From Frank Walker: This is to assist Don Tate with the presentation of information to Senators who might convenes a Senate Estimates Hearing into the corruption of military history concerning the 2nd D&E Platoon and related matters….: I was a journalist on The Sun-Herald seven years ago when I first heard stories of Vietnam veterans from a unit called the 2nd D&E Platoon and their extraordinary struggle to get recognition that they had existed despite denials from officers of Defence and military historians at the Australian War Memorial. In 2011, I researched the background to this story for 12 months through FOI, from documents at the Australian War Memorial and National Archives, and also from speaking to key people involved. Don Tate kindly gave me access to piles of documents and statements he had collected over several years as he led the campaign to get an admission that the platoon had existed for about six weeks in May/June 1969. Even veterans who still suffered PTSD from the war told me their stories in the belief the truth of what happened should be revealed. It wasn’t easy for many of them as they still wrestle daily with their nightmares. But they were battling a military bureaucracy and a clique of veterans that were determined to have the story of what the platoon was involved in buried and forgotten. I managed to find files that were hidden away in the archives that proved what the men were saying was true. But military historians on the public payroll at the Australian War Memorial seemed determined to bury the story. Ashley Ekins, the AWM’s resident official historian for the Vietnam War, refused to speak to me. I repeatedly sent him questions and asked for an interview but he refused. Ekins had formed the opinion that the 2nd D&E Platoon never existed, and would not budge from that opinion even after the then Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support, the Hon Dr Mike Kelly formally announced in 2008 that the unit had existed and thanked the men involved for their bravery. I found it surprising that a historian being funded by the public purse would refuse to see a member of the public researching a book in an area he was reputed to be an expert in. I hear that since my book Ghost Platoon came out to critical praise, Ekins has tried to besmirch it in internal AWM emails, and orally at the launch of his own book– Fighting to the Finish. In Ghost Platoon, I was critical of the presentation of the Vietnam War exhibition at the AWM, saying it fails to explain the lies of how we got into the war. I wrote that I felt the AWM had crossed the line on being a memorial/museum and was now a place to glorify Australians in war, and seeing itself as the custodian of the ‘ANZAC’ legend. I don’t follow that jingoistic line in my military history books. Maybe that’s why Ekins refused to talk to me and later sought to run down my Ghost Platoon book. I think the story of the 2nd D&E platoon reveals the extent to which the military bureaucracy seeks to cover up and bury anything that doesn’t go along with the glossy myth they perpetuate of the bronzed larrikin Anzac who happily goes to war and comes back just as happy. Frank Walker 0417 090 346 Author ‘Ghost Platoon’ and ‘The Tiger Man of Vietnam’. frank.walker@optusnet.com.au