AFTER spending a year in Vietnam fighting for Australia and for his life Mick Kramer had his citizenship stolen and his passport revoked.

40-years after the war, he was forced into a three-year battle with bureaucrats in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, who had even threatened him with jail.

LONG BATTLE: Vietnam vet Mick Kramer fought for Australia, but denied a passport

After News Corp Australia revealed his story in 2013 his rights were restored and his passport reissued and next month German-born Mick and his wife Carol will travel to Europe for a holiday that has been decades in the making.

Last year he was sitting around his pizza oven enjoying a good red wine regaling some friends with his amazing tale of bureaucratic madness.

“They couldn’t believe it and one suggested that I should write a novel,” he said.

He has done just that and a publisher is perusing a 68,000-word manuscript entitled “Full Circle”.

“I just changed the names and got on with it,” Mick said.

His story almost defies belief.

After fighting for his adopted country with the 1st Battalion’s Charlie Company between September 1968 and September 1969 his passport lapsed and when he went to renew it so he could go overseas with his wife his request was denied.

He had lied about his age so he could fight for Australia, so his citizenship that had been granted in 1964 was cancelled in 2011.

He hit another hurdle when an official discovered that his naturalisation certificate did not specify if he was male or female even though it carried his full name and referred to “himself”.

“Mick could not believe his ears, and so he stood up and began to take off his

trousers, saying, ‘You have to be joking, here take a look and you will see what I am!’ his novel says.

In July 2013 Carol announced that she was going overseas on her own.

“You have had three years to sort out your passport issue and I am sick of waiting, so I am going to Europe,” his novel quotes her as saying.

“By the time you get back, we will have two remodelled bathrooms, new floor tiles laid in the kitchen and eighteen solar electricity panels installed. I hope that you enjoy yourself while you are overseas,” the book’s hero says.

After the 2013 article appeared his local member and now Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley got on board and lobbied the department for justice.

His citizenship was soon restored and his new certificate was issued on September 24, 2013 exactly 44 years after he returned home badly damaged from Vietnam to Culcairn near Albury in NSW. His passport followed on November 1.

The certificate says; “I, the Minister administering the Australian Citizenship Act 2007, give notice that the above named (Michael George Kramer) is an Australian Citizen and that citizenship was acquired on15/September/1964.”

Mick is looking forward to his overseas holiday with Carol and to hopefully having his novel published.

“I was a victim of bureaucratic nonsense by people who were just trying to impress their bosses by giving an Australian citizen a hard time,” he said.