Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association Ltd

26/06/2026

They were singing in the back of the truck.

Filthy and thirsty, twenty minutes back from a long sweep through the scrub, when someone up ahead sang out that there were cold drinks in the mess tent. The exhausted men started pushing for the tailgate. Some didn't wait, they went straight over the high steel sides.

One of them was Private Michael Bourke. His mates in 1RAR called him Stoney.

He was a Carlton boy, second youngest of eleven, nineteen years old. What he did before the army, his schooling, his work, the records mark "not yet discovered." The system logged the soldier and lost the boy. We do know this much: no ballot sent him. He put his own hand up and walked into the infantry.

1RAR was the first Australian battalion into Vietnam, regular soldiers to a man, landed at Bien Hoa in early June 1965 alongside the American 173rd Airborne. Stoney had been in the country exactly three weeks. On that Saturday, 26 June, he was one of 550 Australians out on a battalion sweep. He came back from it without ever firing a shot in anger.

He never made it off the truck. As the men scrambled down, a gr***de caught and detonated at ground level beside the vehicle. The records still argue over whose it was and how it snagged. They agree on what it did. William Carroll, mid-leap over the side, was killed where he jumped.

So was a young American soldier standing on the ground below. Stoney was about five feet above the blast and took it in the head. He didn't go quickly, he held on for ten or fifteen minutes before he died. A fourth man, Private Arie Van Valen, was carried out of that same explosion and fought for three more days before he was gone on 29 June.

Stoney Bourke lies now at Cheltenham, a quiet corner of Melbourne a long way from a base camp at Bien Hoa. His name is cut into Panel 4 at the Australian War Memorial, and on the right nights it still rises in light across the Hall of Memory in the Canberra dark, a nineteen-year-old from Carlton, named to the whole country while the city sleeps.

Sixty-one years ago today, three young men died inside their own wire, within sight of the mess tent.

Rest easy, Stoney. Rest easy, William. Rest easy, Arie.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association

26/06/2026

The shirt off his own back, handed to a stranger who needed it. That was the line his mates kept reaching for.

Private David Jon Smith.

He enlisted in the Regular Army on 30 September 2003 and was an infantryman from that first day. The Royal Australian Regiment held him for most of what came after: 5/7 RAR through the mechanised years, then 5 RAR when the battalion was re-raised. In 2005–06 he deployed to Iraq with the Al Muthanna Task Group. In 2008 he deployed to Afghanistan with the first Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force. Two wars in three years. Both survived.

His last posting brought him back to the bush. At the School of Armour at Puckapunyal he worked the Mechanised Crew Commander's courses, riding as vehicle commander on the older M113A1, an aluminium carrier decades into its service, so the crew commanders coming up behind him could learn the trade on it. The squadron counted him among its most liked. A hard worker. A good soldier.

On the morning of 26 June 2009, the M113A1 he was commanding rolled during a training exercise. The soldier driving beside him was hurt and flown to a hospital in Melbourne. David Jon Smith was killed.

He had come through Iraq and Afghanistan. He died on a training ground in central Victoria, a few hours' drive from the battalions that made him. His mates remembered a man who would give a stranger the shirt off his back, and who was, in their own plain words, a good soldier and a good mate.

His brother Tim followed him into the Army as a Cavalryman, drawn to it by the soldier he'd grown up behind, and now serves with the Hawthorn RSL Sub Branch. Today the Sub Branch marked the anniversary in their own words in a separate post. Seventeen years on, to the day, that is still how he is spoken of, by his family and by the men who served beside him.

David Jon Smith died in training, not in battle. So did many others, in the air, on the ranges, in vehicles like the one he was commanding that morning. Their service ended the way a soldier's can in war. But there is no place among the nation's memorials that gathers their names.

That is what the Australian Military Training Memorial will change. APPVA has been building this project for more than twelve months, with in-principle support from many eminent Australians, including our patron, Air Chief Marshal Sir Angus Houston AK, AFC (Ret'd). The National Capital Authority has now approved a site on Anzac Parade in Canberra, alongside the nation's other military memorials. This is no longer an idea. It is happening.

It is not about one soldier, or one aircraft. It is for every Australian who died while training in the service of this nation. A recent training loss, and an inquiry still before the Parliament, are only the latest reasons it cannot wait.

We are turning intent into action. We call on politicians of every side, ex-service organisations, the defence industry, business, philanthropists, the public, and serving and former members of the ADF to get behind it. Most of all, we ask the families and mates of those lost in training to reach out, so the consultation can begin. Your voices will shape the design and make sure it honours the people it is built for.

You can help through membership, donations, advocacy, and the consultation. The project plan is here:
https://peacekeepers.asn.au/memorial-to-adf-members-lost-in-training-project-plan/

Together we can make certain that every Australian who lost their life in training is remembered.

Lest We Forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans' Association

26/06/2026

25/06/2026

💸 Tax time is almost here! 💸

Before the ATO gets too excited about your profits, consider sponsoring a table at the Peacekeeper Dinner.

Come and enjoy a fantastic evening at the Australian War Memorial, great company, and the satisfaction of knowing your tax-deductible donation is going somewhere meaningful.

Secure your table via the link below 👇

The Peacekeeper Dinner on 12 September 2026 will celebrate the opening of the Australian War Memorial Peacekeeper Galleries.

25/06/2026

It is a poignant day as we mark the 76th anniversary of the commencement of the Korean War.

When the fighting officially ceased on 27 July 1953, the Korean peninsula was left in a fragile state, and the work of maintaining the peace fell to the men who stayed behind. It was not combat in the heat of an advance; it was the steady, dangerous work of monitoring a line that could not be allowed to blur.

The ink on the armistice was barely dry, but the duty remained. These men were the architects of a stable ceasefire. They supervised the implementation of terms along the 151-mile Demilitarized Zone, investigated breaches, and acted as the vital intermediaries between opposing commanders. They were the ones who stayed in the watchtowers, the engine rooms, and the base offices when the world’s attention began to shift elsewhere, vigilantly ensuring the peace did not fracture.

For their families, the loss was absolute. These men bore the peacemaker’s burden, facing the inherent hazards of post-conflict stability to secure a future for the region. They died in the service of a quiet, persistent vigilance. For many years, their sacrifice was commemorated in the Remembrance Book; it was a significant milestone when, in 2013, the Australian War Memorial officially amended its criteria to place these men on the bronze panels of the Roll of Honour, giving their service the permanent, formal recognition it has always deserved.

We honour those from our Roll of Honour who stayed to keep the watch:

Private William Wilson – 30 July 1953
Private Neville Shepherd – 16 September 1953
Telegrapher William Davis – 10 January 1954
Private Ronald Leigh – 2 February 1954
Lance Corporal Albert Haymes – 6 February 1954
Private James Carter – 22 February 1954
Leading Electrical Mechanic Kenneth Nelson – 6 March 1954
Chief Petty Officer Alan Spencer Hawken – 7 March 1954
Private George Innes – 5 May 1954
Pilot Officer Henry Andrews – 31 May 1954
Private Brian Waller – 25 July 1954
Captain Garth Jarman – 27 July 1954
Private James Coatsworth – 18 August 1954
Private John Kane – 20 August 1954
Captain John Kollias – 16 September 1954
Private Ian Bevis – 2 January 1956
Signalman Clive McArthur – 30 January 1956
Sergeant John Nowell – 24 November 1956

Their watch ended decades ago, but the stability they helped build persists on the Korean peninsula to this day. We remember them not as statistics, but as our own, the men who held the line when the noise of battle faded. As some of Australia’s forgotten war veterans they deserve to be remembered and recognised.

Rest easy, all.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association

24/06/2026

24/06/2026

Vale 2306765 Daniel Kenneth "Danny" Armfield

Danny Armfield, late of Taree, passed away on 9 June 2026, aged 56.

He was one of ours, a peacekeeper. In 1992 and 1993 he served on operations with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, the mission known as UNTAC: Australians a long way from home, helping a shattered country find its way to its first free elections after decades of war. It was hard, uncertain service, and Danny did it.

He was a much-loved son and stepson, a brother, an uncle, and a mate to many. Behind the service number was a bloke his family adored, and they'll feel this loss the hardest.

Danny's funeral will be held at the Chapel at Manning Great Lakes Memorial Gardens, Pampoolah, at 2pm on Friday 26 June. Those who served alongside him, and those who simply want to stand for a fellow veteran, are welcome to pay their respects.

To Danny's family, Lorraine, Betty and Terry, his brothers and sisters, and all who loved him, APPVA stands with you. He served. We remember him.

Rest easy, Danny.

Lest we forget.

Our sub-Branch will pay tribute for a fellow comrade who no longer graces our ranks. 2306765 Daniel Armfield.
Daniel saw Operational Service with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia 1992-93

24/06/2026

On paper, he was a clerk.

A young man from a coal town in Western Australia, called up in the ballot and posted, after training, to a headquarters at Nui Dat to push paper for the Task Force. He could have spent his war there, behind the wire, in relative safety.

He didn't. He'd been attached to the cavalry, B Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, and when that attachment ended, he stayed on with them. Without orders. He'd found his place.

His name was Lance Corporal Keith Ivan Dewar.

Keith was from Collie, in the south-west, son of Henry Dewar of Clifton Street, brother to Ron. Before the Army he was a clerk with the Postmaster-General's in Perth, a steady job, a quiet life ahead of him. The birthday ballot took all of that in February 1968.

By the end of that year he was in Phuoc Tuy Province, and by 1969 he was a crew commander in an M113, call-sign 22A, riding at the front of the squadron's hardest work: escorting the bulldozers that tore the jungle back, metre by metre, across ground the enemy had seeded with mines. The commander rides with his head out of the turret, the most exposed seat in the vehicle. Keith took it.

On the morning of 24 June 1969, fifty-seven years ago today, at seven minutes to noon, 22A struck a mine, an estimated eighty-pound charge buried in the ground. The blast was total. Keith was killed, and so was his driver, Trooper Bob Young. Keith was twenty-one. Bob was twenty-two.

He didn't stay overseas. By 1969 Australia had changed the old rule that left its dead buried where they fell, and so Keith came home, back across the world to the town that raised him. They buried him at Collie, with full military honours, among his own.

Collie never let go of him. In 2019, fifty years on, the Collie-Cardiff RSL restored an M113, the same type of carrier he commanded, and stood it outside the RSL as his memorial. His brother Ron was there. The armour sits in that quiet street still, a long way from Phuoc Tuy, so nobody forgets the clerk who chose the cavalry.

Rest easy, Keith. Rest easy, Bob. We remember you both.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association Ltd

24/06/2026

These photographs come from one man's camera, Allan Stanton's, and they're among the only images we have of his mate, Bob Young.

There's Bob in the back of his carrier, shirt off in the heat, a smoke in his hand. Bob outside the hut at Nui Dat with Allan, whose camera we have to thank for all of this. Bob on leave in Vung Tau with Steve Cameron, out of uniform for a few days. And Bob crouched over a pile of enemy weapons his troop had captured at the Thua Tich ambush, proof, if any were needed, that he was at the sharp end, not just behind the wheel.

That was Trooper Bob Young, A Squadron, later B Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment. A country boy from Gatton, in the Lockyer Valley of Queensland, called up in the ballot at twenty and sent to drive an M113 through the jungle of Phuoc Tuy.

We don't know much of the rest of him. What he did before the Army, and the family he came from, the records simply mark "not yet discovered." It happens with the National Servicemen, the system logged the soldier and lost the boy. What we're left with is these photographs, and his name.

On 24 June 1969, a little over six months in-country, Bob was driving a carrier called 22A when it ran onto a mine, about eighty pounds of explosive, buried in ground his troop was helping to clear. He was killed alongside his commander, Lance Corporal Keith Dewar. Bob was twenty-two.

They brought him home to Queensland. He lies in the Gatton cemetery now, back in the valley he came from.

Fifty-seven years ago today, we lost him. But in Allan Stanton's photos he's still here, shirt off, smoke in hand, taking a quiet minute before the war found him.

Rest easy, Bob. Rest easy Keith. We remember you.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association

Photo credit:

All six are from the Allan Stanton collection at the Australian War Memorial:
1. Trooper Bob Young in the back of his APC.
2 Bob Young (at the side) with Nick Weir in the turret and Steve Cameron in the driver's seat, Nui Dat.
3 & 4. Bob Young with weapons captured at the Thua Tich ambush.
5. Bob Young (left) and Allan Stanton outside their hut, Nui Dat.
6. Bob Young with Steve Cameron on R&C leave, Vung Tau.

22/06/2026

This is how soldiers grieve.

They'd just carried Luke Worsley home, three kilometres on a stretcher, after a fight that had run twelve hours. Every man wanted his turn to carry him.

Then they came in to a hut at Camp Russell and did the only thing left to do. They cracked a few beers and raised them for Luke.

And when the room finally went quiet, a big bearded bloke picked up a guitar and stood up where everyone could see him. And he sang.

That was Cam Baird.

He sang for Luke, and the room sang back. Tears nobody bothered to hide, and not one man carrying it alone.

That's the bond. You go through the worst day of your life, and your brothers get you through the night.

Thirteen years ago today, we lost Cam too. But in these photos he's still up there with the guitar, holding the room together.

Rest easy, Cam. Rest easy, Luke. We haven't forgotten either of you.

Lest we forget.

Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association

A bit of the live version https://www.facebook.com/reel/589288419006020