Out Of Sight

Richard Utting is a senior criminal defense lawyer, former ABC broadcaster and an ex-Mayor of the City of Fremantle. Add to that he was one of an extremely small number of conscripted Australian Officers sent to serve in the Vietnam War.

His life is an amazing journey and the book “Out of Sight” is a magnificent, at times funny and at others poignant, reflection on what he considers to be, his accidental life.

Extract from Out of Sight:

A Letter Home
16th May 1968

“Our job was to stop the 7th NVA Div. from moving from War Zone D into Saigon.

It rained that night for about 2 hours and, at about 2am on the 13th the Platoon on my right opened up on 4 enemy, killing 1. They ran across the front of my platoon and we started shooting. About two minutes after my guns opened up, the enemy fired two RPG7 rockets at us.

The first landed in front of my centre gun killing a bloke about 10 feet in front of us – he had a piece of shrapnel straight through the heart.”