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This article relates to Australian servicemen killed in Vietnam buried overseas. The headline is not very good, as there's a lot more Vietnam veterans still around, and in a strictly accurate sense, these men were not veterans of the war because they did not survive it.

Until Vietnam, it was the general policy of Australian governments that Australians who fell in war were buried as close as was practical to where they fell. That policy changed midway through the Vietnam War, largely because it had become practical to repatriate the deceased at that point. Somewhere close to 100,000 Australians killed in war are buried overseas, and the question is asked as to why these 25 should be repatriated, when others will not be.

The reason for that is threefold - one, again, is practicality. This can reasonably be done. The numbers are manageable - we could not do it with the tens of thousands buried overseas from the two World Wars, and even the hundreds from Korea would be difficult. Secondly, in a significant number of these cases, close relatives of the men killed are still alive, which is not true of earlier wars. Thirdly, of these 25, 24 are buried in a cemetery which is very difficult to visit, because it is located on an active Malaysian Army base, and while the Malaysians are very good at allowing as much access as they can, they have valid security concerns. It's hard for family members to visit graves.

There are also Australian casualties from the Malayan Emergency, and the Indonesian Confrontation buried in the same cemetery (small, almost unknown wars of the 1950s and 1960s) and their remains will be repatriated as well if their family members desire.

New Zealand also has to deal with the same issues, but I have not heard of any similar decision from there.

AMEN and rest in peace.

In all seriousness. I am not a combat soldier. Just a lowly coastie and never faced anything more than a run aground fishing boat in Morro Bay. (And I absolutely detest Obama’s address to Coasties in Cape May. Ech. vomited on my sneakers listening to that asshat.)

For any combat veterans here. If, God forbid, you were ever killed in combat would you want to be buried on the ground you fought upon, or would you like your remains to be brought back to your home soil?

Myself, I think I would want to be laid to rest where I fell. Of course I assume we had honorable enemies that would treat our bodies with proper respect.