4th Field Regiment (SVN) Association Newsletter No 59 - 2025

The goal of the program is to help get you started with a daily routine of exercise and balanced nutrition. The program is delivered by Corporate Health Management ( CHM). You can find more information via the DVA Website or the Heart Health Program. A similar program is run by Pro Active Health with locations around Australia. Have a look at their website : www.pro-active.com.au o r via the DVA Website. The following is an extract from the diary of Joe Kocka. Joe died in November 2024. This and other sections of his diary were published in “The Eyes and Ears” the newsletter of the Detachment 131st Divisional Locating Battery in Vietnam from 1966 to 1971. Joe Kocka’s (RIP) memoirs . “Read on ... but be aware that what I have penned here is the best I can muster. My memory is not as it used to be and I make no apology for any inaccuracy, if you can detect it! If you can, then better still email me and I'll update my story after considering your opinions. Perhaps in this way we may be able to get the account straight for that small period in our lives. I served in South Vietnam during the period 20 August 1970 till 29 July 1971. And although I have managed to pen the following, I am a little vague on exact dates simply because they are impossible to bring to mind. For that reason I am Page 7 of 30 using this page to maintain and update my memory as dates, times and events come back to me. The 'as at' date will give you some indication just how well I am travelling, as I attempt to include everything on a frequent basis. Introduction – (as at 27 August 2003) I know that my time in South Vietnam was not as stressful or hectic as it was for the many other diggers who served. An adventure, yes. Important, certainly. Hard times, there were many. Good times, also many. Stressful times, there were many of those too. And to cap it all off, bewildering and confusing when you think back and suddenly realise that someone could easily have shot you or bombed you. In hindsight I must have believed in what we were doing. I often thank God that my training was sufficiently basic and my knowledge sufficiently limited that I had no time to sit and contemplate each new day or the results of my efforts the day before. If I was smarter then I believe I would have also been very cynical and possibly unmotivated. Using our training and simple common "dog-f$@k' kept us from too much harm. As I said I served as best I could, and in that time had many great moments, many stressful episodes, and just as many undefinable periods which I still try and make sense of to this day. If I were to be asked to sum up my war experience I could not go much better than to say 'Unforgettable'! The following pages - and photographs - are but a glimpse into what I experienced in those twelve months as a nineteen (19) year old digger. I was proud to be an Aussie digger, but ignorant of what it all really meant. In the thirty years since then I have gained enough of an insight to believe I must have lived under some rock; what choice did we have in the matter. Too many factors/variables would need to have been altered to have prevented our involvement in that war. That was impossible, regardless of the demonstrations and desires of so many to end the conflict. Like the French before us, the war ran its own course. Unfortunately, we should have learnt from the French (lessons learnt!!) but in the end failed as they had failed. I have arranged this story in a fashion which will provide me with the achievement of three (3) objectives: 1. To tell it like I experienced it 2. To show it as I saw it, and 3. To provide support through this page to those many missing mates who took our shameful homecoming to heart, and left to live a life of regret ... alone. For the many uninitiated, the following is a description of what “My Vietnam” was all about, and what we the members of 131 were expected to do. Setting foot in Vietnam. On