Some years ago, on a flight from Adelaide to Sydney, while putting my hand luggage in the overhead compartment, I caught the attention of the cabin manager. As I resumed my seat and buckled up, she looked at me again and said ‘Oh, I know you. You’re that bloke who writes all those songs about death and war.’ Now, that’s what a marketing-communications specialist would call a ‘branding problem’.

I knew perfectly well that she was referring to ‘I Was Only 19’, a song I wrote and recorded in 1983 based on the story of my brother-in-law, Mick Storen, who was deployed to Vietnam in 1969. Among other things, the song recalls one of the worst mine incidents of the Vietnam war. Mick and the other members of 3 Platoon, A Company, 6 RAR, were on Operation Mundingburra in the foothills of the scrubby, mine-infested Long Hai Hills of South Vietnam.

The boys had stopped for a break and they weren’t there very long before a radio signal came through from HQ at Nui Dat announcing that the Americans had landed on the moon. Lieutenant Peter ‘Skipper’ Hines passed the historic news on to his men. Tragically, however, 3 Platoon had stopped to rest in the middle of an unmapped minefield and, moments later, Skipper Hines stepped on an M16 mine — one of two set off that day. It was shortly after 10 a.m., Vietnam time, on 21 July 1969.

While all this was happening 4,000 miles away, I was sitting in the new assembly hall at Blackfriars Priory School in Adelaide, watching the moon landing on a black-and-white TV set up on a high stand. The broadcast, comprising a set of bleary images leavened by a crackling, barely intelligible audio track, was deemed important enough by the Dominican Fathers for classes to be suspended. Little did I know as I watched the broadcast that I would write a very famous song about that mine incident in the Long Hai Hills and that the song would comprehensively change my life.

On the back of ‘19’, I’ve done some extraordinary things, I’ve met all sorts of people and I’ve been to some amazing places, including East Timor and Afghanistan. Jackson Browne once wrote ‘… a good song takes you far…’ Tarin Kowt is about as far as it gets. In many ways, this song has come to define me though I’m not entirely sure that the definition is all-encompassing. I’ve been a songwriter now for over 30 years. I can lay claim to a moderately extensive catalogue of work but, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, I’ve only ever written one song. ‘Oh, I heard your song on the radio the other day.’ Yeah, well, I bet I know which one you heard.

Having a song like ‘19’ in your catalogue is like having five kids, one of whom plays AFL footy. You love all of your kids equally — and you are equally proud of all of them — but the only one of your kids that anyone else wants to talk about, ever, is the AFL footballer. You wouldn’t be without the footballer, mind you, and you do enjoy the attention, but sometimes you get gently protective of your other kids who don’t attract the same attention. I could discover a cure for cancer but, until I shuffle off this mortal coil and check into my room in Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower of Song’, I’ll always be that ‘Vietnam song guy’. On the whole, though, it’s a pretty good position to be in. Very few songwriters ever get to write a song as well accepted and with the longevity of ‘19’.

But there are minor irritations. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stood in a shop somewhere, waiting patiently to be served and minding my own business, when some wit has observed loudly to his friend, ‘I was only 19 when I was in Bali’. (The Bali reference recalls another one of my ‘hits’ — ‘I’ve Been to Bali Too’.) This can get rather tedious.

In recent weeks, ‘19’ has taken on another life, this time as an illustrated picture book. Three weeks ago, when I presented a copy of the book to the school library at Blackfriars, I was asked to read the story to 20 little Grade 4 boys who were having their library lesson at the time. I’d not done this before so, as I settled into the big story chair, I tried to channel Mem Fox by opening my eyes wide as possible. To my gratification and relief, the kids were transfixed. When I finished, I invited some questions and a forest of hands went up. A lot of the questions were the sort you would expect from a bunch of little boys: ‘Mr Schumann, did they have bazookas in Vietnam?’, ‘Did they have strike-fighters?’, ‘Did they have hand-grenades?’, ‘Did they have rocket launchers?’ One little military historian told me solemnly that AK-47s were used in Vietnam — ‘…not by our blokes, but by the other blokes’. But lest we think that all their questions were fuelled by nascent testosterone, there were plenty of other, more thoughtful questions. The question that quite destabilised me was from the little boy over to the side who asked, ‘Mr Schumann, when you read this story do you get emotional?’ Well, ahem, yes…

Quite a number of years ago I was invited to address a group of students in the Australian Studies course at Flinders University. Introducing me, the lecturer said something like this: ‘Every now and then an artist will create something that he or she loses control of. In a very real sense it becomes the property of the people about whom it was written.’ On reflection, I think that’s what happened with ‘19’. Notwithstanding idiots in shops, I couldn’t be happier and I couldn’t be prouder.