By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
BILL never saw the grenade in February 1971.
It rolled underneath his good mate Eric Halkyard, a machine gunner, who lay next to Bill in the high hills of Phuoc Tuy province in South Vietnam and tore his friend apart.
Bill Rogers, now 68 years old and a Berwick native, was medevac’d out of the Vietnam War with severed nerves in his arm and shrapnel in his back, but he was the lucky one – Eric left behind a wife and two children.
“I can see his face, like I’m looking at you. It just sort of sticks with you,” Bill said of his friend.
“He was a good mate; it was a comradeship that you knew what each other was doing.
“You didn’t have to say, you knew exactly what was happening, everything gelled.
“When he died we both came back in the chopper, he in a body bag and I was lying next to him and I thought ‘this isn’t the way it’s supposed to end’.”
Bill has been an active member of Legacy since the mid- ’90s, helping to support the widows and children of soldiers killed or wounded in action.
But Bill said in the 40 years since his death, he has never been able to find Eric’s family.
“I’d thought about him a lot, one of the things they didn’t know a lot about was, although he was separated, he had a wife and two children in England,” he said.
“I often think about him and I think about the kids and just how they’re doing.”
Bill, a former president of Melbourne Legacy, served in the Vietnam War with the 7th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment in 1970 and 1971 before he was flown back to Australia after being wounded just a month before the end of his tour.
Tomorrow (Friday) Bill will be in Perth watching his 39-year-old son Scott, himself a veteran of Iraq and East Timor and the president of his local RSL, as he leads the Anzac parade.
“Anzac Day to me is a very important day because that’s the day that you not only remember the mates that you’ve lost, but it’s the mates of all conflicts,” Bill said.
“It was a different year, a different type of conflict but you all served and you were all part of this family which is, to us, very important.”
Bill joined Legacy in the mid-’90s and is now the welfare officer for the south-eastern Legacy group, which covers the Berwick, Cranbourne and Dandenong areas.
Established in 1923 by ex-servicemen, Legacy is a voluntary organisation which currently assists 100,000 widows and their families throughout Australia, across 49 different clubs, including one in London.
“To me, it’s a great privilege to look after these ladies.
“The things you do for them and they’re so appreciative, they’re appreciative of you just going around having a chat to them,” Bill said.
“And they say ‘would you like a cup of tea?’ and you discover they have it all laid out ready for you, they just love it.”
