It came at immense cost. The tiny, poor country was drenched with more bombs than Germany in World War Two, its underfunded hospitals drowning in wounded.

Millions were dead.

We do not have an estimate even of the number of millions, many, many of them children.

A bare handful of years into their recovery from what they call the "American war", they were invaded by China, after they chose to end the horror of the Cambodian genocide with their own military intervention.

And yet years of economic recovery later little Vietnam today is now one of Australia's closer Asian allies; we signed a strategic partnership just last year.

Today Australians help clear mines where once we laid them.

Young Australians travel to Vietnam as tourists, where our country once forced them to go as soldiers.

Australians welcomed Vietnamese refugees with more or less open arms, people who were left on the wrong side of a lost conflict and needed our help.

In my opinion the two countries have managed the sort of maturity, both on the level of individuals and of policy that would have prevented all that horror in the first place if brought to bear before hand.

On both sides of that fence, the policy and process of compassion has been driven above all by veterans of the conflict.

Veterans have even developed "friendship clubs"; on the 50^th anniversary of Long Tan, both sides commemorated the bloodbath battle over a beer.

On this Vietnam Veterans' Day we should certainly remember the suffering and sacrifice of those who went to fight this horrendous conflict. None knows the cost of war better than they.

But look across the world, from a worryingly unstable Eastern Europe, to a violent unjust crackdown by the Chinese state against people they claim to govern in Hong Kong.

From a US president needlessly rattling the sabre worldwide to an Australian government that continues to mistreat refugees including children.

To my mind we should definitely be seeking to find lessons from the compassion our two people - and their veterans.

Lest we forget the lessons they teach us.