Vietnam War veteran Kerry Williams just wanted to reclaim his identity, but the Department of Veterans' Affairs and another man's family have been reluctant to hand it back.
For nearly 50 years, a black and white photograph from the battle of Suoi Chau Pha, where six Australians were killed and 14 wounded, gave meaning to Mr William's life. To his family and air force mates, he was the man holding the plasma bottle.
Two years ago, however, his place in history was taken away.
RAAF photographer Barrie Ward shot the image on August 6, 1967. The composition is simple but filled with urgency. It shows a man wearing a flight suit, with the surname Williams sewn on his chest.
He is hoisting a bottle over an injured digger being borne on a stretcher by three army medics at Nui Dat forward detachment.
With a lit cigarette in his right hand, this older man's eyes are fixed on the injured digger. In the background, an Iroquois helicopter is riddled with bullet holes.
''I don't know why or how I survived intact. Sometimes I wished I was wounded or injured,'' said Mr Williams, now 76, and retired in Warners Bay. ''There are things I did over there that I am ashamed of, but I look at that photo now and I am proud, what I did actually meant something, it's positive.''
In 2012, the Department of Veterans' Affairs upset Mr Williams's world. The department altered the photo for its remembrance day poster and calendar. The cigarette was photoshopped out. The bullet holes appeared to be closed over. And, finally, their records replaced Mr Williams in the image. Instead, Dr Jack Blomley, a much-admired former rugby union international and former St Joseph's Hunter's Hill student, was inserted into this nicotine-free version of reality.
The decision literally changed history, splitting military and veterans' associations and leaving two families with ongoing, conflicting claims to that photograph.
Kathy Williams, Mr Williams's daughter, said the official records by Mr Ward, the now-dead photographer, stated her father was carrying the plasma bottle.
''He is wearing his flying suit with his surname over his right breast. Dad never loaned his flying suits to anyone. Dad remembers Barrie taking that photo, it's him in the photo, so basically he has been labelled a liar.
''The mistake [the Department of Veterans' Affairs] made caused such a mess, both for dad, our family, Blomley's family, other vets and the department itself,'' Ms Williams said.
''We complained for a long time. The minister never got back to me, but the department told us it had been resolved … when dad told me the photo appeared again with the wrong identity, I couldn't help but think, someone in the department is deliberately playing god once more.''
Patsy Graham, the younger sister of Dr Blomley, said her brother was correctly identified. Two army medics in the image, Trevor Skinner and Bert Kuijpers, signed declarations that the plasma-carrier was Dr Blomley. They said he often wore a discarded flight suit as its material eased his severe suffering from prickly heat.
''Anyone from our family or who served with him immediately says that's Jack,'' Mrs Graham said. ''He was a larrikin, but greatly loved, and no one assumes he borrowed the flight suit from Kerry. He just would have taken a discarded one where he found it … The department has handled this terribly.''
In 2013, the Australian War Memorial ruled that Mr Williams was the man holding the bottle, citing the name tag, hairline and face shape as evidence, as well as other images in their collection. However, Veterans' Affairs continued to publish the black and white image online with Dr Blomley identified as the man.
On Friday, after earlier Fairfax Media inquiries, the department said it would change its caption to identify Kerin Williams in the photo (Kerry is his preferred name). It admitted to photoshopping the cigarette out of the image so the poster could be displayed in schools.
The family and comrades of Dr Blomley still believe he is the man holding the plasma bottle. No one, however, disputes that both men were at Nui Dat on that charged August day.
Mr Williams, then 29, a leading aircraftsman from the RAAF 9 Squadron, was standing on the skids of the Iroquois as the chopper hovered over a jungle clearing close to Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy province. They were waiting to evacuate wounded Australians. Instead, the black clad Viet Cong emerged from the jungle and began firing their AK47 rifles.
Bullets sliced the shoelaces of the pilot, shrapnel grazed a medic's forehead and perforated the Iroquois. They missed Mr Williams.
"I was born in Rockhampton but grew up in Vietnam on that day,'' he said. ''We went back to Nui Dat … The wounded started arriving and I just jumped in to help wherever I could. It was then that Barrie Ward took the photo.''
The personality of Dr Blomley, then 39, dominated the Nui Dat forward detachment. Often shirtless and wearing boots without shoelaces, ''Jack the Quack'' regularly ignored military protocol. His family says his bonhomie hid the fact the reality of war was wearing him down. He died five years after leaving Vietnam from a heart attack, leaving a wife and five children.
That day, that war, cast a long and terrible shadow over two Australian families. Some truths are beyond doubt.
