One generation after another
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Sherreie (widow)
I
’m a welfare officer now. I used to go
into schools and teach about Vietnam.
There were five of us. I talked about
the impact of war on the families of the
men who came home. When you think
about it, there’s been one generation after
another that’s gone to war; you had fathers
and sons in World War I and World War
II, quite close together. Then you had
uncles and brothers in Malaya and Korea,
then sons in Vietnam. Now you’ve got the
sons again in Iraq. One generation after
another…
The army was a part of my life always. My uncles were in the
army and my dad was a POW. He was in Changi. They’d done a
mock execution on him and he had a scar right ’round from here
to here. He’d lost all the marrow in his legs and one was shorter
than the other. He spent a year in hospital when he returned; he
just had a lot of terrible injuries.
Dad was fifty-two when I was born and he was TPI by the time
I was nine. When I was twelve, Mum ran off with another bloke
– she was always running off with other blokes. She’d met Dad in
about 1948, after the hospital, so I mean, she must have known
what he was like. You can’t meet a bloke who’s been through that
and think he’s going to be the most perfect man in the world.
He was a beautiful dad, the best dad in the world but a horrible
husband. He never raised a hand to me but I saw him raise it to
Mum. Every Friday night, there was alcohol and you could tell
there was going to be a big fight. You knew it was coming and you
made yourself very scarce.
After Mum took off, Dad and I went to Sydney to live. He had
lots of mates, very good friends and he was President of an RSL
Club. If he had welfare cases, or had to do something for the
Club, I was always with him. When I was about sixteen, I started
volunteering at Concord Hospital. I was in the section with the
young boys coming home from Vietnam. I’d read to them and
write letters for them. It was the first time I’d come into contact
with people taking drugs. They were coming home addicted.
Then in 1968 when I was nearly eighteen, I joined the army
myself. In those days, you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing
photos of Vietnam and the body bags lined up everywhere.
Everyone saw it. They sent it all around the world.
I was in town for the first march and this woman, you know, she
threw red paint on the boys and she screamed, ‘Murderer, baby
killer.’ I was on the sidelines when she did it and I just cried.
There was an old lady near me, she’d been an entertainer in the
Second World War and she was totally devastated by what she
saw. She screamed back and the fi lth that came out of her mouth
was incredible. She was screaming to the woman, ‘How can you
do this to our boys?’ And the young woman was screaming back,
‘Baby murderers, baby murderers.’ And we were all stunned.
We didn’t know what to do. The tears were just streaming down
our faces.
I can still remember going out to meet my cousin at the airport.
They used to bring them in from Vietnam at midnight. We’re all
standing there waiting for them to get off and they diverted the
boys to the hangar to get changed into civvy clothes first. It was
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because they were frightened they’d be belted up: that’s why they
made them change. Those boys were straight off the plane, into
civvies, onto trains or buses, back home. And they might not
have been in uniform but they still stood out; their haircuts gave
them away.
It was very hard. I mean, in earlier times the soldiers went to
war on a ship and they came home on a ship. These boys got on
a plane and went straight into war the next day. At the end of
it, they got back on a plane and into normal life, in a matter of
hours. They never had those months, together on a ship, to come
to terms with it.
You saw the young soldiers go over there with big smiles on their
faces because of the great adventure and then you saw them come
home and they were very quiet. I had three mates. They were all
married and when they got back, they had a favourite pub they
used to go to. And they’d go in there as soon as they got off duty
and they’d sit there until it was time to leave. They sat in a corner,
the three of them, and they would put their money on the table
and nobody went near them ’cause they all knew if they did, these
kids would erupt.
They weren’t there to hurt anyone but the boys who came back
from Vietnam, a lot of them were very opinionated and there was
a lot of hate in them because we’d let them down.
Terry was nineteen when he went to Vietnam and I only knew
him vaguely before he went. We started going out in 1971, a few
months after he got back. My son Grant was born that year. His
father was another soldier; I was four months pregnant when I
found out he was killed. Terry and I were married the next year.
I didn’t really know much about him except that when he drank
he was the most wonderful, happiest bloke to be around, real
happy-go-lucky. I loved being around him. But there was another
side. On my twenty-first birthday, we were on a train and I said
something Terry didn’t like and then… whack!
I jumped off the train and I rang Dad up and I said, ‘Dad, Terry’s
just belted me up; he slapped me, belted me up in the train.’
And Dad came and got me, took me home and said to Terry who
was sitting there, Dad said, ‘You get out here, we’re going out.’ I
don’t know where they went but Terry came home with a box of
chocolates and a big bunch of flowers and apologised. And my
father took me aside and said, ‘If he’s done this once, he’ll do it
many, many, many times.’ He understood what I would be up
against. He said, ‘You’re marrying someone who’s been to war.
Are you prepared for this?’
Terry was so different when he was sober: he was hard. You
walked around on tip toes. He’d come home from work and run
his finger along the top of the chairs, the doorknobs, anywhere. If
my linen cupboard was out of synch or my pantry, he’d rave and
rave for hours and just wouldn’t let it go. My friends would say,
‘He’s such a control freak. Why don’t you leave him?’ But I didn’t
see anything wrong with it. ‘How is he a control freak?’ It was
probably ’cause I’d lived with Dad that it didn’t really affect me
like it would someone else. At that stage, it was normal to me. My
father had needed things to be done in a certain way as well.
And in the beginning, Terry was the best father around. It was
the moment Grant bucked the system and questioned him that
it turned. Grant was about seven, I think. He’d been naughty
at his Catholic primary school and the Sister rang up and Terry
answered. When Grant come home, he got a flogging and I was…
I was just stunned at the violence of it. I couldn’t do anything. I’d
never seen this complete violence: it was as though this blackness
come over Terry. I was so terrified I couldn’t go to work the next
day; I had to stay there. I had to make sure that he couldn’t get
his hands on Grant again. But actually that wasn’t the way it went
with Terry. After he flogged him, it was all over and done with.
We were terrified but to Terry it was finished.
My father had died two years before that. He would never have
tolerated Grant being hit. He would have got us out of there very
It was very hard. I mean, in earlier times the soldiers went to war on a ship and they came
home on a ship. These boys got on a plane and went straight into war the next day.
At the end of it, they got back on a plane and into normal life, in a matter of hours.
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quickly. He used to say to me, ‘Are you alright?’ I’d always tell him
that I was. The last time I saw him, he said ‘I want you to do one
thing for me and I don’t want you to tell Terry. I want you to put
$20 a week away in a bank account that he knows nothing about
and if you ever have to leave, you have that money there to leave
with.’ And I done it, just as he asked. And about that time when
things had started to turn, I did leave. I thought ‘I don’t have to
live like this.’
I packed us up and drove to the airport, flew to Sydney and then
to Queensland where some friends put us up. But Terry came
after us and found where I was hiding. He said, ‘I have a gun
in my pocket’, and he threatened to shoot the lot of us. I didn’t
even pack. I just got in the car with Grant. And I never heard
from those friends again. I would say they were too frightened.
And after going through that, I wouldn’t have tried it again
either. Never.
He isolated us completely from other people. I would go to work
and come home and that was it. No phone calls to girlfriends or
anyone. His theory was that from the minute he got home, you
did nothing but be with him. My friends stopped coming around;
he couldn’t tolerate them anyway. I took time off from the army
at one stage to go to uni because I wanted to be a welfare worker
and obviously, he was very against that. I’d get up every morning
and throw up because I knew how much he didn’t want me to do
it. But I still went and I did get through it and I did leave the army
and I did start my job.
I was a wreck though: he made everything so difficult. As the
years passed, he wanted me to get a job at home and not go
anywhere and it was, ‘You be here, don’t you go there, don’t you
do that’. It really was just like a gaol and when I look back I think
that’s where Grant’s rebellion has come from.
I had a lot of bruises but he’d hit me where people couldn’t see
and I used to get very, very sore you know, in that lower part
of my body. The thing I still don’t understand is why I didn’t
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You know that they [neighbours] know and you have to face
them every day. There’s nothing you can do about it.
And you can’t hide it, so you hide within yourself instead.
You live two lives.
tell anybody outside. I mean, I was out walking, I had ample
opportunity to tell people that I was scared to go home, but I
never done it. I never done it. I don’t know if it was because I felt
Terry would hurt them or that he would kill Grant. I’m not sure.
Neighbours always know a lot but they turn their heads. They
don’t look at you. They turn their heads away and they don’t say
anything. You know that they know and you have to face them
every day. There’s nothing you can do about it. And you can’t hide
it, so you hide within yourself instead. You live two lives.
You never tell your friends. Sometimes you know, they’ll say, ‘Gee,
you look stressed today, what’s the matter?’ And you’ll say, ‘Oh
Grant’s just misbehaved again.’ You can always blame the child.
Mothers can get away with that. And I was an expert at how to
cover up the bruises on my cheekbones and you know, I wore long
shirts a lot.
We had an army doctor in the camp and he was a pretty switched
on bloke and he knew what was going on. There wasn’t only me;
there was a couple of other women in the street that were in the
same situation. But in my experience, army doctors will not go
in to bat for the wife. They don’t want to get involved. I mean, all
they done was patch you up and pat you on the head. And once
Terry left the army, he never let me see a doctor separately. He
always came and the doctors would believe his excuses. Like one
day he broke my ribs and I couldn’t breathe and he took me to the
doctor and stayed with me and I remember he said, ‘She fell off
the horse and she’s broken some ribs.’
Terry could never say sorry. Would never say it. We’d have to
make love instead. I used to hate it. I used to hate it. That was the
way he got over it and he’d be all right after that, for a while. Until
the wall went up again.
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It’s complicated. It was like this thing came over him. I mean,
we had a lot of soft times. He would always hold my hand and
whenever he walked past me, he touched me. He could be very
giving until the wall went up. He would pull you in and then push
you away and then drag you in again. That’s how he got away with
it. And people on the outside can never understand what’s it’s like
on the inside. They don’t know and they never will know the full
story of what happens in a house.
It got worse as he got older: the spark of anger for no reason;
the shaking. These days I’d say it was post traumatic stress and
sometimes I think, if only I’d known then what I know now?
I’m not sure that I would have been able to get him help anyway
though. You could never really talk about it to him. You couldn’t
say, ‘I think we’ve got a problem’, because you knew you’d get your
head smashed in. You never, ever said it.
As Grant got older, it got more difficult. He was a bit of a terror
at school and every time he’d done something wrong, instead of
sitting down and talking with him, Terry would break out the fist.
And take everything off him. He wasn’t allowed anything and he
just had to sit in his room all by himself.
He had these expectations of Grant. He would buy him the best
of anything, but for Grant to keep it? That was another thing.
Like I remember once Terry got him a beautiful skateboard. It was
about this big… he had it made for him. Of course we had to have
the kneepads, we had to have the elbow pads, we had to have the
helmet. And one day Terry saw him without the helmet and so he
just smashed the skateboard. He’d paid hundreds of dollars for it
and it just took it and smashed it and never bought him another
skateboard again. That’s what it was like.
At the end of primary, when he was about twelve I took Grant
to a psychiatrist. He couldn’t do the schoolwork so his thing was
to be as big a disaster in the classroom as he possibly could. And
he was just so easily led. He wanted to please others and he still
does, that’s why he’s in so much trouble now. But anyway, I took
him to Concord Hospital where they had a special section for
kids that have got problems and he spent three months there
under the scrutiny of a psychiatrist. The doctors declared him as
hyperactive and put him on Ritalin.
I personally don’t think they wanted to know the full story. They
wanted to know Grant and his problems but not about his family
life. One psychiatrist came up with all these theories about Grant
that didn’t make sense to me at all. What he saw and what I knew
to be true were completely different and the only thing I could
put it down to was that Grant was making up stories to make the
psychiatrist happy. So I’d say to Grant, ‘Please don’t ever lie to
the psychiatrist, he’s there to help you.’ And he’d go to me, ‘Okay
Mum, I won’t.’ But I don’t know.
The good times for us were when Terry was away because then
Grant and I could do what we wanted to do. We had a wonderful
time. He was in the Cubs and the Scouts and he was so gorgeous. I
had my little piggybank and we would go over to the beach for the
day or when the big shows like Jesus Christ Superstar were on,
I’d say to some of the army women, ‘Would you like to come to
the show?’ When Terry was gone, we had a whale of a time but as
soon as he rocked back up, everything stopped. Grant used to say
to me, ‘When’s he coming home?’ And I would say, ‘On Sunday.’
And he’d say, ‘Oh okay then, so we’ll have all your good clothes
put away and he won’t see them when he comes home, will he
Mum?’ And I’d go, ‘That’s right darling.’ Because I had two sets: I
had the clothes that I could wear when Grant and I went out, like
jeans and things and the clothes that Terry wanted me to wear.
Dresses and skirts. And we’d keep the other things hidden.
When Grant was about thirteen, I managed to get him away to
boarding school. It was getting pretty nasty at home. He was
back-answering Terry and challenging him and Terry couldn’t
stand to be challenged. And with Grant away, it was quieter. Terry
was happier, he had me to himself. He left the army and went to
work for a newspaper and he kept moving us to bigger and bigger
houses on bigger and bigger acreage so he didn’t have to talk with
people or deal with them. Looking back at myself, I can’t imagine
how I did what I did. I ran two businesses while we were married:
a cleaning business and a newspaper delivery service. And right at
the end, I was CEO of the local fire brigade. It knocks my socks off
the things I did in the hours he was away or asleep.
At fifteen Grant took himself off Ritalin and applied for the
army when he was seventeen. About a month before he went in,
he came home when Terry was giving me a punch in the mouth
and he grabbed Terry and I thought they were going to kill each
other. That was the first time Grant had reacted like that and
after it, Terry backed right off and he never touched Grant again.
Four months after he went into the army, Grant had a fall during
training. He wrecked his knee and he was discharged. Not long
after, he was married. He was eighteen, she was fifteen and
they had a baby. Then more babies. Three children before he was
twenty. He has five kids all together.
It was in his twenties that he started using. He was a bouncer at a
nightclub and he got really heavy into drugs. I remember it came
out in court that the first time he held someone up, he was crying
while he did it. It was in his friend’s mother’s video shop and he
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When I first moved here, I went to Legacy House and a lovely man,
a Vietnam veteran, welcomed me and he said ‘I think you’d better join
Legacy and War Widows, it will give you a leg in to come and join us.’
had a baseball bat and he apologised. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I have to
do this for the money.’
I never, ever knew he was on drugs. He never asked me for
anything and he was working. He rang me one day and said,
‘I’ve got to go to prison Mum. I’ve got to go to court, will you
come?’ I couldn’t understand it. I said, ‘Where are you?’ And he
said, ‘I’m in the Perth lock-up.’ I said, ‘What’s a lock-up?’ And he
said, ‘It’s a gaol. I’ve done something silly.’ And until I went into
court, I didn’t know anything. I’m sitting there listening to them
speaking about Grant and I had no idea who they were talking
about. It was like I was hearing about somebody I didn’t even
know. And I’m thinking, ‘How did he do all this? Why didn’t I
know?’ I mean, I saw him every week. He’d ring me up every
night. Why didn’t I know? You couldn’t see it. He wore shortsleeved shirts; there were no tracks on him; there was nothing.
His skin was beautiful…
While Grant was in gaol, Terry died of cancer and I waited a year
for Grant to come home before going to Sydney to make a new
start for us. He got out and I went over to find us a place and
while I was away something happened. There was a fight and
someone died and now he’s in gaol again for a very long time.
If you met Grant, you would love him. He’s warm and caring
but he’s got this black side. Like me. Both of us need anger
management. I didn’t know I needed it but I can get so angry.
Anyone will tell you that.
When Grant was about two, I started to keep a journal and just
before Terry died, I read it. Then I ripped it up. It was such a
damaging look at our whole life and it was terrifying because I
thought, ‘How could two adult people do this to a family?’ The
whole situation was destructive from the time we teed up until
the end. It was so sick. Even on his deathbed Terry was telling
me how I’d fail without him. I couldn’t understand why I’d lived
with it for thirty-seven years. Why did I do that? It felt like it
wasn’t even me I was reading about. It was this other woman and
her husband and her child and I was thinking, ‘I feel so sorry for
those people.’
But here I am now, in this lovely house on the other side of
Australia and I am happy. When I first moved here, I went to
Legacy House and a lovely man, a Vietnam veteran, welcomed
me and he said ‘I think you’d better join Legacy and War Widows,
it will give you a leg in to come and join us.’ And then I joined
the Women’s Auxiliary and now I do the welfare work and I’m
Assistant Secretary down at the VVAA [Vietnam Veterans
Association of Australia] cottage. It’s fun with all of us: they’re
my type of people and I know where I am with them. And we
understand each other. We can do for each other what the lady
next door can’t…
Sometimes I get a little frightened of what I’ve achieved. I’ve
designed this new home for myself the way I want. I sold
everything, moved here and now I’m trying to get Grant moved to
a prison in this State. If I get him here, Vietnam veterans will go
in and do the counselling; we’re just waiting to see.
A little while back I was up the back of a Sons and Daughters of
Vietnam Veterans meeting and I heard this young man speak and
it was the first real story I’ve heard from a child of a veteran. I felt
I was hearing Grant through him and there were so many tears.
After that, I rang Grant and I told him about what this boy had
talked about and he said, ‘I’ve been telling you that for years now.’
And I said, ‘ I understand now but I didn’t hear.’ And he said, ‘I
know you didn’t hear Mum.’ And of course, I cried again and he
said, ‘Don’t cry Mum, it’s all over now.’ And I said, ‘It’s not over…’
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Grant (son)
I’ve always loved my mum but I never called her that. I always
called her ‘dearest’. She’s a grouse mum. You couldn’t ask for a
better one.
I’d make up excuses like that I did it playing footy. As a young
kid, I was very withdrawn but as things got worse, when it went
from the belt to him actually punching me, that’s when I started
to become pretty violent and I was forever getting kicked out of
school for fighting.
I didn’t know and I still don’t know the full story. I know there are
a lot of things that have happened that my mum won’t ever tell
me. When I was younger I couldn’t understand why she stayed
with him and I was pretty angry with her for a while ’cause I said
to her a few times, I said, ‘Mum, let’s leave. Let’s get away.’ And
she packed and was ready to go and then decided not to and then
we stayed and everything would be good for another couple of
weeks and then bang… it’d all start up again. Mum sent me away
to boarding school when I was thirteen. I didn’t know why at first
but over the years, I sort of figured it out. It was just pretty much
to save my arse.
I’ve got a huge anger problem. I grew up thinking violence was
okay but I’m starting to realise now that it’s probably not the
best way to deal with something. Mum has always been very
supportive and never turned her back on me for anything, even
though I’ve done a lot of stupid things. We’ve always been very
close. When Terry was away, we were inseparable; in fact, I think
that the way Mum and I were together made Terry feel left out.
Mum and I had such a great bond that he felt like an outsider
when he came home. And I think we did make him an outsider.
I hated Terry for so long and it wasn’t until he died that I actually
started to forgive him. I was about thirty-three then.
There was good and bad times. Mostly when he was away they
were good. When he was home it wasn’t always good. He was a
very intimidating man.
I haven’t really had much of a chance to be a father to my five
kids, mostly ’cause I’ve been in prison and my ex-wife took off
with them and everything. But when I was there, I was as loving
as I could be. And I never hit them and I always sat and played
and, you know, got up in the middle of the night.
I think he tried to be a loving dad but he was, I don’t know,
just screwed up in the head. After I joined the army myself, I
started to understand why he was the way he was. I listened to
other people talk and I’d hear things that happened to them in
Vietnam and whatnot and it made me think of how it probably
affected him.
He was very loving when he was drunk but when he was sober he
used to lash out at me if I did the slightest little thing wrong. Like
if my homework wasn’t done right, if there was an easy question
I got wrong, if I was five minutes late coming home. I pretty much
kept the beatings to myself. I never thought other people would
understand. I’d go to school with a black eye or something and
I have a parole date of 015 and if I don’t get paroled my release
is 017. I’m studying my Cert III, Cert IV and Diploma in
Community Services through TAFE so when I get out I’ll be able
to work with not just juvies but with ones older, ones who have
been in the same situation as myself. That’s what I really want
to do.
I think if there’d been some organisation to help wives and kids,
it would have made everything a lot easier. I know Mum didn’t
have anyone to talk to. We just had each other.
I listened to other people talk and I’d hear things that happened
to them in Vietnam and whatnot and it made me think
of how it probably affected him.
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