Description

"For years after returning from Vietnam, I kept my illness hidden with long hours of work, study, sporting pursuits, and anything that produced total exhaustion and allowed me to fall into bed and sleep.  It was a successful ploy... But I was wearing out; my resilience to the flashbacks and nightmares was weakening.  Two hour's sleep a night, or sometimes four, was the norm.  I became hyper-vigilant, wary of crowded places and doorways, and my general physical health deteriorated... Other veterans I knew well were in mental health care or struggling to work at a job... Then there were the suicides... I was no longer able to hide Vietnam from myself... One night I collapsed.  I knew I was dying."

In an intensely personal account, Barry Heard draws on his own experiences as a young conscript, along with those of this comrades, to look back at life before, during, and after the Vietnam War.  The result is a sympathetic portrayal of a group of young men who were sent off to war unprepared for the emotional and psychological impact it would have on them.  In particular, this is a vivid and searingly honest portrayal of the author's post-war, slow-motion breakdown.

Well Done, Those Men attempts to make sense of what Vietnam did to the lives of the soldiers who fought there.  It details the rigours of their military training and the horror of the war they fought, but focuses especially on what happened to them when they returned home to Australia, and on their shared experiences of alienation, anxiety, depression, and guilt.

Barry Heard's sensitive, poignant account of his long journey home from Vietnam is an inspiring story of a life reclaimed.  Told with gentle understatement and wry humour, Well Done, Those Men gives voice to a lost generation of Australian mn.

About the Author

Barry Heard was conscripted in the first national service ballot, and served in Vietnam as an infantryman and radio operator. After completing his national service he returned to Australia, where he found himself unable to settle down. He had ten different jobs in his first 10 years back, worked as a teacher for a further 10 years, and then held several mid-managerial posts before succumbing to a devastating breakdown due to severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Since recovering, Barry has decided to concentrate on his writing. His short stories have received several prizes. Well Done, Those Men is his first book. He lives with his family in rural Victoria.