Memories of Service 3 - Wayne Chester

... I actually like the Vietnamese people. I admired them. I admired the Viet Cong. I mean who the hell would go and live in a hole for 15 years living on dried fish and rice for a cause? You gotta admire them. But if they were gonna shoot at you, you'd shoot them first.

– Wayne Chester

Then it all went quiet and they stopped firing and we just lay awake until daylight. And the first time I’ve even seen a white Māori. We were both lying there and we both looked down and there was a hand grenade lying between us that had been thrown at us and hadn’t gone off.

– Wayne Chester

... around the corner came this magnificent cat, would've been about the size of a labrador, and it looked like a snow leopard ... [it was] two metres away, as it came around the corner. And I don't know how it ever saw me but it stopped and it looked me right in the eye. It was quite an amazing moment.

– Wayne Chester, on a close encounter with what was likely an endangered clouded leopard