by Rob Maylor
After a while I was pretty much left alone at Kapooka. I just had to toe the party line and put in when required, although I often helped out the others with their map reading, field craft and other trade secrets if they were struggling.
I was amazed by the amount of bird life around the training area and just how noisy galahs can be. The cockatoos and the crows can be pretty vocal at times as well. There were a few emus knocking about too, and during one of the first overnight exercises I had one pecking at my boot. He started to push the friendship when he began to peck at the bottom of my trousers to get at the elastic band that helped blouse them.
Shortly after the march-out parade at the end of training we were herded onto separate coaches bound for different destinations. Mine was going to Singleton in the Hunter Valley where the infantrymen learn their trade. The school of infantry also run promotion courses, the sniper team leader’s course and an assortment of other infantry-related courses.
As soon as we stepped off the bus at Singleton I instantly noticed the temperature difference, this place during the day was definitely warmer than Kapooka in the south. The next thing I noticed was that the camp was almost being overrun by kangaroos. They were everywhere, and reasonably tame. We met the training staff and were put into sections, then shown to our accommodation. The school of infantry was also trialling a six-week training package. But again, this is nowhere near enough time to learn all the skills to become well rehearsed in your trade.
Once again we went through a series of lectures and kit issues before we got stuck into training. There are eight men in a British infantry section–a third of a platoon. That is then broken down into two four-man teams so when you pepper-pot forward, you will always have security. As you move, the other half of the section will stay firm and cover you. The Australian system of nine-man sections broken into three manoeuvre groups is, I think, a lot better. The section is split into the two forward scouts, three in the gun group where the 2IC is situated and four in the assault group.
This meant more moving parts for the section commander to control, but it also brought more flexibility. I also liked the idea of having two scouts working together because as a single scout your personal arcs are restricted, making your job quite hard work at times and mentally draining. Having a second scout relieved a bit of that pressure, but also provided that all-important additional security and visibility. But being the lead scout is by far the best job in the section, or even patrol: it carries a lot of responsibility, but you are the eyes and ears of the section, or patrol commander.
The weapon we used was a 5.56 mm semi-automatic Steyr, with the capability of switching to fully automatic by applying extra pressure to the trigger. The two trigger pressures were four and eight pounds. There is a single shot-lockout button that stops heavy-handed firers from passing the first trigger pressure and letting off an unexpected burst. But when I was lead scout I always had the lockout button pushed in so if compromised I could initially return a heavy weight of fire in two- to three-round bursts. Then on the completion of the contact immediate action (IA) and a change of mag (magazine), I would go back to single well-aimed shots by just manipulating the first trigger pressure.
Initially a heavy or an aggressive weight of fire will get the enemy’s head down in fear for his life, but sending just one or two shots his way will alert him to where you are, and then you’ll be on the receiving end of his anger. Aggression is a vital ingredient in any attack or contact. It helps overcome the fear, but also lets the enemy know that you mean business.
It did actually take me a little while to get back into the swing of things at Singleton, and to start remembering how to be an infantryman again. It doesn’t take long before your skills start to perish. Sniping is a prime example of that; your expertise diminishes very quickly if you haven’t done anything practical for a while, and takes some good training to get back up to an acceptable standard.
One thing I’ll never forget about ‘Singo’ is the inch ants. They are everywhere, and they deliver a very painful sting. You don’t necessarily notice they are on you until halfway through a section attack after you’ve crawled over one of their nests. However, you do notice the prickly pear that you’ve just crawled through, sat on, put your hand on and walked through, embedding its thorns everywhere. The thorns are not easy to remove either. As you try to pull out these sharp, needle-like weapons they break off and stick into your fingertips. It’s a bit like trying to get a piece of very sticky tape off your fingers; all you do is transfer it from one hand to the other. Then there are the small brown scorpions under rocks and of course plenty of snakes in case you’re tempted to relax. The range and training area also has a big population of feral pigs, but hunting is banned.
Aside from each man’s all-important rifle, the infantry section was armed with the 66 mm rocket launcher and the M79 single-shot 40 mm grenade launcher, which looks like a big single-barrel shotgun: the breach opens the same way and a cartridge is loaded in the same manner. The M203 40 mm grenade launcher was only just coming in at that stage; the battalions had them but not the school of infantry.
The gunners carried a light machine gun, a fully automatic, belt-fed 5.56 mm Minimi light machine gun also known as an LSW and supported by a bipod. This is the hardest job in the section. As a gunner you have the responsibility to provide an enormous amount of fire power to suppress the enemy so the rest of the section can close with them. Your drills also need to be very slick to rectify any stoppages or problems you have with that gun and get it operating again. Your kit is generally heavier than everyone else’s. The Minimi weighs twice as much as the Steyr, and you’ll carry 800 to 1,200 rounds of link in your webbing and pack.
Other lads in the section will also carry a few hundred rounds of link to be given to the gunners if needed. Each man will carry an M18A1 Claymore, which is 680 grams of C-4 plastic explosive with 700 small steel ball bearings embedded into the explosive, and packed in a hard plastic case. It comes in a green carry bag with a firing device and electrical cable with detonator attached. They are primarily used in ambushes and as an anti-infiltration device, and can be used singly or as several banked together.
They put us through quite a punishing regime of patrolling, section attacks with different scenarios, and defensive exercises. This culminated in a section competition they called ‘Hard Core’ that ran for 12 hours. It was designed to test how much individuals and complete sections had learnt over the previous weeks. We would pack-march between stands where we would have to complete certain activities that were either timed or scored. The activities included radio communications, observation stands, weapon drills and first aid. In truth there was nothing hard about it at all, except having to listen to the DS ‘gobbing off’ at you!
My mate Jon who was in the regiment at the time had organised for me to meet Sully, a WO2 from SASR who was based at Singleton in a training position. I was keen to have a chat about the unit and the best way to approach getting on selection–and hopefully ‘back-dooring’ it once I had marched out of training. But when my training team found out what I was attempting to do, the troop sergeant threatened to charge me if I set foot anywhere near the Special Forces Training Centre (SFTC). I don’t know where that outburst came from, but when this bloke had me ‘heels together’ at attention in front of him it made me even more determined to get into the SAS. I was told to pull my head in and had my chest poked a couple of times over the course of the six weeks.
I was a happy man to get away from that training establishment and to pick up my position in the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment–3RAR.
George was back in New Zealand for those first three months and they were pretty tough for her. Once I left the police we had to give up the police house we had been renting. And like the police, the army recruit training pay is the absolute minimum so keeping a pregnant George and one-year-old Lauren housed, fed and clothed was almost impossible. She stayed with my parents for three months,
which almost drove her mad.
She arrived in Australia in September 1999 with Lauren and our two dogs, and we stayed in a hotel on the Hume Highway while waiting for a house in Holsworthy. The dogs had to be kennelled and George had to take an hour’s train ride to walk them each day.
Finally we moved into a house on Yengo Court, one of the Defence Department houses available for rent in the area, and 200 metres from Holsworthy camp. We were lucky enough to get a brand-new one. But word had already come through that 3RAR was to be deployed to East Timor. Fortunately, George’s mum and dad were back again from the UK. Even though money was very tight I was glad to be back in the forces. I’d taken the first step towards my goal of joining the SAS. I knew there was a bumpy road ahead but at least I was on the way.
9
Cooling It
Just across the Arafura Sea from Darwin, East Timor was descending into chaos. You had to feel sorry for the East Timorese. They had been under the colonial heel of Portugal for about 400 years before they cleared out in 1974. The colonial power had exploited the place without giving them either education or the means to run the show economically or politically. So no-one was particularly surprised when the Indonesians took over in 1975.
The Indonesians did a lot to develop the place economically for the next 20 years but it was really run by the Indonesian Army (TNI), who also ripped them off. The Timorese set up an armed resistance under Xanana Gusmão that gradually won a lot of international support, especially after the Dili massacre in 1991.
When Suharto was forced out in 1998 and Habibi took over, he offered the Timorese autonomy inside the Indonesian state. That only encouraged the resistance, who wanted full independence, and in 1999 Habibi agreed to give them a referendum. That happened in August and nearly 80 per cent voted for independence, which really pissed the TNI off. When they left they torched and trashed just about everything they’d built–the water supply system, the electricity grid, schools, the university and just about every major public building in Dili.
They had backed a local militia who tried to disrupt the referendum; when that failed the militias retreated over the border to West Timor but returned from time to time to settle scores and stir things up.
Before we deployed there we were briefed on the background to the conflict and since we were basically peacekeepers, our job was to act as a deterrent to the militias and to any locals who might want to use the situation as a cover to settle family feuds. It’s a role that requires special skills. You need to assert your authority in any given situation and to use your weapon only as a last resort. This is where my experience in Northern Ireland was useful. I was used to the constraints and similar rules of engagement. Even though the tropical battleground was much more like Brunei than Belfast, it was a similar scenario.
Because I had just been posted to the unit I didn’t deploy with the initial push. I still had a bit of admin to sort out and was deployed to Timor two weeks later. A handful of us from 3RAR flew to Darwin to join other members of the task force then loaded onto a big motorised catamaran, the Jervis Bay, built in Fremantle for the Americans. On 8 October it took us about 14 hours to reach Dili, where we would become part of the Interfet force.
The WO2 in charge gave us a heads up before we arrived on what had occurred in the area over the previous couple of weeks. The militia were the bad guys and were very lightly armed, more often than not carrying machetes, but casualties were still high. In the ranks there were plenty of stories of blokes finding dead bodies at the bottom of wells and caches of hundreds of Indonesian weapons that had been burned. We all thought it could get rough, especially since all the news reports suggested that the situation was hostile.
So it was a bit of an anticlimax getting off the boat to find the place quiet and relatively peaceful. Dili looked like a battle site due to all the rubbish everywhere and all the burnt-out buildings, but I felt quite safe and secure as we were transported to battalion HQ on the back of an open Unimog. The HQ was set up in a burnt-out school. From there we were sent to form up with our respective platoons.
I was in 1 Platoon of Alpha Company and at that time 3RAR was responsible for securing the Dili heliport. Alpha Company occupied the main entrance and a couple of other areas around the base. In between normal security details we rotated through shifts as guards for detainees. The shifts were long and tedious and I couldn’t wait to get out and see some action–if there was ever going to be any.
Our first operation outside Dili was to secure Bobanaro, a Falintil stronghold in the hills, and we flew in by Blackhawk helicopter. Amongst the pilots was a bloke I’d get to know and like a lot in the years ahead–Mark ‘Bingers’ Bingley. As soon as we were settled into Bobanaro we started a day and night patrolling program and even conducted a few two- and three-day patrols.
The Timorese did everything they could to help out and make life a bit more comfortable. When we moved to their villages in the hills they built shelters for us using palm fronds thatched together for the roof, and cleared areas overgrown with lantana. It might take two or three days to build a decent-sized shelter but nothing was too much trouble. There were times when we would patrol to some outlying villages which had been abandoned following militia attacks, so we would use the vacant houses for temporary shelter to get out of the elements due to the wet season.
The patrols were fairly uneventful, although you could never relax. We were in Bobanaro about a month before we moved again, this time to Gildapil near Tapo, which was closer to the West Timorese border. The SAS had the village under surveillance and had cleared it well before we got there. But, as usual in the battalions, the left hand doesn’t talk to the right hand and we also ended up clearing the entire village. We never did catch up with any militia in the villages, because as soon as we arrived in the area most of them took off back across the border.
Every now and again some locals would come up and point out a guy they said was militia, so we’d apprehend the guy and send him back to Dili where the MPs would interview him. The locals had quickly cottoned onto the idea that if you called some guy ‘militia’ the Australians troops would come along, grab him and he’d disappear for three or four days. It usually turned out to be the result of a feud, and he wasn’t necessarily militia at all.
When we became used to the scene we found that if a militia member did come into the area from West Timor it was like stirring up a beehive. You could see how agitated the locals would become and the intruder would realise that his mission in East Timor was compromised and he’d soon be gone.
My section conducted a three-day observation post just outside of Gildapil overlooking the border. One night while I was on sentry duty I heard gunshots and screaming about 3 kilometres on the other side of the border. The rest of the section woke but unfortunately we couldn’t react because West Timor wasn’t our jurisdiction. All we could do was listen to what was going on and report it. This frustrated the whole section. There was something quite significant going on within our reach and we wanted to get there. Gildapil was rat infested and thankfully we didn’t stay too long.
We did have a few laughs while there, usually at someone else’s expense. Our troop boss was burning rubbish one lunch time which set the village meeting house on fire and burned it to the ground. He was in a state of panic. All we could do in between fits of laughter was to just put out the spot fires in case everything else went up. This meeting house was quite large and had been there for many years.
From Gildapil we flew to Occussi, an East Timorese enclave in West Timor, where we provided OPs and border checks on individually displaced persons (IDPs) who were coming back in from West Timor. This started to wear thin after a while and when Christmas and New Year came along it was a welcome relief to get some beer inside us. As usual we ignored the normal two beers per man and ran with ‘Drink as much as you can get your hands on’.
Alcohol was very hard to get hold of, but one day our section patrolled up to the edge of the b
order, which was defined by a large river. Once at the main crossing bridge two Indonesian soldiers approached us. One had a blue plastic bag in his hand with something heavy in it. As we struggled through the language barrier a can of Bintang, Indonesian beer, was pulled from the bag. ‘For you,’ they said and handed us half-a-dozen cans of beer, which we protected with our lives. Eventually succumbing to the pressure, we drank the beers at room temperature. Bear in mind room temperature in Timor is approximately 34 degrees; the tepid amber liquid never touched the sides.
There were militia troubles inland from the border that we reacted to. Our new CO, who was a bit of a clown, got quite excited about this and addressed the unit as we were awaiting the Blackhawk helicopters, saying in rather an authoritative voice, ‘I am taking you to battle, men!’ We were all stunned and looked at each other mystified.
Even my OC rolled his eyes back. Surely this guy wasn’t for real! Once on the helicopter and still confused about what the CO had said, we headed straight for the hills to Nefelete.
When we got there my patrol was tasked to put in an observation post (OP) and monitor the troubles. On the 8-kilometre walk in we met a couple of very agitated and frightened local men. They said a militia gang was terrorising the returning refugees and had killed some East Timorese. So we went in to check the situation.
Using the dead ground we got into position about 80 metres from the border. We observed five men with. 303 type bolt-action rifles about 70 metres on the other side of the border. They were indeed antagonising a group of terrified refugees and the situation was suddenly critical. One of the militia saw us and deliberately pointed his rifle at us. Once that happened, our rules of engagement required a response. Unfortunately I missed that window and he realigned his weapon across the border to the local East Timorese.
