Vietnam: 'Click, bang, dead'

This sequence is typical of the devastatingly effective mix of drama, archival footage and of dramatic recreations from Hansard and memoirs of the era, to create a moment of real political tension in the history of Australia’s role in the war in Vietnam.

Vietnam synopsis

This epic story of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War is told through the history of a middle class family, the Goddards, whose son Phillip (Nicholas Eadie) is conscripted to fight in the war and whose father, Douglas (Barry Otto), is one of the key Canberra bureaucrats responsible for the policy of Australia’s involvement in the war.

Phillip has a schoolgirl younger sister, Megan (Nicole Kidman) – already on the pill and opposed to the war in Indo China – and a housewife mother, Evelyn (Victoria Lang), who is just starting to stand up to her authoritarian and patronising husband. The family is driven apart by the war in Vietnam, the sexual revolution and the growing independence of women in Australian society. When Phillip becomes alienated from his family as a result of his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, the family never loses the courage to keep love alive, using their new found insights to begin to know each other as they never have before.

Vietnam curator's notes

Vietnam makes evocative use of archival footage from the era to establish the verisimilitude of the mid 1960s. It’s a backdrop of Beatlemania, flower power and a growing horror as the nightly news presents the carnage of the war in Vietnam. The directors even go so far as to inject Megan (Nicole Kidman) and her mother Evelyn (Veronica Lang) into archival news footage from the early 1970s as they join hands with hundreds of thousands of others who are opposed to the war in Vietnam.

The late 1960s in Australia was a time of great social and political upheaval. Since the end of the Second World War, Australia had had full employment. A whole generation of young people who had experienced the possibility of a university education, were now experimenting with sexual freedoms, new forms of music and political views that would bring them into sharp conflict with their parents’ generation. One of the issues that polarised Australian society was the Vietnam war and the use of conscription to call up young men whose birth date was drawn out of a barrel, like winning a lottery, except that for them it was to go to war.

Notes by Janet Bell

Education notes

This clip shows a group of soldiers behind a burning car. It then cuts to a re-enactment of Australia’s prime minister in 1965, Sir Robert Menzies (Noel Ferrier), announcing to Parliament that Australia would be committing a battalion to support the USA in the war in South Vietnam. As he speaks, the scene cuts to young Australian soldiers watching their military instructor (Tim Robertson) give the command for a Claymore antipersonnel mine to be blown up. The explosion shreds the targets and smoke surrounds the wreckage. The instructor explains the different types of antipersonnel mines adapted and used by the Vietcong. The clip ends with a demonstration of a pressure–release detonator mine – ‘click, bang, dead’.

Educational value points

• The clip is an excerpt from the Australian television miniseries Vietnam (1988), about Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The first Australian troops were sent to Vietnam in June 1965 at the request of the US Government. This was part of the USA’s and Australia’s policy of attempting to stem the spread of communism in Asia. Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–63), the leader of the South Vietnamese Government, had repeatedly requested military aid from the USA to assist in its battle with communist North Vietnam and in early 1965 the USA increased its commitment to the War and requested support from its allies, including Australia.

• The dramatic impact of the scene is set when Sir Robert Menzies’s words in Parliament are contrasted with images of the young soldiers, whose lives his words will change forever. The flames, smoke and explosions they are shown in their training demonstrate the type of warfare they will face in Vietnam. The military instructor forces them to focus their attention with a dramatic demonstration of the click of the pressure-release bomb, and each of the words ‘click, bang, dead’ is heard against individual close-ups of the faces of three young soldiers.

• The young men portrayed in this clip may have been conscripted into the Australian Regular Army. Conscription, or the National Service Scheme, was introduced in 1964 to raise more troops to support the USA in the Vietnam War and was based on a lottery ballot using the birth dates of 20-year-old males. Conscripts were obliged to give two years’ continuous full-time service. Between 1964 and 1972, 63,735 national servicemen served in the Australian Army and 19,450 of those conscripts served in the Vietnam War. Conscription was abolished by the newly elected Labor government on 5 December 1972.

• The Vietnam conflict (1954–75) stemmed from the war for Vietnamese independence fought against the colonial French. It then became a civil war between South Vietnam, supported by some democratic countries, and communist-led North Vietnam. The USA became involved in the War in a bid to ‘contain’ communism in South-East Asia, viewing the defence of South Vietnam as a crucial part of the Cold War between the communist states of Russia and China and the democracies of the world.

• Australian troops served in Vietnam from July 1962, when 30 military advisers were sent, until June 1973, when the last platoon returned to Australia. Including military advisers, ground troops and Air Force and Navy personnel, approximately 50,000 Australian military personnel served in Vietnam. At the height of Australia’s involvement, Australian troops numbered 8,500. Almost 2,400 Australian soldiers were wounded and 520 died in the conflict.

• The Vietcong, mentioned in this clip, was the guerrilla force that, with the North Vietnam army, fought against South Vietnam from the late 1950s until 1975. Most of its soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam and they received military aid and training from the North Vietnamese army. They fought a guerrilla war of terrorism, ambush and sabotage, and mostly controlled the countryside rather than the cities. They were referred to as ‘VC’ or ‘Charlie’ by Australian and US troops.

• The clip includes detailed descriptions and demonstrations of the different types of landmines used in the Vietnam War to kill and maim. In 2007, between about 15,000 and 20,000 people around the world are killed by antipersonnel landmines each year. Landmines are cheap to manufacture and can be easily laid by hand, by air or from cruise missiles. They are difficult to find and remove because they are small and often not made from metal. Countries that have high incidences of civilian casualties by landmines as a result of previous military conflicts include Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

• Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978) was the prime minister of Australia 1939–41 and 1949–66. Under Menzies, the Australian Government made the decision to reintroduce conscription, and to send Australian troops to Vietnam in 1965. Menzies had been prime minister in 1939 when the Second World War began and was forced to resign in 1941. He was instrumental in the formation of the Liberal Party, which was launched in 1945, and in December 1949 was again elected prime minister. Menzies is Australia’s longest-serving prime minister.

• The Kennedy Miller production company created Vietnam. George Miller (1945–) and Byron Kennedy (1952–83) met in 1971 and formed Kennedy Miller Productions, which produced the three Mad Max feature films. Between 1983 and 1989 Kennedy Miller produced miniseries for television that told stories exploring Australian identity. These were The Dismissal (1983), Bodyline (1984), The Cowra Breakout (1984), The Dirtwater Dynasty (1988) and Bangkok Hilton (1989).

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia