Rayene Stewart Simpson

The Australian Soldier Who Kept Going Back

By May 1969, Warrant Officer Class II Rayene Stewart Simpson, VC, DCM, had already lived through a military career that would have exhausted most men. He had served in the Second World War, fought through the Korean War, operated during the Malayan Emergency, and completed repeated tours with the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. Yet it was in the mountains and jungle of South Vietnam that Simpson would perform the acts that placed him among Australia’s most highly decorated soldiers. His story is not simply one of medals. It is the story of a professional soldier who repeatedly moved toward danger when others needed him most.

Rayene Stewart Simpson, known throughout the Army as Ray or “Simmo,” was born in Sydney on 16 February 1926. His childhood was difficult. After his family broke apart, he was separated from his siblings and placed in the Church of England Home for Boys at Carlingford. He left school young and worked as a labourer near Taree. When the Second World War began, Simpson was still too young to enlist. He waited until he was old enough and joined the Australian Army in March 1944. The Army would become the central institution of his adult life.

His first experience of wartime service came in the Pacific. Simpson served on Morotai and Tarakan and remained in uniform until his postwar discharge in 1947. Civilian life did not hold him for long. In 1951 he returned to the Australian Regular Army and was sent to Korea with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He spent three Christmases in Korea and developed the experience and fieldcraft that would later define him as a senior soldier. After Korea he transferred to the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, serving in Malaya during the Emergency from 1955 to 1957. He later joined 1st Special Air Service Company, adding special operations experience to an already formidable military background.

Then came Vietnam. In 1962 Simpson became one of the early members of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, better known as AATTV. Unlike soldiers serving primarily inside Australian formations, members of the Training Team often operated alongside South Vietnamese troops and United States Special Forces, advising, training and accompanying local forces into combat. Simpson completed three periods of service with AATTV and eventually became its longest-serving member. Vietnam would also reveal just how far he was willing to go for the men around him.

On 16 September 1964, during his second Vietnam tour, Simpson was accompanying a Vietnamese Special Forces platoon near Ta Ko in Quang Nam Province when the patrol was intercepted by a superior Viet Cong force. The Vietnamese commander became an early casualty and Simpson was severely wounded by rifle fire in his right leg. Bleeding heavily, he nevertheless took control. His Distinguished Conduct Medal citation recorded that he rallied the platoon, established a defensive position, radioed for assistance and, through what the citation described as his “personal example and inspiring leadership,” held repeated attacks until the relief force arrived. Even then, Simpson refused evacuation until he was satisfied that the position was secure and the soldiers under his care had been attended to. His wounds were serious enough to keep him in hospital for months.

That might have ended another soldier’s combat career. It did not end Simpson’s. After recovering and returning to Australia, he left the Army in May 1966. Within a year he had paid his own way back to Saigon and re-enlisted. He was rapidly restored to warrant officer rank and returned to AATTV. By 1969 he was commanding 232 Company, 3rd Battalion, Mobile Strike Force Command, operating in Kontum Province with forces associated with the United States 5th Special Forces Group. Simpson was now 43 years old, a veteran of four major conflicts, and about to face the action for which his name would become permanently associated with the Victoria Cross.

On 6 May 1969, Simpson’s company was engaged during a search and clear operation near the borders of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. When a leading platoon came under heavy enemy fire, Simpson moved forward and joined an attempt to attack the enemy position from the flank. An Australian adviser was seriously wounded. Simpson crossed exposed ground under fire, reached him and carried him to relative safety. Instead of remaining under cover, he returned to the fight. He crawled forward to within roughly ten metres of the enemy position and attacked it with grenades. As the situation deteriorated, Simpson helped cover the withdrawal of his force and ensured that the wounded were brought out. His leadership and personal bravery during this phase of the operation formed the first part of the case for his Victoria Cross.

Five days later, on 11 May 1969, Simpson again found himself facing intense enemy fire. His battalion commander had been killed, an Australian warrant officer and several indigenous soldiers had been wounded, and another Australian adviser was isolated by the fighting. Simpson quickly organised two platoons and led them back toward the contact. As enemy machine-gun fire struck the position, many of the troops with him fell back. Simpson did not. He moved forward to cover the evacuation of the casualties while the enemy concentrated its fire on him at close range. He repeatedly attempted to advance toward his battalion commander’s body, but each attempt was stopped by heavy fire. Realising that saving the wounded had become the priority, Simpson placed himself between the enemy and the casualties and continued fighting while they were withdrawn. The official account emphasised that his courage prevented the enemy from closing on the evacuation and helped the wounded reach the helicopter landing area.

The citation for Simpson’s Victoria Cross captured what those around him had witnessed across the operation. It described his coolness under fire as exceptional and concluded that his “repeated acts of personal bravery... were an inspiration to all” who served with him. He had repeatedly exposed himself not for a single dramatic moment, but over separate actions, while rescuing casualties, directing soldiers and physically placing himself between wounded men and enemy fire. For those actions on 6 and 11 May 1969, Ray Simpson was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry available to an Australian soldier under the Imperial honours system of the period.

Simpson’s gallantry was recognised beyond Australia. The United States awarded him the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for Valour for his service in Vietnam, adding two major American gallantry decorations to the Victoria Cross and Distinguished Conduct Medal already associated with his name. The Australian War Memorial confirms both United States awards, although the complete individual American citation texts are not reproduced in the public Memorial records currently available. For that reason, their wording should not be reconstructed or invented. What can be stated with confidence is that allied forces regarded Simpson’s combat conduct as exceptional, and that his American decorations formed part of a remarkable record of recognised gallantry.

There was also another side to “Simmo.” He could be blunt, unconventional and difficult to contain within the ordinary expectations of military life, but those characteristics existed beside a reputation for dependability, courage and fierce loyalty. He was deeply devoted to his Japanese wife, Sakai Shoko, whom he had met while serving in the Far East and married in 1953. His repeated return to Vietnam was tied not only to the Army but also to a life that stretched across Australia, Vietnam and Japan. The soldier remembered for moving through machine-gun fire was also a husband who ultimately chose to make his post-Army life in Japan.

On 1 May 1970, Queen Elizabeth II presented Simpson with his Victoria Cross at Government House in Sydney. Only days later, after approximately 21 years of accumulated Army service, he took his final discharge. In 1972 he became an administrative officer at the Australian Embassy in Tokyo. He died there on 18 October 1978, aged 52, and was buried at Yokohama War Cemetery. His Victoria Cross and medal group later entered the collection of the Australian War Memorial, preserving the physical record of a career that had stretched from the Pacific fighting of the Second World War to Korea, Malaya and Vietnam.

Rayene Stewart Simpson’s legacy rests on more than the Victoria Cross beside his name. His Distinguished Conduct Medal citation tells of a wounded soldier who would not abandon his men. His Victoria Cross citation tells of a warrant officer who repeatedly entered killing ground to bring others out. His Silver Star and Bronze Star for Valour show that the soldiers of an allied army also recognised what they had witnessed. Across decades of service, Simpson earned a reputation not through ceremony, but through what he did when gunfire was close, casualties were mounting and someone had to go forward. That is why Warrant Officer Class II Rayene Stewart Simpson, VC, DCM remains one of the most compelling figures in Australian military history and one of the defining Australian Victoria Cross recipients of the Vietnam War.