by Rob Maylor
In March 2001 I started the Sniper Team Leader course in Singleton with my good mate Lee. We were joined by several other snipers from infantry battalions that were based in Darwin and Townsville. This course was very similar to the Royal Marines course I had completed six years before and was thoroughly enjoyable. However, my malaria raised its ugly head several times over the six-week period. By now I was really starting to get pissed off with it. It just seemed like every time I got to a certain level of fitness, or was physically run down it would hit me again.
About two weeks into the course I woke up in a pool of sweat and shivering. I put up with it through the night and by morning the virus had left my bloodstream and melted away back into my liver. This was one course that I couldn’t afford to leave, as I was looking at having my own sniper team for the next trip to East Timor.
Two days later I had a full-blown fever during a navigational exercise where we were just using aerial photography, and narrowly escaped failing it. I started to feel the effects as I was gridding and scaling my aerial photograph. To grid and scale an aerial photo requires measuring the same two known points, one on a map and the other on the photograph. By using a mathematical formula with these two measurements you will get the size of the grid squares required for the aerial photo. Once you have your scale, you can lightly draw on the grid. As we individually set off I could feel myself starting to burn up. The previous times I had been admitted to hospital with malaria my body had a reached a temperature of just over 41 degrees, which could be quite dangerous and trigger convulsions. Anything over 42.5 degrees could permanently damage the brain.
I had to lie down in the shade and open my ghillie suit top until I could bring myself to start walking again. I was really struggling to make sense of what I was doing but I managed to plod on in the right direction. We had to hit six checkpoints and I had only got four, which had taken me all day to get. The others had finished long before.
That evening I managed to get hold of some doxycycline, hoping that the drug would subdue the virus long enough to complete the course. Four days later came the day/night navigation exercise and I had a bad fever the night before. The navex was conducted during some bad weather, which helped keep me cool. I started off okay but it got to the stage where I could only walk about a kilometre then had to stop for a break. I just lay on the side of the road in the rain. I couldn’t hold down any food so I just sipped away at my water. Part of my route saw me walking underneath high tension powerlines, which should have been very easy going, as the track was a firebreak, wide and cleared. However, the clay was quite sticky due to the rain.
I’d gone about 200 metres under the powerlines when I fainted. I fell backwards onto my pack, which weighed 32 kilos. I can’t remember how many times that happened during that nav leg, but it seemed to take forever. The final checkpoint for the day nav wasn’t too far from the end of this clay track but I was absolutely exhausted. Somehow I mustered up the energy to slog away to the end. Once there I was able to get some food on board and after a rest I started to perk up a little. Pete, one of the DS, walked with me on the night navex as he was concerned about my wellbeing, but I finished the nav exercise and went on to finish the team leader course.
Towards the end of the year 3RAR did a series of build-up exercises in and around Townsville in preparation for our second Timor deployment. Lee and I were now promoted to lance corporals. Lee went to Bravo Company as a section 2IC and I stayed on in snipers as a team leader. Sniper section conducted a reasonable amount of our own training as did most of the battalion, only coming together for the final exercise. One day during the course of this exercise I was riding in the back of a Land Rover with Paul as we were being driven out to the range. Our colleague ‘Monty’, who was driving, was obviously fatigued and the reconnaissance platoon boss was asleep in the front passenger seat. Monty’s driving deteriorated by the minute, so I suggested to him to stop and take a rest. He said he was okay but then drove straight past the turn-off to the range. Paul knew something wasn’t right but couldn’t quite put his finger on it and asked Monty if he knew where he was going, to which he replied, ‘Yes!’ So for a while we sat there and said nothing.
Monty was nodding off momentarily and Paul angrily told him to pull over but he wouldn’t, and next minute he drove into a severe dip in the road way too fast, panicked and hit the brakes, which sent us into a 50-metre sideways slide before we hit the bank on the right side of the gravel road and rolled the vehicle onto its side. I got catapulted onto Paul, who hurt his back badly. My first thoughts were to get hold of Monty and punch the hell out of him, but I had to help Paul first. As I got Paul out I noticed this Monty idiot standing beside the Land Rover having a smoke. ‘You fuckin’ bastard!’ I shouted, ‘Give me a hand!’ He was in a state of shock, so I got him to get the accident forms out and start filling in the paperwork. He had to go back inside the vehicle to get the accident forms out, but didn’t even bother to help the reconnaissance platoon commander who was still trapped inside by the seatbelt. I had to get in from the driver’s door that was facing skywards to help him out.
We had no form of mobile communications and luckily a civilian turned up who had a winch on his 4 x 4. We hooked up the winch cable to the Land Rover and turned it back on its wheels and then pushed it to the side of the road. The young lieutenant got a ride out with the civilian and told range control what had happened. I remained with Paul, who was in severe pain and four hours later a recovery team turned up to survey the damage and tow the Land Rover back to base. Monty got off this reckless accident scot-free; meanwhile Paul is still having trouble with his back.
One good thing about our return to Timor in 2002 was that I’d achieved my aim to be sniper team leader on operations, even though the operational environment was very quiet. I was among the advance party from 3RAR that flew to Dili on an RAAF C130 Hercules, and then was driven to Moleana. The humidity hit us as we walked off the back ramp of the aircraft and to a small fleet of trucks. We were to work from Moleana for the next six months. On arrival at our location we quickly orientated ourselves to the camp and received a good handover from the 2RAR guys. During the first couple of days we met up with the Blackhawk crew briefly before they rotated out. I was pretty sure Bingers was there again also.
As snipers we operated as two four-man teams with the ability to break down into pairs if needed. My team consisted of Paul, Chris and MP, who I worked with again when he joined me at SASR. We lived in porta-cabins that had been joined together and had the centre wall removed. Conditions weren’t bad. We had hot and cold running water, good cooked meals every day we were on base, and real toilets! Most of our work involved observing border crossing points where the TNI were controlling movement back and forth. West Timorese locals would trade fuel and other items in the tactical coordination line (TCL), which was the designated border. The TNI would let the locals cross to the other side in the mornings to trade their goods, but when they returned in the afternoons they’d charge them a fee for the privilege.
The Indonesians swore this wasn’t happening so we set out to gather the evidence. And on this particular job there were only three of us: MP, Paul and myself. We inserted at night by foot from one of the checkpoints that was manned by a section from Bravo Company. The locals don’t particularly like the dark so we got into our final location undetected.
But as we pushed through to our OP location we got covered with this very fine hair from a bush which worked its way through our clothing and stuck into our bare flesh. This made us itch furiously for the next 24 hours and we all broke out in rashes. The observation post was too good to leave so we set up our optics and cameras with long-range lenses in among this extremely aggressive foliage. It wasn’t long before we started to see some activity across the border.
We got perfect shots of the TNI taking their cut–often in American dollars–and hiding it in the roof of the shelter they’d made. On our return we sent our evidence up the chain of c
ommand and they produced this to the Indonesians. They did make an attempt to control the black market checkpoints after that but it was a hopeless task. There was virtually no fuel in East Timor for local use, but it was readily available over the border. So they did bring it across, and they charged a fortune for it.
We did do some good work throughout the trip but nothing that would place your life in any serious danger. Tensions between us, the militia and the Indonesians had virtually come to an end in 2000. There were a few minor bun fights between locals at a couple of checkpoints, but nothing too serious.
As a result of the lack of conflict, sniper section got on the wrong side of the company hierarchy, as we would always question the reasoning behind painfully pointless tasks. We all had high personal standards, and begrudged being sent out into the field because someone was too lazy to do their job properly. Soon we found ourselves constantly tasked and this kept us in the field and away from the command structure. In the end it suited us to be away from Moleana and all the bickering and ridiculous rules that were being thrown around by the bored battalion and company hierarchy.
The pattern that developed was a two to three day OP operation, back in camp for a few days and then out again. During our time back in base I used the Kiowa helicopters of 161 recce squadron to conduct a visual reconnaissance of the ground where we were to operate, which worked a treat. Because the foliage can be quite sparse throughout Timor we spotted the best possible locations to place OPs just about every time. The helicopter pilots were very good to us and always keen to help us out. I think they enjoyed doing something different from their normal TCL runs and joy rides for officers.
I also worked closely with the Blackhawk crews organising the insertion and extraction of our next task. They had started a database on all the LPs (landing points) and LZs (landing zones) within the Australian AO. And when I was given one of these ‘pointless’ tasks I was talking about earlier, I just popped in to see these guys and they gave me all the information I needed with 15 minutes. When I produced this information to the company hierarchy it sent them into a rage. They thought I was going behind their backs and being obstinate. I thought I was being practical and showing some initiative.
The task was for my sniper team to walk a 26-kilometre circuit of several helicopter landing points and landing zones, to check on their condition and report back. The Blackhawk crews were even prepared to fly to each LP and LZ, which would have been completed in approximately one hour from start-up to shut-down. The result was that we were inserted by vehicle for a long and tedious walk. Both ‘superiors’ very quickly lost what little respect I had for them.
On another occasion we were ordered to occupy an OP on a very large bare rock in the middle of a wide river on the border. It had no cover from view or fire, and no escape routes. If for some reason we had come under fire in that location we would have had to run straight into the open to a feature which faced the enemy. Paul even pointed out a track on the aerial photograph that ran right through the centre of it, but the officer in charge was hell-bent on putting my team on that rock. It was thoughtless planning like this that inspired me even more to move on to better pastures. We did the job, but didn’t go anywhere near that suggested location.
This trip wasn’t all bad news. It was frustrating, yes, but we did have a few laughs in between. At one OP location we killed a snake and decided to take it back to Moleana for the ‘prevent med’ guys to identify for poison antidote, as they had limited information on the flora and fauna of East Timor. It turned out to be a python. I felt like a real mug and the boys didn’t let me forget it.
On what little time we had off we managed to get into the township of Maleana to check out the markets, which were about a slow 15-minute drive away. Some of the blokes bought trinkets for family members, but more importantly we had sourced a little local bloke who would sell us beer for double what we pay in Australia. We tried to haggle but he knew he had the monopoly and wouldn’t budge on the price. So we parted with the cash. This was one of our personal little wins over the army, and as soldiers do, we love to down a few amber nectars from time to time.
Towards the end of our tour I bumped into the RSM, Peter Tyrell–or ‘Squirrel’ as he was known. He was a good bloke and we got chatting. He asked me what I wanted to do that next year so I said I wanted a posting to Perth, as near as possible to Campbell Barracks, the SASR headquarters. By now I had only one object in mind–to join the regiment. My plan was to get out of Sydney and position myself for the selection course. He supported me, and pulled all the right strings to help me secure a position as a lance corporal in 16RWAR, a reserve unit based about 6 kilometres from Campbell Barracks.
My team managed to produce some good results from our observations of Indonesian army activities over the six months and I was proud of them for that, even though the situation was benign. However, we did go on high alert just before the Bali bombings and for a short time afterwards. Elections had been held the previous year for a constituent assembly to draft a constitution. That was completed by February 2002 and East Timor became formally independent on 20 May, with Xanana Gusmão sworn in as the country’s president.
I would get to know XG, as we called him, a few years later as a member of SASR. Dramas did arise in December 2002 when rioting students set fire to the house of Prime Minister Marí Alkatiri and advanced on the police station. The police opened fire and one student was killed. The students carried his body to the national parliament building where they fought the police, set a supermarket on fire and plundered shops. The police opened fire again and four more students were killed. But 3RAR had been home two months by that stage. Alkatiri called an inquiry and blamed foreign influence for the violence, a typical response from him.
11
Making the Grade
As soon as I got the posting order I applied to do SAS selection. I had a friend in the regiment who was trying everything he could to give me a heads up on what I needed to concentrate on for the best chance of success. But in reality there wasn’t a lot he could do. I began completing the paperwork, stringent medical examinations, written tests and psychological evaluations.
First came ‘barrier testing’ back at Holsworthy, the physical endurance work that gives the training staff a good idea if you have the makings to attempt selection. What worried me was that I’d hurt my knee running around Moleana and it wouldn’t heal. By now I was pretty sure I’d beaten the malaria off and I trained hard for the barrier testing with a mate–RS–who also wanted to join SASR. The barrier was a combined test with 4RAR and, as it turned out, RS did his barrier testing a couple of days before me and he passed with flying colours. In my group of six candidates for SASR only two of us got through. Step one down and dusted!
3RAR was winding down for Christmas leave, and I had my sights firmly set on Perth and selection. I continued a tough training regime I designed for myself interspersed with organising our relocation to Perth, although I did slip over to New Zealand with Lee for one week for a hunting trip.
With George and the girls, I arrived in Perth on a Saturday and our first impressions were good–it seemed clean and quiet. We stayed in a hotel until we could move into a defence house close to Campbell Barracks. Early the next day we went for a walk around the CBD until lunch time then caught a train to Swanbourne and walked to the married patch to check it out. It was very hot and the girls–by now three and four–were getting tired and grumpy, but we gained a good idea of the area, which was close to the beach. When our gear arrived we moved in.
I had a couple of friends from 3RAR who were also posted to 16RWAR including their training warrant officer. When I told them I was doing selection they let me do my own training, which I was very thankful for. In fact, I was only at 16RWAR for five weeks before I started selection.
Selection began on 18 February 2003. I met up with RS and a couple of others from the old battalion and we were transported to a hangar in the training area at Bindoon
where we and our kit were thoroughly searched. We didn’t get much sleep that night due to nerves and the bloody snorers, and were woken at 0400 hours to start the 15-kilometre timed pack march to another camp.
During this walk a huge blister developed on my right heel. I was surprised this happened as I had walked a lot of miles wearing the same boots and never had a problem. I wasn’t happy about this, particularly at such an early stage. We were to stay at this camp for the next five days conducting several lessons and a three-day continuous navigation exercise. I was ever mindful that the malaria might resurface at any stage, and also did everything I could to make that blister as comfortable as possible. After this phase we spent a fair bit of time at Lancelin, a very scrubby area north of Perth, and although that phase was very hard I began to enjoy it. The tests were a series of solo pack marches from point to point over quite long distances carrying about 32 kilos in a pack plus webbing. It was quite tough because it was midsummer and temperatures were mainly in the high 30s; we even had days at 41 degrees.
During this phase I tackled it more systematically than most other candidates as I knew I wasn’t a bad walker with a pack on my back, and my nav was pretty good. So just before dark I’d find a spot and settle down for the night. I’d get my wet sweaty gear off and get inside my sleeping bag, as the nights were quite cold. I would cook up a feed and knock up a brew from the ration pack while it was still light, then get a good night’s sleep to start fresh and early in the morning. There were times when I was woken up by blokes stomping past me in the dead of night, tripping over and cursing because they were walking into things or falling flat on their faces–an easy way to acquire an injury and be withdrawn from selection.
Endurance is all in the mind. If your mind becomes corrupt when you’re on selection you’re finished. For example, when I started to think, ‘I’m starving right now and I could really tuck into a pizza,’ I had to blanket it with other thoughts and press on. You can be big, strong and extremely physically fit but if you’re not mentally tough enough you won’t pass. As long as your mind keeps telling your body to keep on going and to put one foot in front of the other you’ll be there at the end.
