Gary McKay spent 30 years as an army officer after being conscripted for national service in 1968. He served in South Vietnam in 1971 as an infantry rifle platoon commander where he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry and severely wounded in the last major Australian battle of the Vietnam War.
In 1987 Gary’s best-selling autobiography In Good Company, Australia’s Battlefields in Vietnam, Going Back was released and he began what is now a full-time career as a non-fiction writer and freelance historian. He is Australia’s most prolific writer on the subject of the Vietnam War having released 12 books with Allen & Unwin. Two of his latest, Australia’s Battlefields in Vietnam and Going Back have been highly acclaimed by veterans who have returned to Vietnam and those wanting to see where Australia fought during the war. Gary has also travelled widely in the Pacific doing research and leading battlefield tours in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.