This Monday, the Year 12 History class got to meet a veteran from the Vietnam War to learn about his experiences. His name is Billy Barnes, and he served as a 2nd Lieutenant, then as a 1st Lieutenant and later a Captain in the 161st New Zealand Artillery Battery. We learnt quite a lot.

Billy Barnes came to our class to tell us about what his role was in the war and other facts about what happened over in Vietnam. One of the things we learnt was that he was in charge of calculating the precise angles for firing the artillery guns, after receiving coordinates from the observation point. We also learnt that the guns he was working with could fire from Darfield to Coalgate, Springfield or Kirwee up to 12 km range!

Billy shared with us a piece of artwork that he had produced showing a soldier walking through the jungle with lots of dangerous animals like leopards, tigers and snakes hiding in the jungle. But the most dangerous thing in the picture was the tripwire strung up in front of the soldier, connected to a claymore mine. The drawing was captioned "Psalm 23:4", which is "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me". He told us that in Vietnam they would say that they would fear no evil.

He told us about the effects of Agent Orange exposure on the veterans, such as dioxin poisoning, cancers and birth defects in veterans’ children and grandchildren. We also learnt about how it took several decades before the government and the producers of Agent Orange admitted to the serious consequences of exposure or even the fact that our soldiers were actually exposed to Agent Orange.

Finally, Billy asked a student from our class to read one of the many eyewitness accounts from the book that Billy had collated. The piece that was read to the rest of the class was about an operation to evacuate all the orphans that were born to American servicemen and local Vietnamese women. During the evacuation, the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy lost one of its doors due to a failure in the locking mechanism. As the door blew off, part of the tail was damaged, affecting the steering system. The interior of the plane, which was not designed for passengers, rapidly depressurised and the pilot was forced to land. It landed at twice the normal speed and exploded. One of Billy’s friends, who was flying another plane nearby, witnessed the carnage and still suffers from PTSD like many veterans, this is just one of the many horrific incidents that our servicemen had to endure whilst serving in Vietnam. Billy’s visit really brought home the human side of the war.