Indeed, a less complicated landscape could not have been imagined.  Shimmered in the heat haze far out on the horizon, a range of four or five tall peaks rose abruptly out of the otherwise dead flat terrain, as tended to be the habit of mountains in the region. But the Long Hais were different—you could tell even from that distance. They were different because they spoke to you, and what they spoke of was great danger. They spoke in the voice of the constant roar of distant explosions, like a thunderstorm on the way in, only it never arrived.
    Day in, day out, hour upon hour, the flashing silver slivers of Phantoms and F111’s dive-bombed them from high up, strafing and rocketing the slopes. Then the choppers came to chatter about the ridgelines and blaze away like angry insects. Later, maybe, the invisible B-52’s would offload their five and ten thousand pounders from the courageous altitude of thirty thousand feet, hurling rows of apocalyptic columns of dirt and smoke skyward as the heavy detonations marched across the valleys and peaks. Between air raids, the artillery took over. Shells whistled in straight over their heads from Nui Dat or thumped away from The Horseshoe, and if all that wasn’t enough, there were barrages from US Navy warships far out on the South China Sea.
 “Don’t they ever fucking stop?” we all  wondered aloud.
 “Nope,” Nigel Naughton said, “Been going on flat out for five fuckin’ years.”
 “Popular place.”
 “Yeah. There’s so many craters they call them the Mountains of the Moon.”
 “Well if that’s where the fuckin’ Charlies are, why don’t we fuckin’ go up there and get the bastards?”
 “Task Force wants to. But the Yanks reckon it’s suicide. They reckon if they stop the bombardment, even for a few  minutes, Charlie’ll be able to break out and overrun the whole province.”
 “And that’s why they’re building this silly fucking fence? To keep the bastards in there so the Yanks can pound `em to death.”
 “You got it.”

“Do you know what you’re celebrating today?” He turned to his mother. “Do you?” He was politeness itself. She stared at this cold monster they had produced, fed, clothed, educated, and suffered. “Have you any idea what happened that day, the original day, what it meant?”
    “I been talking”—his mother was indignant—”to Wacka about it just tonight.”
    “Oh, Wacka.” Tactical blunder or deliberate provocation, Hughie was not sure, but voiced the words that rushed to his mouth. “What would he know about it?”
    Alf came at him. “Don’t you insult my mate. Don’t you insult him. He was there, wasn’t he?”
    I will not shout at you. That is exactly the trouble. We all shout at each other and nobody listens and nothing is changed. I will be quiet.
    He forced on himself an air of patience. “Does the man who was there ever know anything? All he knows is what he sees, one man’s view from a trench.” He risked it: “Right, Wack?”
    Sitting up taunt and troubled, Wacka nodded.
    “It’s the people who come after, who can study it, see the whole thing—”
    With deepest contempt Alf spat out what he had revered all his life. “Book-learnin’.” He pointed to Wacka. “He bloody suffered, that man. You tell me book-learnin’ after the event’s gunna tell you more than he can?”
    “He knew how it felt. Others have to tell us what it meant. And that is what is pathetic about your great celebration. Because it meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
    The celebration in question is Anzac Day—an event the significance of which lay in the near future for me—and which I would choose to ignore mostly because of my personal experiences of how my uncles and the neighbouring menfolk indulged the situation, and because of Alan Seymour’s book The One Day of the Year. In fact, I don’t know when I read the book—I saw it as a play on television and was very embarrassed by the thought that soon enough, I would number amongst them, should I survive the war. I’ve never marched on Anzac Day, and I never will.