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To this day, Lynne Moore can’t stand to watch images from July 20, 1969, of the first humans walking on the moon.
Her husband, Private Ray Moore, was killed in action in the Vietnam War that week.
And so rather than evoking a sense of wonder, the moon landing reminds her of army officials arriving to break the bad news at her mother’s house in Kilsyth, in Melbourne’s east, which she was visiting.
“It brings back the knock on the door,” Lynne says. “I have to walk away.”
War widows, she says, were expected to get on with their lives, but now at age 80, she is telling her story.
The Ray Moore she loved was fun-loving, a hard worker and could talk to anyone.
She said it felt very emotional laying a bunch of roses – “Ray’s favourite flower” – with their son Craig and grandson Brendan at the Croydon war memorial on Sunday, at a ceremony for Vietnam Veterans’ Day.
The family features in a new book, Vietnam – Long Hard Years Not Forgotten, about Lilydale region residents’ Vietnam War experiences.
“It’s nice to know Ray is going to be remembered now, for generations to come,” said Lynne, now a great-grandmother of eight, on Sunday. “He died for his country, and they should be proud of that.”
The book’s author, Lilydale RSL secretary Anthony McAleer told the service how in the early 1960s, Ray Moore and Michael Hannaford were teenage apprentices together in the same Croydon butcher shop. Years later Moore joined the army while Hannaford was conscripted.
Hannaford, 21, was killed on December 14, 1968, when the tank he was driving hit a mine. He left a young wife, Margaret.
Moore, 23, was shot dead by a Viet Cong sentry on July 24, 1969.
Ray and Lynne Moore had three children – Rhonda, aged three at the time, Craig, 2 and Gary, six months.
Both widows suffered indignities, McAleer said, which was “a sad indictment” of institutions at the time.
Before Moore’s burial, the army evicted Lynne from their house at Holsworthy army base in Sydney. She was ignored by older war widows, and even parents at her children’s school were hostile.
How did she get through it?
“I think you put one foot in front of the other,” she said. “I had three children to look after. It was just something you did.”
Margaret Hannaford, who attended Sunday’s service, tells in the book how someone from the army said Michael should be buried in a war cemetery in Vietnam, and so not ruin people’s Christmas in Australia.
Margaret refused, and Michael’s funeral was held on Christmas Eve 1968 in a Croydon church.
McAleer said it was important to remember the widows who were among the victims of the Vietnam War.
RSL Victoria senior vice-president Des Callaghan pointed out Tuesday is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, in which Australian soldiers bravely fought an overwhelming enemy force.
It was a time to remember the 523 Australians who died on active duty in Vietnam, the 2400 who were wounded and service people who returned to an Australia that was divided about the war, Callaghan said.
Australia had matured in its treatment of veterans.
“We have learnt the vital truth that one can disagree with the politics of war without diminishing respect for the men and women who put on the uniform,” he said.
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