SKIPPEN, Kevin Vincent
Service Number: | 2790629 |
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Enlisted: | Not yet discovered |
Last Rank: | Lance Bombardier |
Last Unit: | 1st Field Regiment (Post WW2) |
Born: | SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, 22 May 1947 |
Home Town: | Not yet discovered |
Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
Occupation: | Not yet discovered |
Died: | Sydney, New South Wales, 1 October 2015, aged 68 years, cause of death not yet discovered |
Cemetery: | Not yet discovered |
Memorials: |
Vietnam War Service
9 May 1969: | Involvement Lance Bombardier, 2790629, 1st Field Regiment (Post WW2) | |
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9 May 1969: | Involvement Australian Army (Post WW2), Lance Bombardier, 2790629 |
'TRUE BLUE' KEVIN SKIPPEN
I first met Kev Skippen at a Vietnam Veterans Lifestyle program in Jamberoo, 1999.
We hit it off straight away even though I was ex-infantry, and he was ex-artillery. This allowed for some friendly banter.
He was a recalcitrant veteran who had never worn his war medals and never marched in a parade of any sort. He worked for The Illawarra Mercury and quietly raised his family.
Anyway....I organised a group of veterans to help erect a tin shed that had sat under his house for years and he was stunned that men, fellow veterans, would help.
We became firm friends as a result of this.
He was slightly overweight and I regarded myself as something of a sportsman, but this man could beat me at snooker, table tennis and golf and I daresay at everything else if he'd cared to (except perhaps, for chasing ladies).
At golf, while I was hammering the ball a long way (in all directions) Kev was always straight up the middle. No nonsense and I guess that sums the man up.
We shared a love for the races and the punt- at which I usually did better. He rarely won, preferring to back outsiders but he did pick up good exotic results now and then that gave him bragging rights for a while. This was the only way I could beat him.
In 2002, along with seven other veterans, he and his wife Judy helped plant trees on the newly-established Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Walk at Albion Park Rail and from then on, Kev Skippen became less reluctant to admit he was a Vietnam veteran and started to be proud of the fact.
Unfortunately, this was double-edged sword because the more he immersed himself in his war memories, the more he was haunted by things from his past. I asked him once what particularly troubled him.
'I was filling up a water bottle from a stream once,' he said, 'and a dead body floated past me. I've never been able to rid myself of that image.'
As an infantry veteran, I never thought much about such a thing but over time, I could see how it could unsettle an artilleryman's psyche.
He and I became estranged over time after he and his wife Judy moved to Hervey Bay, but I will always recall him as one of the most decent, laid-back men I have ever known, who loved his family dearly, and I was proud to be regarded as a friend.
Submitted 5 February 2016 by Don Tate