He was a forward scout in Vietnam, perhaps the most dangerous job there was, probing through the jungle to meet the enemy, eyeball-to-eyeball, blade to blade.  He had volunteered to join the army in Australia.  He had volunteered to put his life on the line in that particular terrifying role.

As he tells it now in his home in Glen Innes, a helicopter gunship opened fire – what is misnamed as “friendly fire”.  John was thrown into the open by the impact and there, a Viet Cong sniper hit him.  The shrapnel from the gunship ripped his chest. The sniper’s bullet tore his stomach.

Since then, he has suffered ceaseless nightmares:  “I appear to be back at that time.” He said that sometimes people who served in Vietnam say they never felt frightened.  He did: “The stress and the fear is there all the time, the fear that someone in the jungle is always watching you.”

He had been in Vietnam for six months and then spent another six months in hospital before being sent home.  He still walks with a limp though he has discarded his crutches.

Now 68, he still relives it all, day in day out – or rather, night in, night out..  Perhaps the moment his trauma really started, though, was before he was injured.  His big pal was an aborigine, Andrew Drummond.  Both were versed in Bush craft – that’s why John volunteered for the scouting role.

“May 30, 1969 was a particularly nasty, exhausting day but the two of them were ordered to perform one last task, pushing forward further.  “We had been moving for six days.  We pulled up for a rest but they pushed us further.”

The two tossed a coin to see who would go first, and Andy lost.  John stayed back and his comrade moved forward, passing a tree without seeing the sniper above, the sniper who killed him.

John says today: “He was a brilliant soldier.  I still miss him.  I will never forget him.”

One of John’s nightmares today is that he is walking down the gang-plank of HMAS Sydney onto the wharf in Vietnam.  A helicopter gunship circles and fires at him.  “Andy is firing at me”, he says.  “He is saying ‘I missed you that time, but I’ll get you the next’.”  And the gunship keeps circling.  It is still circling in John’s mind.

John says that this nightmare stems from his guilt at winning the fatal toss of the coin.  When I tell him he has nothing to feel guilty about, he says: “Guilt is hard to say ‘no’ to.”

He now gets some easement of his anguish from a new dog he’s named Nui Dat after the Australian base in Vietnam.  “Dat gives me a purpose,” John said.  “It helps me get past my post-traumatic stress disorder”.  He says his previous dog who died of old age could tell when a particularly bad bout of PTSD was coming up. and the dog would nudge his leg in a caring way.

John was a volunteer who did it “for the adventure, the adrenaline”.  Would he do it again? “I’ve never regretted it.  I’m proud of what the Australians did.”