His birthday wasn't picked from the barrel. He was conscripted anyway

Sydney Morning Herald

24-04-2025

Peter Curtin celebrated his 20th birthday on March 29, 1967.
Like other Australian men of his age in those Vietnam War days, he was subjected to a supposedly random birthday ballot to decide whether he would be called up for compulsory national military service.
When the marbles were drawn from a barrel in the secret National Service Scheme lottery, his birthday was not chosen.
This meant Curtin was – or should have been – freed from being conscripted into national service.
But he wouldn't know that for another two decades.
By a bureaucratic catch 22, still unexplained more than half a century later, he received a letter ordering him to present himself for a medical examination, after which he was drafted into the army.
He was bussed into Puckapunyal Army Base near Seymour, 109 kilometres north of Melbourne, for basic training on April 23, 1969.
It was an official blunder that would turn Curtin's life upside down and would lead, he says, to psychological and physical problems that still plague him.
'Prior to my army service, I was a happy, carefree man, [I] loved life. But 11 months in the army destroyed my endeavour to live my dreams,' he says.
Now aged 78, Curtin, from Mornington in Melbourne's south-east, is pursuing compensation from the federal government for what he considers his stolen youth and for his PTSD diagnosis.
An investigation into his case reveals that the results of the first 11 of the 16 national service ballots – between 1964 and 1970 – were a closely guarded secret.
The department that ran the ballot did not even share with the army the details of birthdates chosen – only names – meaning no cross-checking for accuracy occurred.
The list of birthdays chosen, now kept at the National Archives of Australia, remained secret until it was quietly published in 1997.
The list revealed that in what was known as ballot number 5, held on March 10, 1967, Curtin's birthdate of March 29, 1947, was not chosen.
In a twist that all but ensures the mystery of why he was wrongly called up will never be satisfactorily solved, the department that ran the ballot was dissolved in 1972, and no agency these days bears historical responsibility for the national service scheme.
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Curtin said he had been told he was the only former 'nasho' – as national service conscripts were known at the time – who had checked the birthday list held by National Archives.
He is not the first, however, to suspect the call-up was scammed from within.
Four years before former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer died, he told this masthead that he suspected the call-up was rigged. His concern was that many of those whose birthdays were chosen and were eligible were not called in for conscription.
Fischer himself was conscripted into the Army and sent to Vietnam, where he was seriously wounded in 1968.
'It appears some person within the system played God big time,' Fischer said.
Curtin worries about how many of the other 63,734 young Australian men conscripted between 1964 and 1972 might have been wrongly forced to serve in the military despite their birthdays not being chosen in the ballot.
'Can anyone believe I was the only one of 63,000?' he says.
About 15,300 of those conscripts were sent to fight in the Vietnam War. More than 200 of them died and at least 1200 were wounded.
This was seriously disproportionate to their numbers. Nashos made up just 30 per cent of the Australians who served in Vietnam. But they made up almost 40 per cent of the 520 who died. They accounted for about 60 per cent of those wounded.
'Imagine what parents might have suffered if they were to have discovered their dead son had been sent away even though he should never have been conscripted?' Curtin says.
Though he was medically discharged from the army in 1970 before he could be sent to Vietnam, he was shocked to learn only last year that his discharge was because he had been diagnosed with psychological problems.
It didn't help that when he returned from the Army to his job as a printer at The Age, he was assigned to lowly jobs – despite having previously been a star apprentice – and subjected to bullying and disdain.
He was the last of four generations of Curtin men to work at The Age, and he'd been given the unusual honour of working as a linotype operator in his third year of a five-year apprenticeship.
But when he returned from the Army, he was denied his old job on the night shift and was assigned to 'the bottom of the list': the day shift as a hand compositor.
'Just because I was a nasho, I was caught up in the anti-Vietnam War abuse,' he says.
' The Age and the union those days were very anti-war, and people at work would whisper things like 'how many women did you rape over there, how many children did you kill?' It was shocking – and I hadn't even been to Vietnam,' he says. 'I got into fights and became very angry.
'And then, 20 years later, I discovered I shouldn't have been called up in the first place.'
Curtin spent his post-army years given to regular outbursts of anger, he says, which caused him to move from job to job for years, often with intervening periods of three months of unemployment.
Eventually, he enjoyed success in advertising and publishing, but his emotional problems did not abate.
'I never understood why I was always so angry,' he says.
His doctor prescribed Valium and sleeping tablets for anxiety as early as 1971, and he has been taking medication for PTSD for the past five years.
But only last year, when the Veterans Affairs Department looked into Curtin's case, did he discover mental illness was the official reason for being discharged from the army.
The department wrote to him in June 2024 to deny responsibility for a physical injury arising from a broken ankle, which he had believed all along was the reason for his medical discharge.
The letter stated that the medical board overseeing his discharge had found no incapacity related to his ankle condition.
'It appears from this same report that the medical discharge was based on psychological factors,' the department's letter stated.
Curtin was furious.
'I had to suffer for 54 years before they let me know I had psychological issues – PTSD – from the start,' Curtin says.
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Curtin says his physical problems began almost immediately after being drafted into the army.
He was given boots that were too small for his size 13 feet with a high instep. Marching became agony.
He had suffered a broken right ankle twice while playing football, in 1965 and 1967.
'After some weeks, my right ankle was sore and swollen, but I was told by an NCO [non-commissioned officer] to 'suck it up',' he says.
After being posted to the School of Military Engineering at Casula, Sydney, Curtin says he began suffering nightmares and anxiety, and started sleepwalking – something that had not occurred since he was a child at boarding school.
While being trained for tunnel-clearing and bomb disposal, his nightmares involved being blown up and his body left in Vietnam.
All these years later, he is still battling his way through a bureaucratic run-around in the belief his claim for compensation should be an 'open and shut case'.
Three years ago, the then Morrison government's minister for veterans' affairs, Andrew Gee, acknowledged by letter that Curtin should not have been drafted.
'I regret I am not able to explain why Mr Curtin was conscripted when his birthdate was not drawn as part of the ballot,' Gee wrote.
'I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Curtin for his service and sacrifice in the service of his country in the Army during a tumultuous period in our history.'
He suggested Curtin contact the Federal Ombudsman, who declined to assist.
In August 2023, Curtin received advice from the latest Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Matt Keogh.
Keogh wrote that though 'no single authority exists that could address concerns about wrongful conscription', Curtin could apply for compensation for 'detriment caused by defective administration', this time through the Finance Department.
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However, this masthead has since learned that the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which inherited some of the functions of the long-defunct department that ran the national service scheme, is looking into Curtin's case.
Curtin confirmed he had been contacted by the department and hoped his case might reach a conclusion soon.
As another Anzac Day passes, he waits for justice, filled with old questions about what his life might have been if some anonymous public servant had taken more care about choosing those to be forcibly drafted into a wartime army.