'We were sent to do a job and we did it': Reflections of a 'Nasho'

Spending two years in Vietnam as a 'Nasho', Mr Hulm said he was duty-bound after his birthday was drawn in the conscription ballot.

"Military service was not my preferred option," Mr Hulm said.

"But you went and did the job you had to do.

"Then there was a strange situation where they just said 'Okay, your time's up. Back you go, do a job, get on with your life and forget you've been here'."

Mr Hulm declined to re-enlist after his term of conscription ended, returning to his native New South Wales and keeping his military past quiet as Vietnam veterans were treated "like lepers".

"I had friends I knew for years and years who were not even aware that I'd been in the service," he said.

"You were vilified and not welcome until 1987, when they held the Welcome Home parade in Sydney.

"For a lot of us, there was a big healing process, and after that I got involved a bit with the ex-service organizations. Prior to that, I'd never been to an Anzac Day."

A recent transplant to Tasmania, Mr Hulm gave the guest address at Longford's 2024 Anzac Day service.

During his speech he reflected on the ties that bound service personnel of all branches and throughout generations.

"Australian servicemen and women are linked by the shared experience of serving together," Mr Hulm said.

"Perhaps that emotion we refer to as mateship - marching with our mates - is one of the most satisfying of life's experiences.

"Today the mix of feelings would be common to all veterans.

"The pleasure of seeing old friends and colleagues pride in the job undertaken for Australia in difficult circumstances, and in the shared and private moments of reflection on our service."

In these private moments of reflection, Mr Hulm unpicked his own conflicted feelings on his involvement in war.

"We were sent to do a job and we did it," he said.

"As you get older you often think you might have been against the war, in retrospect, but you're not against your service."

The veteran said people needed to "take the politics out" of Anzac Day and focus on the core values of "mateship and comradeship".

"It's great that people accept the contribution that service people have made over the years," Mr Hulm said.

"There's been more useless wars than worthwhile wars - the last few that we've been involved in, starting from Vietnam - we've achieved nothing, lost a lot of lives.

"We've left those countries in probably a worse state than when we went in, but that's not the fault of the soldiers. That's the fault of the politicians."