War’s Lingering Shadow
Fifty years after the conflict in Vietnam, the Australian soldiers who fought still bear the scars – as do their children and grandchildren.
By Alasdair McGregor – 22 April 2025
As the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment began its year-long deployment to South Vietnam in 1965, young Norman John Rowe thought he had the world at his feet. Blessed with a strong tenor voice, ‘Normie’, as the 18-year-old from Melbourne was known, had quit his trainee telephone technician’s job with the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) and set out to conquer the entertainment world as a rock-and-roll musician. Stardom came quickly; he enjoyed his first number-one hit in April that year. Normie Rowe had arrived on the music scene, but the lottery of life would soon disrupt the trajectory of his promising career.
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