18 Hours

by Sandra Lee

  Martin was also a hit with the girls, not least because he had piercing hazel eyes, a proud chin and a thatch of wavy brown hair that he wore at a length fashionable for the times. If someone said Martin Wallace was a charming young man, they’d be right. Add a good dose of larrikin and you had a lethal combination.

  But Peel High wasn’t enough to hold him once the footy season was over. Like a lot of teenage boys who grow up in the country, Martin was champing at the bit to get out of Tamworth and see the world beyond the New England Highway. He’d tasted the independence that money can buy with the pay packet from a part-time job at the local Grace Bros department store, and so at the end of the second term in his penultimate year at high school, and for the second time that year, he decided to call it quits. It was 1986; he had just turned seventeen.

  By his own reckoning, Martin was a bit of a fiery young man who had the occasional, if requisite, teenager’s clash with his father, and he chafed under the family yoke. It could be fairly said that he was a shining example of the testosterone-charged hubris of youth, on the cusp of manhood and wanting to exert his independence and rail against authority. On top of that, he felt hemmed in by the conspicuousness that comes with small-town life. The local police — known in those parts as the wallopers — were also getting to know Martin and his mates. Not that they were ever in any serious trouble or ended up under lock and key, but the boys made their presence known, as popular boys are wont to do. A broken beer bottle here, a misspoken ‘get fucked’ there, and a drag through the main street in hotted-up cars all earned a stern warning from the local constabulary.

  ‘We used to go shooting all the time up in the State forest, which was illegal — shooting the shit out of everything,’ he says now.

  Having quit school against his parents’ wishes, Martin needed a job. Opportunity had fortuitously presented itself earlier in the year when recruiters from the Australian Army paid a visit to Peel High School. They talked of the career possibilities and adventures offered by Army life. It appealed to Martin particularly because it paralleled his desire to spread his wings and get out of Tamworth. With the words ‘adventure’ and ‘independence’ playing a siren’s song in his head, Martin agreed to sign up, but as he was only seventeen, he needed his parents’ permission to become a soldier.

  Reg gave it gladly, thinking the Army would make a man out of his second son, but Margaret was more reluctant. She understood fully the breadth of her son’s intellect and saw great promise should he continue his studies, whereas Martin saw only confinement and frustration. But she also accepted Martin’s steely will and single-mindedness. Margaret truly didn’t want to sign her son over to the Army, but she knew that if she didn’t he’d go anyway.

  ‘I saw it as an option to exercise my talents, without curbing them, in a manner that was productive to the community,’ the son says now. ‘I could be myself and help the nation, as opposed to being myself and being a pain in the arse to my community. Mum didn’t really want me to go — they were keen on me going to university. It upset her a lot, but she understood it was a good thing, probably.’

  And so in January 1987, Martin Wallace left Tamworth for the Australian Army’s training facility at Kapooka in southern New South Wales. It was a three-month crash course in soldiering, the basic training of all new recruits. He was seventeen and a digger. And within days Martin would be known as Jock, in keeping with the Australian military’s unofficial tradition of handing out nicknames to its members.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The regiment has some of the best and brightest soldiers in the Australian Army. Being a member of the SAS is as much about the mental side of soldiering as it is the physical side.

  JOCK HAD BEEN KICKING back at his flat in the beachside suburb of Scarborough, not far from the SAS headquarters at Swanbourne, on the night of September 11, 2001. It was a mild Tuesday evening at the beginning of spring, and he was exhausted. He’d only recently returned to Perth after spending weeks away on counter-terrorism — CT — exercises, first in chilly Melbourne and then in steaming Darwin for the annual CT Olympics, an event where the government of the day gets to appraise the efficacy and capability of the CT squadron that’s on line at the time.

  The Special Air Service Regiment at the Campbell Barracks in Swanbourne has three Sabre — or war-fighting — squadrons. Each squadron, known as 1 Squadron, 2 Squadron or 3 Squadron, rotates through three specific functions including counter-terrorism (also known as special recovery), surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and offensive and assault operations. The squadrons are subsequently supported by a troop from Jock’s 152 Signal Squadron. Jock was in J Troop, which was then attached to 3 SAS Squadron, but for the better part of the year he had been assigned to the Regimental Headquarters as the commanding officer’s signaller.

  Jock was glad to be back on home turf after the trips away. He knocked the top off a bottle of beer and settled in for some late-night television while fighting the urge to doze off. A newsflash interrupted normal programming. He called to his flatmate who was in the shower, a fellow soldier named Neil.

  ‘Mate, get out here, you better come and watch this,’ Jock said, a sense of urgency in his voice.

  Halfway around the world, at the start of the business day, the North Tower of the iconic World Trade Center in lower Manhattan was on fire. Bright orange flames burst through the broken glass and steel structure and thick black smoke billowed out of the shattered building. The newsreader on TV reported that a plane had crashed into the tower at 8.46am. Authorities were unable to say if the crash was an accident. The talking head on the TV didn’t know what type of aircraft had ploughed into one of Wall Street’s most famous skyscrapers but suggested it might possibly have been a light aircraft, maybe a Cessna.

  As Jock and Neil watched the television in disbelief, a second plane came into view, stark white on cerulean, banking over New York harbour and flying towards the burning North Tower and its twin tower to the right. The crew and passengers on the plane knew what the television news presenter broadcasting into Jock’s lounge room did not. The plane, like the one before, had been hijacked.

  A few minutes earlier, at 8.52am in the state of Connecticut on the northeast coast of America, Lee Hanson answered the phone. On the other end of the line was his son, Peter, who was on the Boeing 767 that would fly across Jock’s television screen directly towards the World Trade Center. The plane was United Airlines Flight 175 and had departed from Boston’s Logan Airport at 8.14am, en route to Los Angeles. Peter, surprisingly calm considering the circumstances, had rung his father to tell him the plane had been hijacked and could he please alert the authorities?

  ‘I think they’ve taken over the cockpit. An attendant has been stabbed and someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves,’ Peter said.

  Eight minutes later, at 9am, he made a second call. Scores of other passengers were ringing family members, telling them they loved them — just in case.

  ‘It’s getting bad, Dad,’ Peter said. ‘A stewardess was stabbed. They seem to have knives and Mace. They said they have a bomb. It’s getting very bad on the plane. Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don’t worry, Dad, if it happens, it’ll be very fast. My God, my God!’

  Just as Peter Hanson spoke what would be his last words to his father, Lee Hanson heard a woman’s piercing scream come down the line. Then the phone went dead.

  At 9.03am, United 175, with its left wing turning down, crashed into the South Tower of the WTC, instantly killing all on board including Peter Hanson, 50 fellow passengers, nine crew and the five hijackers.

  ‘We just looked at each other and nodded and said, “Shit, it’s going to get busy from now on,”’ Jock says, recalling the moment terrorism changed the world forever. ‘It was almost surrea
l, like Hollywood’s outdone itself with special effects.’

  Jock had trained in counter-terrorism. He knew the planes had been hijacked by terrorists. The two planes had crashed into the iconic symbols of capitalism in the heart of the United States’ financial centre on Wall Street. It was an obscene yet unspoken declaration of war on America.

  Jock remained glued to the television most of the night, his outrage growing as a third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and a fourth into an empty field in Pennsylvania. Nineteen terrorists had turned four aircraft loaded with 11 400 gallons (43 000 litres) of jet fuel into guided missiles that killed thousands of innocent civilians, many of whom had just started work for the day.

  ‘People on base were ringing each other up that night. Everyone was talking about how disgusted and appalled they were by these actions,’ Jock says. ‘It was palpable, you could feel the atmosphere at Swannie. Everyone came alive, there were people coming to work going, “What are we doing? When are we going?”’

  Swanbourne was buzzing with speculation about the coming retaliatory response from the US and Jock was sure some element of the SAS would be involved — given the Australian Government’s response and the regiment’s international reputation as one of the best Special Forces in the world.

  The hijackers were quickly identified as members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation al Qaeda — Arabic for the Base — which had been on the US Government’s watch list for years. He reckoned the American Special Forces, always on high alert and ready to roll, would be on the move. Under their charter, the US SF operatives have five missions: special reconnaissance, direct action, conventional warfare, counter-terrorism and foreign internal defence. The Australian SAS were also on call 24/7 and were the experts in long-range surveillance and reconnaissance, essential for fighting terrorism.

  ‘Our job is to prevent that, or react to it, basically. That’s the whole reason we’re doing the job — because idiots are out there who are going to do things like that,’ Jock says, referring to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. ‘It’s a weird way to look at it and it’s not pleasant, but it sort of justifies your own training and your own mindset that you were needed; that your training wasn’t all for nothing. The word pretty much from the onset was that we knew something would happen. We knew there would be a reaction to this by the Americans and that the Australians would be pretty high on the priority list if something was going to go down.’

  Experience taught the soldiers to keep an ear to the ground. They began mentally preparing themselves for any coming action, stepping up into a higher gear and ensuring they were ready for whatever mission the SAS Regiment would be given.

  ‘You accept that this is your role and responsibility,’ Jock says.

  At 9.30am on 9/11 in the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, stood in front of the travelling White House media and addressed the nation. He was visiting the school to announce a new federal government education initiative and had been reading a book, My Pet Goat, to primary school children when he was interrupted and told the second plane had crashed into the South Tower. He looked stunned. His comments, brief as they were, immediately went around the world.

  ‘Today we’ve had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country,’ the President said. ‘I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand.

  ‘And now if you would join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America.’

  Seven minutes later, the Pentagon was struck.

  At 8.30pm, the President addressed the nation from behind his desk in the Oval Office in the White House.

  Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

  The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.

  The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong.

  A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

  America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America — with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

  The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

  America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism … America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

  Jock Wallace’s hunch that the Australian Army and, in particular, the SAS Regiment would be called to action was spot on.

  Prime Minister John Howard was in Washington when the planes struck their target. The day before, he had visited the Pentagon and stood shoulder to shoulder with President Bush to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Australian – US defence alliance and the ANZUS Treaty. Within hours of the terrorist attacks, a clearly distressed Howard held a press conference at the Australian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, not far from the American Capitol building, the political centre of the nation. Using strong and colourful language that was uniquely Australian, Howard expressed his country’s solidarity with the United States and pledged Australian support in any retaliatory strike.

  ‘We will stand by them, we will help them, we will support actions they take to properly retaliate in relation to these acts of bastardry against their citizens and what they stand for,’ the Prime Minister said.

  Howard revealed that he already had sent a message of support to the US President in which he expressed a sense of horror at the ‘catastrophic events and the appalling loss of life’. In his note to Bush, he said: ‘You can be assured of Australia’s resolute solidarity with the American people at this most tragic time.’

  At 1.30am in Australia on 12 September — less than three hours after the first plane crashed into the North Tower — Howard spoke with the then acting Prime Minister, John Anderson, and authorised a special meeting between officers of the federal Attorney General’s Department, the Department of Defence and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in Canberra. The meeting, chaired by the Protective Security Coordinator, resolved to take all appropriate measures to protect American assets and military installations on Australian soil, as well as Israeli and other Jewish assets. It also increased ASIO’s intelligence gathering and surveillance in the region and extended the close personal protection of American embassy and consular officials in the major cities.

  Australia’s commitment to join the war on terrorism was sealed when, on 14 September, the
White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, announced that both the US and Australian governments had concluded that Article IV of their recently celebrated mutual defence pact — the ANZUS Treaty — applied to the terrorist attacks.

  ‘Although our alliance with Australia was crafted under very different circumstances than exist now, the events of September 11, 2001, are a powerful reminder that the alliance and our shared commitments are no less valid today,’ Fleischer said in an official statement from the White House. ‘Australia shares our assessment of the gravity of the situation and is resolute in its commitment to work with the United States and all freedom-loving people to combat international terrorism. In the days and weeks to come, we will consult closely with our Australian allies regarding an effective response to these attacks.’

  As the public grieved, the upper echelons of the diplomatic, political and military worlds were carving out a strategy. Within weeks, Lieutenant Colonel Peter ‘Gus’ Gilmore, the commanding officer of the SAS Regiment at Swanbourne, was negotiating a role for the Australian Special Forces in the war against terrorism. Top brass from the Army began lobbying General Tommy Franks who was running the US Central Command (CentCom) in Florida, sheeting home the most effective way the Australians could join their coalition partners in the fight.

  By mid-October it was decided. President Bush rang John Howard in Canberra to discuss the anti-terrorism campaign and asked that Australia act on its pledge to assist the coalition.

  The following day, 17 October, the Prime Minister announced that Australia would deploy two P3 long-range maritime aircraft to assist maritime patrols and reconnaissance; a 150-man Special Forces detachment from the SASR for combined operations with allied SF groups; and two B707 tanker aircraft to support air-refuelling operations. As well, a guided missile frigate, already in the Middle Eastern theatre to support the multi-national interception forces implementing the United Nations Security Council resolutions in the region, would remain.