I have posted a page on Jim Bourke which can be accessed via the LH Menu under “The Personalities” Jim never served with 7RAR overseas but joined us in Holsworthy when we came home from the 2nd Tour. You may remember him as OC A Coy but if you don’t, you should remember him as the man who bought home our six MIAs from South Vietnam.
I personally followed Jim’s travails as he fought to bring two of these back home . In 1964, before Vietnam appeared on the RAR radar, I was in 1Pl, A Coy, 1RAR and a month too young to deploy with 1RAR on that 1st deployment – thankfully as it turned out. It was this platoon that was hammered on Operation Hump in November, 1965 and had to leave two of their men on the battlefield. The men, Richard (Tiny) Parker and Peter Gillson were in my section back home in Australia before it all went bad.
They were my mates..
An extract;
“On 5 November 1965 1 RAR and 1/503 Battalion deployed into an area of operations approximately 17 km northeast of their base location. 1 RAR conducted an airmobile assault into Landing Zone (LZ) Jack in the vicinity of GR YT 134 257, east of the Dong Nai River and 1/503 Battalion flew into LZ King on the west of the River. The operation was code named Operation Hump. On the afternoon of 8 November at approximately 1630 hrs, A Company 1 RAR encountered elements of the Vietnamese C238 Company just over 3.5 km southeast of LZ Jack. Parker and Gillson were hit by enemy fire during the ensuing battle. Because of the intensity of the enemy fire, members of A Company did not attempt to recover Parker and those present believed he was killed. Sergeant Colin Fawcett (1937-1994) and Pte Laurence Domaschenz (1946-2007) attempted to recover Gillson’s body but were unable to do so; however, Fawcett was able to get close enough to Gillson to confirm he had no pulse.
The post is a long read but worth it. It has a lot of details about Jim’s early life, his military career and his persistent pursuit of the MIAs and is written by Graham Buchan, resident in Ayr Queensland. Graham went to school with Jim and recently has organized a memorial to Jim at Ayr
The story of Jim Bourke should become set in stone in the history of the Regiment.
Go here to read the full story or just click the link in “The Personalities”
My name is Sydney Alexander McLeod army numbers 1/5801 & 1201143 I was an original member of 7 RAR from 3 RAR when we came home from Malaya. I was Jim’s best mate at school I was the guy he rode to Bowen ( actually we turned back at the Don River) and the fella he went camping with in the Burdekin River where we spent nearly all our free time in. The following was posted on Facebook and the Burdekin Community cleaned up (I took out some of my angst)
Well what you find out after the event, apparently I was talking to a bombastic know it all prick who has been white anting me previously on ANZAC day. I did not realise who Graham Buchan was until later. He claims to be an expert on my old mate Jimmy Bourke, he also claims that as a National Serviceman he was assigned to the AATTV as a linguist (HIGHLY UNLIKELY) as an example my interpreter at my insignificant MAT post at LO GOM was a Chinese fluent in English, 2 dialects of Chinese, both Northern and Southern Dialects of Vietnamese plus Laotian and some Montanyard. As it turned out there was a reason I had such an expert where as I can see NO REASON AATV would use such an inexperienced incompetent. (but I will check). This jerkoff said disparagingly to me “Yea everybody now claims to know Jimmy Bourke” despite the fact I had to force upon him that Jim called me in Thailand from Melbourne in regard to finding the bodies and bring them home. I took the part and admit I might have been wrong about the 2 families who did not want to revisit that pain. Eventually he admitted he was 6 years younger than me or Jim, so we were fighting wars while this pompous prick was still at school.
There in lies the rub, he lives in Ayr so he would not have been at the Home Hill Primary School with Jim and I and would have been in Grade 2 in any case. Home Hill never had a High School in those days so we went to Ayr High (me only 2 months then I went out west ringing and droving) high school went for 4 years which means Buchan would still be at Primary School when Jim had finished High School SO HE NEVER DID GO TO SCHOOL WITH JIM OR ME.
He also said a lot of stuff about George Mansfield who wrote a fine Tribute on Jim’s Memorial, didn’t want to know I knew George as a sergeant in 3 RAR while he was still at school and for his information YES George did go to Malaya BUT NOT IN 1963.