is still there, but the main coach is gone … I’ve always admired Stuart, his strength in dealing with exactly the same thing. There was only four years difference between us, and I’m sure it’s very hard for him too, but his vision, he carried that vision and he kept on with that vision, even today … The army sort of took my brother then too. Not that I’ve got anything against the army, if I was born in the time that our father was, I reckon I probably would have went down the same path. I think that his faith helped him and made him do what he wanted to do.”

For Janice, the connection to her husband remains strong and she has never remarried. “I said I never would, and I didn’t want to anyway,” Janice said. “I still dream about him after all this time ... just little things ... and it doesn’t mean anything where you are [in the dream], he’s just there.”

The Last Post Ceremony commemorating Bernard Lyle Smith's military service can be viewed here.