About a hundred years ago when I was young, the Viet Nam War was current and conscription was in force for those who turned 20. Each 6 months the Australian Government held a ballot where marbles bearing birthdates were drawn out of a barrel, like Oz Lotto. Only the prize for having your number come up in this draw was not a truckload of cash, it was the Army and a trip to Viet Nam. I could have obtained a deferment until my university studies were finished but my birthdate did not come out of the barrel. My brothers, twins, turned 20 a year and a half after me. Their birthdate also did not come out, a relief to our parents, especially our mother.
From the time of the arrival of the first advisers in 1962, almost 60,000 Australians, including ground troops and air force and navy personnel, served in Vietnam; 521 died as a result of the war and over 3,000 were wounded.
The US sustained 58,913 dead, over 300,000 were wounded.
In 1983 Redgum, an Australian folk and political music group, released I Was Only 19 as a single and subsequently as part of a live album, Caught in the Act.
