Victorians at War - Oral History Project

Daily Routine
In 1957 Colin Bannister was part of the 3 Royal Australian Regiment sent to Malaya during the State of Emergency. In discussing how the troops fought the Communist guerillas on a daily basis, Colin explains that 'the platoon was the ideal force to deploy against them'. While out on patrol, he was either searching the ground or ambushing the enemy. After Malaya, Colin was among the first group of Australians to be sent to Vietnam in 1964. He served in the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), giving military training to the South Vietnamese for a year. Colin returned for another tour of duty in Vietnam in 1969 where he served as an Operational Staff Officer.
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Deborah Phillips was a nurse in the 6 Field Hospital on the RAAF Base Laverton, Victoria, when she was sent with 13 other nurses from the hospital to serve in East Timor. The team converted an old museum in the capital of Dili into a temporary medical station to aid the troops. Deborah's role in East Timor was to provide medical support to the INTERFET forces but in practice her daily routine included caring for many of the local people who were the victims of civil unrest in the country. Deborah explains that the people they were helping in Dili during the first few months of their arrival were 'basically patients of war', and that the medical staff were treating 'a lot of gun-shot wounds, machete wounds, people who had torture-like injuries, just things like that'.'
Hear complete interviews with veterans in the "Personal Stories" section of the Archives