Killing Babies

Nineteen-year-old Darryl Bishop was away droving when his birth-date was drawn from the Tenth National Service Ballot, 1969. On the 13th May 1971, Private Bishop departed Australia on HMAS Sydney, having earned his place in the Fourth Royal Australian Regiment(4RAR)'s Second Tour of southern Vietnam via gruelling training regimes at Kapooka, Canungra, and Townsville.

Shot through with larrikin spirit and dry humour, yet unflinchingly honest, Killing Babies recounts the narrator's journey into a war-zone which would test his valour, and an exotic world of sin city bars which would test his values. Through the vehicle of vivid memoirs Bishop transports us into the heart and mind of a young bushman who, by luck of the draw and by Government decree, becomes an ANZAC Digger.

Bishop delivers rich detail and dialogue in the best "bush yarn" tradition, as we travel with him from Army Bases, back tracks, and night clubs, to South Vietnam's booby-trapped bamboo groves and rugged, jungle-clad ranges. In these pages Darryl Bishop invites you to sample the life he and his mates lived during the dying days of Australia's involvement in that most unpopular war.