Walking with Grunts: An Australian Army Chaplain with the 8Th Infantry Battalion in Vietnam

The author has been an Anglican priest for over fifty years. Twenty of those years were as an Australian Regular Army Chaplain. He served in Vietnam with the 8th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment in 1969/70. He grew up in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla. He attended Hurstville Central Technical School until a football injury put him out. The prospect of a singing career gave place to a call to the priesthood, theological education at St. John’s Morpeth and St. Francis Brisbane. Ordained by the Bishop of Bathurst, Bishop Arnold Wylde led to parish appointments and took him from Sydney to Bathurst, North and Central Western Queensland. and the Hunter Valley. He was a delegate to the World Anglican Conference in Toronto, Canada, in 1963 and attached to the HQ of the Canadian Church. He studies the use of the Mass Media in North America and on return to Australia produced Radio and TV programmes. He and his wife Norma have been married for over 50 years, they have two children, Ruth and John, and live on Lake Macquarie, NSW. Although now retired he holds a Permission in Officiate in the Diocese of Newcastle and Sydney.