It is 1968 and the plane has just touched down in Sydney after arriving from Vietnam.

Lance Bombardier Bruce Irvine takes the last step down from the plane and looks ahead, seeing his family lined up, waiting.

“We knew we were back then and we were safe,” he said.

Bathurst man Mr Irvine was among the 15,381 National Service conscripts who served in the Vietnam War, and this week marks 50 years since he returned from duty.

His memories of the day he left Vietnam - February 20, 1968 - to fly back to Australia remain as vivid as ever.

It was the end of his nine-month deployment and just 48 hours after his good mate James Leslie Menz was killed in a mortar attack.

James and Bruce were both in the 131 Divisional Locating Battery, a detachment of artillery surveyors in the Royal Australian Artillery.

Mr Irvine spent most of his time in Nui Dat based in the Australian Task Force Base.

His home was a hut with sandbag walls and a canvas fly roof, while the floor foundation was brass artillery shells with floorboards made out of the shell boxes.

“You were busy all the time and you were probably held together by all the communications from here, all the letters,” Mr Irvine said.

Despite the atrocities, Mr Irvine also remembers good times. Laughs with mates and recording songs like Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones onto a tape recorder.

He also remembers performers, including Denise Drysdale and Patti McGrath (later Newton), coming to entertain the troops.

But suddenly the war changed for Mr Irvine when a mortar clipped a tree above his sleeping battery and showered down leaving the man next to him severely injured.

“That changed things for me. You just block things out and do what you’ve got to do,” Mr Irvine said of the horrors around him and how he coped with them.

Fifty years later, “bit by bit” the memories he blocked out have started to return and he said last week’s commemoration service for his friend James Leslie Menz helped. There, he and other members of his battery, shared stories of the war and how they have coped with the memories ever since.​

“It closes things and shuts the doors and puts everything in the right place,” Mr Irvine said of the group’s shared experiences.

JUNE 7 was Bruce Irvine’s unlucky date, while it was his birthday, it was also one of the dates that was drawn out by the Australian Government for conscription.

“Every three months they drew different dates out and then you got a letter telling you where to report for medicals,” he said.

“I got my letter when I was 20 years old.

“Back in those days, if your government told you do to it, you did it.

“I remember when I was told I was going I was a bit nervous, but when you knew your mates were going, you just did it.”

After training was completed, he was serving in Vietnam by May, 1967.

WHILE opposition to the Vietnam War grew as time went on, Mr Irvine said it was not too bad when he was deployed.

“I’d been and gone and come back before the opposition really started,” he said.

However, Mr Irvine does recall that he felt ashamed to wear his uniform when returning to Australia.