This year marks both 60 years since Australia entered the conflict, and 50 years since the disbandment of Australian forces in Vietnam.

Secretary of the Riverina Vietnam Veterans Ralph Todd was only 20 when he was called up and he spent a year in the conflict, but it's stayed with him ever since.

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"When we first got home no one wanted to talk about it, it was a war that wasn't a war, it was unpopular ... we weren't totally recognised as returned servicemen," he said.

Gordon 'Obie' O'Brien was 19 when he was sent to Vietnam as part of B-company, where he was a forward observer.

It was Mr O'Brien's first conflict, as part of a 40 year career in the forces, and he thinks a Vietnam veteran is unique because of the ferocity of the battle they faced. "We were out there 320 days a year getting shot at, we didn't have breaks," he said.

"I always have memories, you can go through every hit you had. All my mates, the ones you lost, the ones who came home, the ones who died since they been home, there's been a lot, especially suicide," he said

Mr O'Brien said nothing was known of PTSD or the mental toll of war when he returned home. "I was an horrific drinker, which I thought was a part of life, that was army ... if you spoke to anyone you were showing weakness," he said.

Mr O'Brien's wife Fran stood by her husband through some dark times.

"A bottle of rum [a night] was nothing [for him], it was just they weren't accepted," she said. Both her husband and her father - who served in Vietnam in his 50s - came home angry and suffered.

But that war holds different memories for Mrs O'Brien. She came from an army family and she too was in the military in 1969, but as a woman she wasn't allowed to take part in the conflict.

"I wanted to go as well," she said. "The closest I came was when they selected my name, it was Francis Leslie, an all male name, I turned up on medical and they said: 'wrong gender'. That was the highlight of my Vietnam."

Mrs O'Brien later served in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq - alongside her son - but she didn't feel like a veteran, those days were always "men's days".

"It took me until my son came home to accept that I was a veteran, back then women weren't," she said.

Mr O'Brien said life as a Vietnam veteran is much better these days.

"Younger people come up and shake our hands and say thank you for our service, that never happened, we were thrown out of RSLs," he said.

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