Ripples of Wartime: Jean Matthews

The real story is adventure. Anything new and exciting was what I wanted.

I wrote off to Red Cross and I think nobody else stepped forward and wanted to go to Vietnam and suddenly I was on the plane to Vietnam.

I was so naive, I'm ashamed to say it. I had no idea what I was in for.

As a Red Cross girl I was not a nurse, I was a Red Cross aid worker I suppose and it was a difficult role we had. We were sister, mother, not a girlfriend, a best friend.

It was a difficult role for me to play because let me tell you they were all gorgeously handsome in the fit and prime of their youth. They might have a hand blown off but they were gorgeous.

They were dirty, sweaty men who stunk of jungle mildew and they hadn't shaved for whatever 10 days and they were absolutely adorable. Some of them are my friends today. I respect and revere every single one of them.

Nothing was ever routine there. I worked at a hospital, the Australian Hospital at the base camp, the logistics support camp but every day you never knew what you were in for. It was crazy and crazy was the norm.

The Battle of Long Tan happened exactly two months into my time in Vietnam and I had never seen anything like it. Those Long Tan wounded were different. Their eyes were stunned and wounded like I don't know what's hit me kind of dazed expression.

These boys didn't smile, they didn't talk, they just laid there silently. They gave me exactly what I needed to know and nothing else and I was frightened. I had, I did not know what was the right words in my naivety.

I vowed that I would have to have a chat with the chaplain. What do you say to men who face such horrors?

We really tried to make the patients lives in Vietnam normal. I didn't know what they came from - with any patient.

I almost never asked what happened because particularly in the medical ward often I wouldn't want to know VD or all sorts of other things that would be embarrassing to them but we did try to make their lives as normal as possible.

It didn't matter if it was small. Small was great but it helped them realize there was a world outside this crazy war.

At Christmas I made sure to wear a dress so that not my Red Cross uniform on that day of all days I had to let them know there was a world, where at home where girls wore pretty dresses and life was normal and one day they would get back to it.

I made it my business in Vietnam to interact as much as I could with the Vietnamese. I did not get many opportunities. We did civil action work but that was almost a rarity. I did that on my day off, when we finally got one day off a week, but I did try to mix with them and then you began to wonder what is this crazy war about.

They just want to tend their rice paddies and get on with raising a nice, have a nice family life for their children, get them educated and so many circumstances that prevented them from doing this.

I think everybody comes back slightly affected by PTSD, very slightly with so many of them. Even the heroes who today would shrug it off and say I haven't got post-traumatic stress disorder.

I think the fact that they all talk so much about the war means that, and I do too, I enjoy talking about it.

It was an indelible part of my life.