It was 1967 and Australian soldier Ben Morris was stationed in Vietnam, fighting against the Viet Cong.
At just 23 years of age Lieutenant Morris, then platoon commander, and 15 of his soldiers set up an ambush for the Viet Cong at Nui Dat on the morning of October 23.
“A group of people appeared in the morning. We could just see their heads bobbing along in the high kunai grass,” Morris explains on Insight.
Unable to get a clear view of them, but believing them to be armed Viet Cong, the solider tasked with triggering the ambush gave the orders to attack once the group reached the middle of the “killing area”.
What happened next has stayed with Morris ever since.
A photo of some of Ben's platoon members. Photo: Supplied Source: Supplied
As a volley of bullets from the Australian machine guns rang out, Morris remembers hearing the distinct sound of children whimpering.
“I immediately left my post and started going forward saying ‘cease fire, cease fire, cease fire’,” he says.
“As I ran forward I was hoping that someone would shoot me in the back so that I didn't have to face the mess that I knew I was about to face.”
What Morris found was not armed Viet Cong soldiers but innocent civilians, including children.
“I was confronted with a scene that will haunt me forever," Morris writes in his thesis The Diggers’ wish: set the record straight which was published in the Oral History Association of Australia Journal.
The people they had mistakenly killed were civilians simply out, they suspect, collecting bamboo.
“They were in what was supposed to be the free fire zone for the taskforce area,” Morris tells Insight host Jenny Brockie.
“The taskforce had been there for over a year so to have civilians wandering through that free fire zone was unthinkable as far as I was concerned.”
Ben Morris pictured back in Vietnam on one of his return trips since the War ended. Photo: Supplied Source: Supplied
Five people died that day, including children, and six were wounded.
“I'd followed it to the letter and it had all gone horribly wrong,” he says.
As he tried to make sense of what just happened, Morris claims he was told that he should have planted captured enemy weapons on the dead in order to make it look like the killing was justified.
Coming home
Three months later Morris, still struggling to deal with the civilian deaths as well as other incidents, returned to Australia where he says he withdrew from friends and family.
Describing his mental state as “pretty manic”, Morris explains that he didn’t initially seek help for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“I had lived with post-traumatic stress, denying that I had it from the time I left the war zone, which was 1968, right through to 1990.”
Years on from the War, Morris says he is still triggered by that incident, saying it’s difficult for the deaths not to creep back into his consciousness.
But the former solider has returned to Vietnam four times since the War, and has even made friends amongst the Vietnamese.
“The Vietnamese people are very forgiving towards us soldiers. I've had a lovely time on all the journeys,” he says.
