Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Kenneth (Doc) Barclay.

I joined the Australian Army in February 1968 after immigrating from England in January 1964. I did my basic training at 1 RTB Kapooka and my corps training at SOAH (School of Army Health) at Healesville until June 1968.

From there I was posted to 108 Field Battery (FD Bty), 4 Field Regt RAA as the medic initially at Wacol Qld for around 6 weeks. From Wacol the regiment moved to Townsville where we conducted training. Initially I was supposed to go with 108 Fd Bty to Singapore in 1969, however the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps have a rule that if you did not serve in Vietnam, you could not serve in Singapore. That was unless you were a National Serviceman. To say that I was not happy after readying all of the troops and their families with vaccinations and medicals was an understatement. However, that is the Army for you.

From 108 Fd Bty I was posted to the Australian component of 107 Fd Bty awaiting the return of the rest of the unit from Malaysia. When to unit finally reunited with the Aust component we started training hard to go to Vietnam. During that time, we had changed over from 25lb artillery guns to 105mm Howitzers, but ammo was in short supply. 107 had one 25lb gun left and as much ammunition as we wanted so we were up at High Rang at lot having fun getting rid of this excess ammo, good days. It was during this time that I was promoted to L/Cpl & the Cpl. In February 1970 HQ Bty of 4 Fd Regt proceeded to Vietnam, followed by 106 Fd Bty in Feb/March, we followed in May 1970 until May 1971.

On return to Australia, I was posted back to the SOAH, this time as a Sgt. I was there from June 1971 70 December 1972. On December 18th, 1972, I was posted to the Papua New Guinea as the Sgt in charge of the PNG Defence Force Medical Centre at Goldie River about 35kms from Port Moresby. This was the best posting that I had in my Army career, very hard at times especially when we took on looking after the locals as well as the soldiers, but it was very rewarding and I learnt a lot about medicine, especially tropical medicine in this period.

On 18th December 1974 after spending 2 years and 10 minutes in PNG I flew back to Australia and took up my new posting a 2 Military Hospital in Ingleburn NSW. I initially worked in the wards, but after a while I was sent to the Casualty Department.

In 1979 I decided that I had enough with the Army (no wars and supervising troops painting) as took my discharge in February.

A great career with many great friends still to this day.