26/07/2026
Extract from More Than a Memory
Margaret Sutherland née Curgenven
RAAFNS, Butterworth, Malaysia, August 1966-June 1967
USAF, Clark Air Base, Philippines, 60 days, January-March 1967
From a nursing perspective, Margaret admits, that ‘Although the Hercs were the best available at the time, it wasn’t an ideal situation because some of them had unreliable heating systems and sometimes you’d have spilt coffee freezing on the floor while the men in the top stretchers would be shedding their clothes because they were sweltering from the rising body heat below. When they landed at Cocos Islands all the patients had to be unloaded while the plane was refueled and then re-loaded. Flying into Pearce Air Force Base near Perth later in the day, they’d wait for Customs and health inspectors to come on board and clear them all back into the country before they and the plane were sprayed with insecticide. Finally they’d all be taken to the Sick Quarters where the West Australian patients would be sorted and dispatched to local hospitals via Army Ambulance and the eastern state patients would be stabilized for the night.
Early next morning, they’d reload the Hercules and fly east to Richmond RAAF Base from whence the Army would collect all the casualties in ambulances and take them to the No 2 Military Hospital (2 Mil) at Ingleburn for reassessment and treatment before they were transferred back to hospitals in their home states.
On occasions, the medivac flights carried the caskets of dead soldiers returning home. They were loaded last, with appropriate respect, onto the tail gate of the plane and screened from the chaos of the temporary ‘sick bay’ by a curtain. The nursing officers never knew any details of the dead they accompanied home, but many years after the war, Margaret was present in Albury when Vietnam Veterans were given Freedom of the City. She met the father of a digger who had been killed on August 18, 1966, in the Battle of Long Tan. Having kept a diary, when she checked the dates he gave her, she realised that it was probably she who had flown home some of the casualties as well as the soldiers killed in action at Long Tan. For her, it meant another piece of her Vietnam puzzle clicked into place…
Photo: Sect Off Pam Bell on loaded Hercules heading home…
