Commemoration of the 63rd Anniversary of the deployment of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam
I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet and their elders, past and present.
And, as we do every night at the Last Post Ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, I acknowledge those of you who have served, those still serving, and the families that love and support you.
Distinguished guests, veterans of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), families, and friends.
It is a profound honour to join you here at The Grove in Canungra, the spiritual home - and, belatedly, a place of homecoming – for so many who served and trained here before deploying to a distant, demanding and little understood war.
A word, a phrase or a name can sometimes enter the national vernacular, where it sits in shorthand to help us to understand.
As visitors to the Memorial move through our galleries, or attend a commemorative event, it is often these one or two words are all that needs to be said for a hush to fall over the group.
‘ANZAC’, becomes more than a beach. It captures eight bloody months fought to a standstill on a thyme-swept peninsula on the other side of the world. A campaign - and a word - that has transcended the First World War and has come to represent a standard against which everyone who has, or who will, wear the Australian slouch measures themselves.
‘Pozieres’ is more than a village; it embodies the true horror of trench warfare, where we suffered 24,000 casualties in six weeks, and where ‘the waste of human life was so terrible that some said victory was scarcely discernible from defeat.’
And it was where the idea for the Australian War Memorial was born.
‘Kokoda’ is more than a thatched village and bush strip in the Owen Staley Ranges. Kokoda defines a brutal, awful campaign that stretched from Port Moresby to the beachheads of Buna, Gona and Sanananda.
And Vietnam, where we speak proudly of the battles of Long Tan and Coral/Balmoral, we also speak of the ‘The Team’.
The Team.
It’s all I need say in the Vietnam Galleries for people to lean in, to listen.
They know of you.
The Team.
First in and last out.
The Team.
The most highly decorated unit of the Vietnam War.
The Team.
As Kerry mentioned in his introduction, I had the privilege of serving our nation as Ambassador to Afghanistan in 2015-16.
My posting coincided with the transition from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, to Resolute Support, where NATO’s mission pivoted to training, advising and assisting the Afghanistan National Defence and Security Assistance Force.
The US also retained and led a separate Counter Terrorist kinetic capability, but it was through Resolute Support where I saw firsthand the complexity of war fought not only on battlefields, but in hearts and in minds, in language, and in trust.
In Afghanistan’s valleys our soldiers — like yours decades earlier — served not only as warriors, but as partners, teachers, and often lifelines.
The Australian Army Training Team Vietnam was, and in many ways remains, the blueprint for that service.
When preparing for this address, I kept stumbling across one phrase to describe The Team – ‘The Quiet Professionals’.
It’s a phrase that encapsulates courage without fanfare.
Strength without swagger.
You served in small, often isolated teams.
The Team trained Vietnamese troops, advised commanders, and walked every inch of jungle with their allies.
The Team’s battlefield success is legendary. Four Victoria Crosses. Dozens of other honours.
But your true legacy lies in how you earned the trust of those you were sent to help.
Because to advise is to lead without rank, to persuade without command, and to inspire with your presence.
That was the AATTV’s daily burden and your quiet triumph.
Your motto is ‘persevere’.
You taught not just tactics, but resilience.
You lived among those you trained.
You bled beside them.
And you exemplified that rare quality — influence earned, not imposed.
It is a testament to your unity and character that six decades later, AATTV veterans remain bound in deep camaraderie.
The Team remembers.
Here today, at The Grove, The Team gathers.
The Team still advocates — including for formal national recognition of its gallantry through the proposed Unit Citation.
And in that ongoing commitment lies a powerful message: Service does not end when the uniform comes off.
Indeed, many of you carried those lessons home.
Into public service, veteran advocacy, community leadership.
You helped build not just battalions, but legacies.
On ANZAC Day 2024, a year 12 student from Marist College Canberra was asked to carry the AATTV banner on ANZAC Day.
It was the first ANZAC Day to be held on the Memorial’s new parade ground. The first person to march on it was Commando Damien Thomlinson, a double amputee after an IED strike in Afghanistan.
That student – my son – is now in his first year at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
He appreciates now it was not only a physical standard he carried that day, but one that embodied a code of conduct he must now uphold for the remainder of his service. And beyond.
The Team.
So please know that here, today, you embody something our nation cherishes — a quiet, enduring patriotism.
A life not of self, but of service.
At the Australian War Memorial, it is both my duty and honour to preserve and to tell stories like yours — to ensure future generations understand not only the battles you fought, but the men and women who fought them, and the families who loved and supported them.
Those who picked up the pieces when the war came home with them or when you gave of it your health.
I host a great many visitors to the Memorial.
From Kings and Queens, Prime Ministers and Presidents, to school children.
And whenever I host a senior delegation from the United States, I always show them three things.
Of course, I take them to the Hall of Memory and the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier.
I also take them to the First World War Gallery and to the exhibition on the Battle of Le Hamel, where on the fourth of July 1918, under General Sir John Monash, Australians and Americans fought side by side in a stunning victory.
A text book example of a combined arms attack that is still taught 107 years later, including here at the Land Warfare Centre.
And then I take them for a walk along the Roll of Honour.
I always stop at the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam panel, and the 33 names in raised bronze.
And that’s where I speak of mateship.
Of Warrant Officer Class 2 Ron Scott and Master Sergeant Eugene Jordan of the US Army.
A comradeship formed in the jungles of Quang Tin Province, Vietnam, where they served as advisors and mentors with the 3rd Battalion, 6th Regiment, 2nd ARVN Division.
Where a pact was made that if one of them was killed, the other would ensure they were buried at home, surrounded by loved ones.
And when Ron Scott was tragically killed in action on 10 September 1965, despite Australian Government policy to the contrary, Master Sergeant Jordan not only raised the money for the repatriation of his mate’s remains, he paid his own way to escort the coffin home, and stood by Ron’s widow at Rookwood Cemetery.
And together, they forced a change in repatriation policy that exists to this day.
Ron Scott and Eugene Jordan stand as a reminder that, in remembering The Team’s story, we are not just looking back.
We are reminding all Australians of the importance of living with integrity, courage, and compassion in their own time.
Kerry provided a number of quotes and asked that I choose one to finish this morning.
I quite liked Albert Pike’s “what we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others, and the world, remains and is immortal”.
But I’ll give you another, this one from the Memorial’s founder, Charles Bean, and it speaks to you, the Members of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam:
‘What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession for ever
Thank you for the Team’s love for your comrades, for your mission, for our country — embodied here at the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam Memorial.
It is an honour for me personally, and for our nation, to remember you.
And please know it stands as one of my greatest of privileges to have been invited to stand with you today, here in The Grove.
Persevere.
Lest we forget!
*I thank Colonel Kerry Gallagher, AM, President of the AATTV Association, for his insights when preparing these remarks.