Certified Legendary Thread Remembering fallen mates - Peter Chant

[itisnt2hard]

Appreciated, mate. Really appreciated...

However, 'these blokes' already have a car.
She is a jet black 1947 Buick Straight-8 and her name is Cher.

Extract from Peter Chant - Fighting Footballer :
The car was black as a black Straight-8 should be: long and sleekly bumpered and marvellously restored, the automotive version of Cher sliding across a stage. This was the ‘Official 9RAR Staff Car,’ assigned to my airport transfers in and out plus VIP duties on ANZAC Day. Check out the photo.

Cher's picture, taken on ANZAC Day 2013, is among the gallery at the end of the Diary. The link to the PDF file is on Page 3 of this thread. As this is now Page 4, for convenience here it is again:

http://www.cpbsa.com.au/9RAR.htm

Cheers Lockhart. I did get a pm from Rexie but to stupid and worn out and couldnt push the right buttons to reply. My personal email just kept timing out. Rexie i did get it so any advice on how to make it happen, please let me know. Cheers

 

[Lockhart Road]

faquito said: ↑

Accidentally entered this thread, but had to chime in.​

My parents left Vietnam the same year (1980) to escape the North/VC, being Chinese business owners, from the South and Buddhist meant we fit into 3 areas of Government persecution (I'm sure Lockhart Road can share some details/insights on the time). They were boat people to an island in Indonesia before a UN program recognised them as refugees, processed properly and invited into Australia.​

​

Being in a similar, almost identical situation to that John Nguyen guy, I can see where he's coming from. My parents left Vietnam in desperation and for a future (not, 'better', but 'A' future) and settled on the first place they landed. Australia is quite isolated in terms of distance required to travel by sea. So people arriving near our borders, unless from Indonesia aren't fleeing to their nearest point of safety.​

​

That's where I see the differentiation.​

​

(The above quote from the 'Random Thoughts' thread, and its invitation, has led to me compiling the following reply. I have reprinted it here as I consider it to be relevant to this thread, too, Peter Chant being mentioned in the last paragraph...)


THE CHINESE AND VIETNAM – SOME VERY PERSONAL INSIGHTS…

My first experience with Chinese in Vietnam – probably my first experience with Chinese anywhere – occurred in an unusual place. Up till then I didn’t even realise there were Chinese in Vietnam. I thought, because I hadn’t thought, that there were only Vietnamese in Vietnam, plus us – the Uc Dai Loi (Australians) – and a few too many Yanks with big guns, big planes and big talk.

Did not apply after dark

The place in question was a fortified village a couple of miles north of and outside the perimeter wire and minefields of the Aussie Task Force Base at Nui Dat, sixty or so miles south-east of Saigon. It was a ‘resettled’ village, i.e.: the inhabitants had watched their ancestral homes somewhere more sinister burnt to the ground, by us, been interrogated and pronounced ‘not Viet Cong after all,’ then been stuck in a hastily constructed community with a bleak concrete market hall in the middle of a defoliated dust bowl close to the evil eye of Nui Dat. I’d add here that the ‘not Viet Cong after all’ classification, in a lot of the individual cases, did not apply after dark.

The fortified village was called Ap Soui Nghe (pronounced Up Sooey Nay) under the so-called protection of a sandbagged fort just to the north-east, garrisoned by a Regional Force ARVN (South Vietnamese) infantry company complete with their families. I was for two months in early 1969 a member of a six- or seven-man Military Advisory Team (MAT), living in the ‘fort.’ We were all infantrymen from 9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (9RAR). The MAT c.o. was Captain Lewis Tizard. He was ex-British Army, a nugget of a man with a highly-strung, excitable personality who used to ride around in a scout car during exercises in Australia with a pork-pie forage cap stuck on his rounded scone and carry on like Rommel. He was a unique bloke, and I was his batman at the time. We became special mates. I think of him all the time, glad to still have the photos of him that I took. Lew Tizard emerged from upper-crust roots in England, spoke like it and was highly educated. He took me under his wing and taught me a bit about a broad spectrum of subjects, one of which was Chinese in Vietnam.

“I’d be into that…”

“Take a look at that woman walking across the parade ground,” he said to me one day. “What’s different about her?” I checked the lady out. “Her skin is whiter, “ I observed. “Her features are different. Higher, more prominent cheekbones. She holds herself proudly, more so than those around her.” Lew nodded, smiling wistfully. “Lovely, isn’t she? She’s Chinese. If I wasn’t so happily married… if I didn’t have to set an example around here and wasn’t such a chocolate soldier, I’d be into that.” From then on I took more notice of the fairer-skinned population of the fort, and in the village, especially the women. And especially the schoolteacher, Co Hien – Miss Hien. She was an absolute catch in black pyjamas. The ARVN Coy. 2IC and the Montagnard CSM tried to endure a ménage a trois over Miss Hien, and then the loser ended up putting a Colt .45 in his mouth, pulling the trigger and blowing his bottom jaw off. The Chinese women in the community could do that to the lovelorn. They were more sophisticated, on a higher plane, inherently smarter, more aloof and impossible to score with. I decided Chinese women were worth knowing more about. I went to Hong Kong on my R&R… and this is where I’m still at.

I flew out of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon on 31 July 1969, on board a Qantas 707 to Sydney. My two years National Service was coming to its end and I’d survived nearly nine months in Vietnam. Sitting next to me was Yabbie, one of my two closest mates. We were together for recruit training at Puckapunyal, starting October 1967, and when he told me he was a crayfisherman from Port MacDonnell I said to him: “You are hereby renamed Yabbie.” We spent a night in King’s Cross, flew home to Adelaide next morning. Yabbie says he can’t recall that night. I sure can. Pink Pussycat and The Pink Panther, four hours of Sandra Nelson, our Charlie Company mascot, a 99% naked blown-up full-size photo of her on the wall of our Nui Dat boozer… We were ordered by some visiting prig of a Field Marshall to take it down or else. It stayed put. Diggers’ rights.

One night in Bangkok – too hard to take

I flew back in to Tan Son Nhut, coincidentally, precisely twenty years later, 31 July 1989. The place instantly looked unchanged from the window of the jet: sandbagged gunship redoubts, iron shed terminal building… Streets with giant International Harvesters, left behind by the Yanks, charging about... Streets buzzing with beetle Renault cabs and swarm upon swarm of Lambrettas (still like that, Saigon, a rolling surf of scooters loaded with families including the dog... pillion passengers in flowing silk national dress, the ao dai, fascinating to sit and watch with a cold beer in hand). A ‘reunified’ Vietnam, all decisions made in Hanoi, had taken the first step to imitate Beijing and open up the country to the West. They called it Doi Moi. I flew in alone, scheduled to join up with a Belgian trade mission coming from the other direction. No direct flights from Hong Kong to Saigon then, had to travel via Bangkok, en route spending a night there – too hard to take – then board one of the twice-weekly flights to Tan Son Nhut on Thai or Singapore International. No credit cards either. Not trusted by Hanoi, credit cards: too plastic, too complicated, too American with the Yanks still on the official hate list. Greenbacks were okay, though, everything done in hard cash. Hypocritical, you say? I’d prefer pragmatic. The country needed foreign exchange in a hurry.

I checked into the Rex Hotel on a corner of the square in the city, spent three or four days there in between two meetings with the local power utility, one a senior engineer from Hue, watched hawk-like by the political party commissar from Hanoi. Southerners weren’t trusted to talk turkey with foreigners. I spent my days sitting in the restaurant by the hanging bamboo beaded curtains above the square and read Bonfire of the Vanities; terrific read, Tom Wolfe became an instant hit with me, not so Brian De Palma when the cast of the film version came out with Bruce Willis in the role of Peter Fallow, whom Wolfe wrote into his story as a Pommie lush and martini bludger. Trouble was Tom Wolfe then proceeded to write one book every ten years. The Right Stuff had been one of his best, also made into a movie. I ate in the Rex’s restaurant, tasty French cuisine, and cheap… great French red no white, and cheap. The first night in good old Saigon I tentatively checked out the disco that had already opened in the hotel basement. It was as dark as the bar in the Grand Hotel in Vung Tau where my initiation to Asian women, well… girls, took place in early February 1969. Never forget those cats’ eyes coming at me through the gloom, the long fingernails reaching out, grabbing my arm, hauling me into the nearest cubicle, emptying my wallet in under twenty minutes… This time, twenty years wiser, a desperately pretty lady showed me photos of the American GI who’d left her behind fifteen years earlier. “Please, sir… can you help me find him?”

A heap of vengeance

Across the square was the Caravelle Hotel. Both of the hotels are still there, the Caravelle now boringly redeveloped, not so the Rex which retains its old world charm – or at least it did when I last went into it three years ago – as does the Continental where I stayed on one of my subsequent business visits in the 1980s and early 1990s, drinking sundowners in its atmospheric Long Bar. But let’s get back to the subject by travelling back in time….

Between 1975 and 1989 a lot of very nasty stuff was heaped on the Chinese population of Vietnam, not just South Vietnam. They were stripped of all their worldly goods, Nazi-style, put on boats, any sort of boat whether it could float out of sight or not, and shoved out to sea. There was a heap of vengeance to be wreaked by Hanoi, and the Chinese, the ‘Jews of Asia,’ copped it right up the middle. Rusted leaking hulks with people hanging over their sides started running aground in Hong Kong. The refugees were processed into hastily constructed camps in Kowloon, fed and clothed and given paid menial work to do and, over the course of several years, were resettled in countries all around the world, including Australia.

Full of Soviet s**t

The persecution of its ethnic Chinese by Hanoi did not go unnoticed in Beijing. In February 1979, the year Deng Xiaoping grabbed the reins and introduced China’s Open Door Policy, the PLA launched a punitive strike across the Sino-Vietnamese border. The war went on for a month, and the PLA was given a hiding before withdrawing. Part of the reason for its incursion, Beijing told the world, was to punish Hanoi for its treatment of its ethnic Chinese population. But there was another reason – a geopolitically strategic one that’s hardly known. Moscow had signed a Mutual Defence Treaty with Hanoi, and Deng wanted to test it. Beijing’s relationship with Moscow had gone rancid, and the northern borders of China were manned and on a war footing. Deng chose to check whether Moscow would in fact live up to its promise to come to Hanoi’s aid if Vietnam was attacked, suspecting that Moscow was full of Soviet s**t. Deng was right on the money. The Kremlin sat on its hands all through the month-long Sino-Vietnamese War of early 1979. The Soviet Army was occupied with a higher priority campaign: Afghanistan, one they ultimately lost in a miserable fashion similar to the Americans earlier in Vietnam.

But now it was July 1989, ten years later, and I was back in Saigon, a member of a new invasion force, a commercial one. Vietnam was in economic strife and needed to catch up with the PRC in a hurry. Guess who came back to Vietnam along with that commercial strike force. Yep… the Chinese – enthusiastically led by the entrepreneurs of Hong Kong and followed by others including the nouveau riche and powerbrokers of Mainland China. Check out Vietnam today – rebuilt by the West, especially rebuilt by the East in the guise of the Chinese, the very race of people that Hanoi had cast off in leaking boats during those despicable years in the wake of April 1975. Life can be ironic… especially in the Far East. I keep returning to that other appropriate adjective: pragmatic.

Epiphany

My most recent visit to Saigon was three years ago. I flew there with my wife, who’s Chinese, and my daughter. When I was invited to accompany them I laid down a few select conditions: “I’ll go if we can stay in the Sheraton, sit in the top floor bar and watch the sun set over the Saigon River. I’ll go if we can hire a car and drive down to Vung Tau. I want to see if the Grand Hotel is still there.” Indeed it is. The car was laid on, the Sheraton booked, by my wife’s brother-in-law, a typically successful Chinese businessman who’s doing a variety of stuff in Vietnam and employs Chinese staff in an office in Saigon. The drive took three hours each way. Vung Tau has expanded so violently it’s like an outer suburb of Saigon. The Grand retains its French profile, over which a golden paint job has been applied. It goes without saying that I checked out the bar, at least the spot where it used to be.

That large walled space is today a characterless storeroom full of ghosts of foxy bar girls with cat’s eyes and long fingernails and young fighting men desperate not to be sent back out into the jungle without putting up one last protest of basic carnality. The side door accessed via a backstreet, atop a set of steps leading to the corridor off which a heavy door used to open to the right and into the bar, has been bolted shut. I stood outside that door during my return visit three years ago, upon the exact same spot I’d first set foot on that brightly sunlit morning in early February 1969... and right there and then I experienced something I’ve since called an ‘epiphany.’ No heavenly spirit, no foxy ghost called Lan, appeared in front of me, however. What did happen was a time-warp flit up that flight of steps through one door, then a second door to the right into my youthful past. 41 years vanished before my eyes in a white flash. Where the hell have they gone? I asked myself. I was an emotional wreck for the remainder of that day, to the annoyance of my family members. Yet I'm so happy that I made the pilgrimage. It was something very special.

Bibliography

Enough random insights and thoughts on this subject for now. I’m sure that not many who browse the ‘Random Thoughts' thread will be keen to get into a long short-story like this has turned into. DonDynamite may prove an exception, I reckon, along with you, faquito – Mr Ambassador, sir. Thank you for your invitation to make this contribution. I may post excerpts in a future ‘Dear Fos’ Memo. I shall, more definitely, post what I’ve put together here on the ‘Remembering Fallen Mates – Peter Chant’ thread. Peter was one of us that sunny day in early February 1969 in Vung Tau, when we partied away our two-day In-Country R&R, known as 'R&C.' Ten days later, Pete was dead.

Appended here is the list of books I earlier threatened to include with this post:

VIETNAM: A HISTORY - The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War by Stanley Kurnow (The American perspective.)
VIETNAM – THE AUSTRALIAN WAR by Paul Ham
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST – by David Halberstam
A BRIGHT SHINING LIE – John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam – by Neil Sheehan
WHO THE HELL ARE WE FIGHTING? The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars by Michael Hiam (I’ve just read this and wholly recommend it; the book lays down the facts on the great intelligence lie perpetrated by General Westmoreland’s MAC-V command in Saigon, and the gripping court case brought by him against CIA analyst Sam Adams, Mike Wallace and CBS for daring to bring the duping of America by Westmoreland and MAC-V to the attention of the country…)
HO CHI MINH – A LIFE by William J. Duiker
SAIGON – by Anthony Grey (Fiction based on fact, Vietnam’s history in a romantic Wilbur Smith style.)
VIEW FROM A LOW BOUGH by Barrie Crowley (Written by a member of Charlie Company, 9RAR, giving his personal view of being on the ground in Vietnam, of characters poorly camouflaged by nicknames whom we both knew in Vietnam… including Lew Tizard; and of incidents, some of which I was much too close to. The only real downer is his chapter describing his R&R in Hong Kong. Barrie sure missed his chance there.)

 

[Ford Fairlane]

Have you watched the documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara?

Fascinating man and covers insights into his role in the Vietnam War while US Secretary of Defence and the firebombing of Japan at the end of WW2 when he was a statistical analyst.

 

[Lockhart Road]

Have you watched the documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara?
Fascinating man and covers insights into his role in the Vietnam War while US Secretary of Defence and the firebombing of Japan at the end of WW2 when he was a statistical analyst.

I've watched the documentary twice, Ford. Agree, it gives insights to the workings of the man's mind, but no-one will ever get the full story on McNamara simply because he'll die an enigma.

Personally, I've developed mixed feelings about him.
As a fresh Secretary of Defense in 1962 his steady hand on the wheel helped the Kennedys stonewall their suicidally gung-ho Joint Chiefs of Staff and save the world from a nuclear Armageddon over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But in Vietnam he was a vital link in the Washington DC chain of command that escalated America's commitment to the war, and kept on escalating it. McNamara was a human computer, a mathematical genius. But like all computers, to do his best analysis of a situation he was reliant on being fed the most accurate data. In the case of McNamara and Vietnam it was GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

I've only recently understood how this happened, when I read one of the books I've listed in the bibliography above: Who The Hell Are We Fighting written by Michael Hiam. It tells how the US Military Assistance Command - Vietnam (MAC-V), under Westmoreland, aided and abetted by the higher echelon in the CIA, consistently discounted the Viet Cong and NVA forces in the South to one-third of what they actually were, and maintained the same unreal low figure to give the impression to the White House and Congress that their brilliant battle strategy was winning the war.

Then came the Tet Offensive of late January 1968. Though Westmoreland indignantly blustered that he knew it was coming and his troops were prepared, the truth is the opposite. Somehow all these Viet Cong that had been excluded for years from the official MAC-V Enemy Order of Battle stats had come out of the ground and were creating mayhem all over South Vietnam including the grounds of the US Embassy in Saigon.
As enemy kill stats started to be added up in the MAC-V and CIA backrooms, one military intelligence analyst announced that the cross-over point had been reached. "We've killed them all off!" he shouted. "We had them at 300,000 and we've just killed No. 300,001 in this action! And they're still coming! Who the hell are we fighting?" The true figure of Viet Cong / NVA strength was three times the figure MAC-V and the CIA fed up the command chain to LBJ. Getting the truth out had been Sam Adams' personal crusade as a lower-level CIA analyst, and he died a physical wreck in his fifties because of the treatment he was subjected to for being the only American intelligence agent with the integrity and the balls to do his job properly. A truly absorbing read.

There's a movie starring Danny DeVito called 'Renaissance Man.' In Australia, reads Wikipedia, it was dumbed down under the alternative title of 'Army Intelligence.' DeVito plays a civilian English teacher assigned to a military base in America. He teaches his class of supposed airheads what an oxymoron is, told them that a prime example was 'Military Intelligence.' Worth watching.

 

[Lockhart Road]

In my search for SANFL / Port Adelaide Magpies material on Peter Chant, I've come into ownership of a copy of the 1962 SANFL Year Book, covering the 1961 season during which, it confirms, Pete played his first four games for the Magpies...

Recent developments in the Reserves Debate have taken my mind back into the past - which, I know, a lot of people feel is less relevant to the argument today than I do - and back to the mindset of the Port Adelaide Football Club during our long, golden era that began in the early 1950s.
It was a mindset that left no prisoners, and it is epitomised by a couple of snippets from the abovementioned 1962 Year Book, taken from a section headed 'Clubs, coaches - and trouble,' which make reference to some of the great players / coaches I and others have mentioned on this and other relevant threads, namely Neil Hawke, Geoff Motley and Rex Johns and, inevitably, Fos Williams:

HAWKE CASE
Late in 1961 the Hawke case transcended all other matters of football interest.
Neil Hawke (Port, later East Perth) had returned to SA in 1960 determined not to play for Port again. Refused a clearance from Port to Torrens, he stood out of league football in 1960.
In May last year, Torrens, with the object of acquiring Hawke, unsuccessfully asked the full League to amend its by-laws to make a footballer who plays interstate for three years a free agent. (Under SA by-laws such a player is bound to his former club for three years after his return to SA). Torrens based its argument on another by-law which enables an SA League player going to the country to become 'unattached' after three years away from his former League club.
However, subsequently a League tribunal released Hawke to Torrens, taking into account that 'as a result of Port Adelaide granting a clearance to Hawke to play in WA, the Port Adelaide club received a substantial sum of money'.

(Hawke played 3 games for West Torrens in 1961.)

COACHING STIRS
Between seasons Port stars Geoff Motley and Rex Johns were concerned in coaching stirs.
Motley was named as Glenelg coach when Stan Wickham, after reappointment, relinquishing the post on health grounds. But Port refused to clear Motley who, a couple of months earlier, had been superseded as Port coach by Fos Williams.
Motley had given Port 19 games, and it is worth remembering that Port gained Williams, the club's great playing coach from 1950 to 1958, after he had played only 54 games for West (Adelaide).
Port also refused Rex Johns, now apparently no certainty as its regular full forward, a clearance to become Central District playing coach.

This was of course the Big Bob McLean Era at Alberton.
Bob McLean came from Norwood, and was perhaps the greatest ever inter-club loss / acquisition, as far as an administrative role is concerned... until Keith Thomas more recently made the same cross-town transfer as did Big Bob all those years ago.
Is it no wonder that the other SANFL clubs developed such a hatred, such a fear of, and indeed such a respect for the rock called PAFC that they could never crack... as has been demonstrated by the current bevy of backwardly-obsessed SANFL figureheads ?

 

[Lockhart Road]

Hi Ford
Peter was also a respected member of the Semaphore Surf Life Saving club and a terrific beach sprinter and flags competitor – he is always fondly remembered by members of the surf club.

Have just been advised by Warwick Archer - Past-President, Brighton Surf Life Saving Club - that Semaphore SLC are compiling a history of their Club. Peter Chant, they say, was a Vice Captain of the Club.

We're in the process of assisting the Sema4 SLC with information about Pete's Army life, and also in the process is a Peter Chant ANZAC event for April next year.

 

[Ford Fairlane]

COACHING STIRS
Between seasons Port stars Geoff Motley and Rex Johns were concerned in coaching stirs.
Motley was named as Glenelg coach when Stan Wickham, after reappointment, relinquishing the post on health grounds. But Port refused to clear Motley who, a couple of months earlier, had been superseded as Port coach by Fos Williams.
Motley had given Port 19 games, and it is worth remembering that Port gained Williams, the club's great playing coach from 1950 to 1958, after he had played only 54 games for West (Adelaide).
Port also refused Rex Johns, now apparently no certainty as its regular full forward, a clearance to become Central District playing coach.

This was of course the Big Bob McLean Era at Alberton.
Bob McLean came from Norwood, and was perhaps the greatest ever inter-club loss / acquisition, as far as an administrative role is concerned... until Keith Thomas more recently made the same cross-town transfer as did Big Bob all those years ago.
Is it no wonder that the other SANFL clubs developed such a hatred, such a fear of, and indeed such a respect for the rock called PAFC that they could never crack... as has been demonstrated by the current bevy of backwardly-obsessed SANFL figureheads ?

And why was Motley removed as coach? For going out in straight sets in the 1960 and 1961 finals series after finishing minor premier both years. Port lost the 1961 Prelim Final by 2 points. Port won the 1962 GF under F N Williams by 3 points. As Chrissie Amphlett sang, it's a fine line between pleasure and pain.

 

[Lockhart Road]

And why was Motley removed as coach? For going out in straight sets in the 1960 and 1961 finals series after finishing minor premier both years. Port lost the 1961 Prelim Final by 2 points. Port won the 1962 GF under F N Williams by 3 points. As Chrissie Amphlett sang, it's a fine line between pleasure and pain.

Could you check something that's been troubling me, please, Ford...?

The text I quoted from the 1962 SANFL Year Book stated that Motley 'had given Port' 19 games in the 1961 season.
Does that mean Fos Williams came back before the end of the minor round in 1961?

Actually... I have the 1962 Year Book right here. Shall check if it answers my question.

Wait out...

(PS: Explanation for onset of personal disorganisation:
Have just returned from late afternoon sojourn on Lockhart Road... finding a taxi during half-time in the Hawthorn / Sydney match tested even my Lockhart Road taxi-finding skills honed across 44 years... )

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

LR in 1961 there were 19 minor round game and we payed in 2 finals.

1961 was also an All Australian carnival year, so Motley probably missed 2 games playing at the carnival

 

[Lockhart Road]

LR in 1961 there were 19 minor round game and we payed in 2 finals.

1961 was also an All Australian carnival year, so Motley probably missed 2 games playing at the carnival

You are on the ball, as always, REH.

Eight teams but only 19 minor round games, not 21, in 1961.

I'll add a bit to that, claiming it to be relevant to this thread as Peter Chant was on the Magpies' senior list at the time...

Port played Glenelg and Sturt only twice in 1961, all others three times.
Glenelg finished 2nd bottom and Sturt bottom that year, so not playing them three times was a bit unfortunate (a fixed fixture?), but Port finished minor premiers anyway.
The Magpies lost four minor round games - to West (eventual premiers) in round 1, South in round 3, Norwood in round 11 (by 3 points) and Torrens in the last round.

The SANFL Year Book exacerbated that last round defeat by telling readers: Port, defeated by Torrens in the last match of the minor round, by West in the second semi final and by Norwood in the preliminary final, lost three consecutive games in the one season for the first time since 1949.

Upshot: the sacking of Captain-Coach Geoff Motley and the return of Fos Williams as non-playing coach.

Another extract from the Year Book:
By-products of...overall improvement (in the SANFL competition) were record crowds at three games.
The 24,000 at a Port-Torrens match at Adelaide Oval equalled the best for any minor-round game, there was a record Kensington Oval crowd of 17,250 for a Port-Norwood game and 20,100, the biggest crowd ever for Thebarton, saw Torrens beat Port in the last minor-round game.
(Note the common denominator.)

There were two sensational games.
First, the Donnybrook Match between Torrens and Norwood at Thebarton.
Fisticuffs, sometimes behind the play, were frequent with Slaven (Torrens) breaking a leg and Stephens and Feehan (Norwood) fracturing thumbs.
(The five umpires in this game were briefly dropped from league appointments for not making more than one report and were warned "not to offend again.")

The Year Book seemingly suffered its own broken digits as it failed to go on and tell readers what was the second 'sensational game'.

 

[Lockhart Road]

TRAVIS BOAK ON…

THE MOMENT WHEN HE JUST WENT, "WOW"
"There's been five or six moments that have been amazing, but the one that stands out for me was the big comeback against West Coast. It was Kane Cornes' 250th game, who is a legend of the club, and for the ball to finish in his hands that was just a great moment."

I've been a bit slow posting here the Boaky section from a media piece that appeared last Friday. If you haven't already seen the rest of it, here's the link:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...tember-contender/story-fni5f9df-1226712502642

In a few places earlier in this thread I've made mention of the West Coast game, Round 5, the ANZAC match... how the game turned on its head at halftime after I'd presented our Chairman with Peter Chant's WTFRW tie... comment made by Rucci in the subsequent press, and me in my April Diary, to the effect that Peter had been 'watching'...

It's been a season so far of jaw-dropping stuff for us, certainly for me - omens, turn-arounds, goofy-footed wrong 'uns, VC-winning plays and 1-percenters... signs from the outer limits...

The reference in the above-quoted media piece published on 6 September includes due reference to the three 'No. 35' signs that have occurred at different times this season, beginning in Sorrento before it had even started, each one recognized as it happened for what it was with silent, respectful awe.

This sure has been J-Mac's memorial season... with more to come.

I'm certain that John wouldn't mind sharing a little of the light with Peter Chant.

 

[Lockhart Road]

From the '2013 Favourite Moments' thread...

Ford Fairlane said: ↑

Just a few to get the ball rolling
The Showdowns
The West Coast comeback
Peter Chant and Lockhart Road
Winning a final against Collingwood
The Collingwood and Sydney minor round wins announcing our arrival​

Thank you very much, Ford, for including Peter Chant in your short list.
I say this on Pete's behalf, and on behalf of his and my mates.

For me, personally, this was not just a season of wondrous performance by our Club on and off the field. Others will do those broad categories finer justice than I could.
For me, personally, this season took on a wholly different dimension from the moment the BigFooty community took Peter so warmly into their fold, recognizing that they had found a member of their family whom they'd never known.

For that, my gratitude goes, again, to Rexie J. and to Ford Fairlane for providing vital support at the start of the project and expert direction in getting it going. The BF Board did the rest.

 

[Lockhart Road]

11th hour... 11th day... 11th month...

PAFC has honoured its fallen with this commendable post on the Club website.

http://www.portadelaidefc.com.au/news/2013-11-11/lest-we-forget

Peter Chant appears on the Roll of Honour.

Lest we forget... Never, mate.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Well done to the club and Matthew Agius who wrote the article.

 

[Lockhart Road]

A casual observation and a reminiscence to add to Peter's thread:

1) Monday, 11 November 2013 is also Veterans' Day in the USA.

2) During the recent two-week 'Friendship Tour' of Vietnam by two-dozen 9RAR mates with wives, partners plus two daughters of a deceased veteran - which I joined with my wife for the Hanoi / Ha Long Bay sector - I was reminded that Peter Chant was an avid horse-racing man and an owner or part-owner of horseflesh, and had 'an interest' in a thin string of thoroughbreds.
The most memorable of these, I was assured, raced under the name of Rain Lover.

One of my two very best mates was on the tour; he assured me over a beer... then reassured me five beers later... then re-reassured me the next morning... that at Woodside just before we shipped out to Vietnam in early November 1968 Peter had given him a wink just before the 1968 Melbourne Cup and told him of his 'interest' in Rain Lover.
$10 was put on the horse, and the winnings duly pocketed.

Rain Lover, ridden by Jimmie Johnson, won consecutive Melbourne Cups in 1968 and 1969 - the latter victory taking place nine months after Peter's death in action... as if, looking back, horse and jockey, and trainer, were making their own very special tribute to the quiet little bloke who had 'an interest' in the three of them.

My betting mate was by the first Tuesday in November 1969 a civilian again (as was I) and back on his dusty old stamping ground at the Top End of this island continent of ours.
The night before the 1969 Melbourne Cup it started to rain, something that hadn't happened apparently for a long time up there. He woke up at 3:00 a.m. with a start. Maybe it was PTSD setting in, or maybe he had just seen Peter's wink again, in a dream, and heard the little bloke telling him: "It's raining, Bushman. What better omen do you need?"
The bet went on first thing in the morning, and the winnings duly pocketed. Again.

We demolished what remained of those winnings one afternoon and night in Hanoi, and remembered the quiet little bloke and his wink all over again.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

LR do you reckon Peter had any impact on the favourite Big Philou pulling out about an hour before the 1969 race.

 

[Lockhart Road]

LR do you reckon Peter had any impact on the favourite Big Philou pulling out about an hour before the 1969 race.

REH - Experiencing first-hand Peter's half-time miracle vs. West Coast in Round 5, I'd reckon that the little bloke is, and was, capable of anything.

 

[Lockhart Road]

PETER CHANT's Vietnam campaign medals, badges (military and life-saving), and photos of him in Prison Bars (1961-1962) and formal khaki battle-dress have been put together on dark-green felt and framed by 9RAR Association, and delivered to the Club for mounting in an appropriate place.

PETE IS BACK HOME.

During ANZAC Round the framed memorial will be officially presented to the Club by Pete's next-of-kin.
This will not be the only ceremony within a larger ANZAC ceremony performed by the Club... more detail re which I'll include in a separate thread.

So concludes this particular BF thread.
It has achieved quite amazing results in twelve months - for Pete and our memory of him, for his mates, and for our Football Club.
Thank you all for your interest, attention and your support.

 

[Eddie Dingle]

PETER CHANT's Vietnam campaign medals, badges (military and life-saving), and photos of him in Prison Bars (1961-1962) and formal khaki battle-dress have been put together on dark-green felt and framed by 9RAR Association, and delivered to the Club for mounting in an appropriate place.

PETE IS BACK HOME.

During ANZAC Round the framed memorial will be officially presented to the Club by Pete's next-of-kin.
This will not be the only ceremony within a larger ANZAC ceremony performed by the Club... more detail re which I'll include in a separate thread.

So concludes this particular BF thread.
It has achieved quite amazing results in twelve months - for Pete and our memory of him, for his mates, and for our Football Club.
Thank you all for your interest, attention and your support.

Stop making me tear up man.

#petershome

 

[1954]

A Vietnam vet mate of mine told me about 5 years ago that an ex Port player had been killed in Vietnam, he wasn't sure if his name was Peter, or Paul Chant.

I did some checking and found out his name was Peter, and that I had actually seen him play, it was at the Kensington oval in 1961 ( against I think Norwood ) and he kicked a couple of goals playing as a rover/forward pocket.

I remember the day very well because a mate and myself found a wallet with 10 or 12 pounds in it ( huge money for a couple of 12 year olds ), we handed it in, and the police tracked down the owner, who didn't even say thankyou.

For those who weren't around at the time Kensington oval was used as a neutral ground for footy before it became athletics only in the mid 60's.

It is sensational news that the club is now honouring the memory of Peter Chant, and very well done to Lockhart Road in his efforts to help that happen.

 

[Ford Fairlane]

Lockhart Road will be thrilled to read your recollection of Peter 1954

 

[Ford Fairlane]

Lockhart Road found this footage of Evan Jones performing in 1999 at the Torrens Parade Ground in Adelaide at a Concert held annually to commemorate the Battle of Long Tan. Evan was conscripted in 1968 and his experience in Vietnam was as an Intelligence Dutyman and photographer with 5RAR.

 

[I Dont Care]

Ford, I wonder if that is the same Evan Jones, who is Albury Ladonga's mate in that youtube you posted in the 50,000 thread?

 

[Ford Fairlane]

Ford, I wonder if that is the same Evan Jones, who is Albury Ladonga's mate in that youtube you posted in the 50,000 thread?

Just posted that in the 50,000 thread. I think it is - that was how I found these clips. He wrote The Pushbike Song which his brother recorded with The Mixtures.

 

[manureid]

Every thread I go in to atm seems to be discussing the same stuff.... My browser has gone all Twilight Zone on me...