2023 End of Australia’s Involvement in the Vietnam War 50th Anniversary $2 ‘C’ Mintmark Coloured Silver Proof Coin

50th Anniversary of the End of Australia's Involvement in the Vietnam War 2023 $2 ‘C’ Mintmark Coloured Fine Silver Proof Coin.

Some 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam. More than 500 lost their lives, many more were wounded. It was Australia’s largest military commitment in the second half of the twentieth century, and one of the country’s most divisive episodes. Anti-war groups, including people not previously associated with protest, like the mothers of military age men, demanded an end to Australia’s involvement.

Today we remember Vietnam for the loss of life and the toll it took on those who served, and for the impact it had on Australia through a turbulent decade. The Vietnam War impacted Australia in many ways. At first, Australian involvement was widely supported, but over time it became increasingly unpopular and by its end the majority of Australians were opposed. National service, the conscription of young men for service in combat operations, caused deep and bitter divisions in the community.

In the war’s final years there were mass demonstrations in Australian cities against conscription and the war. Men were sent to prison for refusing to participate in the National Service scheme. Vietnam was the first Asian conflict involving Australians without British allies. In Vietnam, Australia was bound to a United States strategy, fighting a popular communist insurgency involving the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army.

A complex environment where success was difficult to measure. The war spread from Vietnam to neighbouring Laos and Cambodia and resulted in communist regimes in each of these countries, a refugee crisis, and sorrow at the enormous loss of life in countries on both sides.

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