SBS Documentary ‘Vietnam: The War That Made Australia’

New SBS documentary ‘Vietnam: The War That Made Australia’ tells unheard side of the war

Three-part series reveals a new side to a war that changed lives and Australia forever

Premieres 8.30pm Sunday 3 April on SBS

Vietnam: The War That Made Australia is the extraordinary untold story of the elite ‘Australian Army Training Team Vietnam’ (AKA ‘The Team’) who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the South Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War and helped transform Australia into a modern multicultural society.

Many of these soldiers will speak about their experiences for the first time.

This eye-opening three-part SBS commissioned documentary series, produced by Joined Up Films, follows the very unique war The Team fought over a decade. The Team was embedded with South Vietnamese and other local units, often alone or in pairs. As a consequence, their experience of the war was very different to that of other Australian soldiers, and they forged close and unbreakable bonds with their Vietnamese brothers-in-arms.

That bond continued after the war when members of The Team helped Vietnamese refugees to settle in Australia, which marked Australia’s transition into a modern multicultural society.

The series uses archival footage and new candid interviews with surviving members of The Team and their Vietnamese brothers-in-arms to tell this moving story – from their early involvement with the South Vietnamese Army and its role in the vicious, clandestine war fought by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against the Viet Cong, to the growing barbarity of the war and the experiences of Team members during the Tet Offensive, to the aftermath of the war in which team members came to the aid of Vietnamese refugees.

Throughout the series, members of The Team return to Vietnam to relive pivotal and emotionally confronting moments of the war and in doing so they tackle demons that have haunted them for almost fifty years, relive horrifying events and reunite with their Vietnamese colleagues.

 

 

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