Sailing and engineering have been a passion of Ocean Grove Vietnam veteran Peter Foote for over two decades of his life.
The 76-year-old started his career with the Royal Australian Navy in 1965 when he stepped onto the HMAS Leeuwin in Fremantle as a junior recruit at 16 years old.
Mr Foote served on many ships throughout his naval career and made his way up from engineering sailor to chief petty officer in charge of the engineering department before he retired in 1987.
“My first posting was on the HMAS Sydney, which was going to Vietnam with the Australian troops and their equipment,” he said.
“I was later posted to destroyer escort HMAS Derwent, which was called upon to be an escort for HMAS Sydney, so we went to Vietnam as the guardian of HMAS Sydney which was full of troops for their next journey up.”
Mr Foote’s grandfather also served in the Navy during the First World War, and his father was a Second World War Army soldier who survived three years as a prisoner of war (POW) of the Japanese and lived to be 100.
“My father was captured at Ambon Island (now part of Indonesia) when the Australian force known as Gull Force was overwhelmed by the Japanese task force that came to take the ground,” he said.
“He spent his 18th and 21st birthdays in a POW camp in China at Hainan Island, and when the war ended, he was discovered there and was repatriated back to Australia by a Royal Navy ship.”
Mr Foote said Vietnam Veterans’ Day was a “very important day” to learn from history and honour everyone who served in the Vietnam War.
“You never want history to repeat itself, so we need to show that we support those veterans who are still with us,” he said.
