From wool classing to Vietnam for Albany vet

You can have footy mates, you can have schoolmates and even a best mate but you will never have mates like the ones you served with at war. They are the words of Albany Vietnam War veteran Lyndsay Horton. Mr Horton’s life took a dramatic turn in the 1960s, when he was called on by his country to fight on the front line in the Vietnam jungle. “I went in as a national serviceman in 1968 and I was a wool classer by trade. They quickly told me at pre-allocation they had no sheep in the army so I’d be going in the infantry,” Mr Horton said. “I thought ‘oh well, this is not bad’ and then in the next breath, they said, ‘you’ll be going straight to train with a battalion to go to Vietnam’, and away I went.” Mr Horton was drafted into the 6th Battalion, which had fought at the Battle of Long Tan two years earlier. He would become one of Australia’s 3629 casualties of the war, taking a bullet to the arm and shrapnel up his back from a rocket-propelled grenade in an ambush. “I was doing a forward scout job at the time, walked into an ambush, got hit with a rocket-propelled grenade and took a bullet through my arm,” he said. “I got medevaced out. They put you through a metal detector to make sure they’ve got all the metal out. It took a fair bit of getting us out, because it was a thick jungle. “Although I got wounded and spent a lot of time at hospital, I did thoroughly enjoy my two years in the army.” Like the rest of Australia, the 72-year-old veteran will be paying his respects on Anzac Day a little differently this year. Mr Horton will stand at the end of his driveway at dawn, accompanied by some of his latest Anzac-inspired metal work creations.