Warrior Brothers (6 page)

After the initial rush of the assault, I felt the adrenaline drain from my body. I could still taste the exhilaration of action at the back of my mouth, and I tried to savour the moment for as long as I could. It was a sensation I would grow very used to in the years to come.

A two-man security team, Buzz and I, remained on the vessel to provide armed protection for the navy steaming party of seven men. The remaining members of our assault team returned to the HMAS
Newcastle
to support subsequent tasks.

Our packs, filled with food and sleeping equipment, did not arrive on the first night as planned. The robust inflatable boat that was ferrying the equipment across overturned in the huge swell: the wind got underneath the hull and the crew was thrown into the icy waters. A second boat was dispatched to recover them. The navy managed to retrieve all our packs, which was quite an effort. Righting the upside-down vessel, however, proved a lot more difficult. A pair of navy clearance divers donned arctic wetsuits before attempting to attach a winch from a helicopter to the bottom of the overturned craft. It took four hours in the gale-force winds to retrieve the vessel, and all the men who spent time in the water were taken to the medical facility aboard HMAS
Newcastle
suffering hypothermia.

Buzz and I decided to do six-hour security piquet rotations that would be manned from the bridge. Six hours on, six hours off. Our initial 60 minutes of fun quickly turned into 12 days of tiresome shiftwork. We shared a sleeping bag in a forward stowage area with a cardboard box as our mattress. The area was covered in fish blood and guts, and even after we ordered the crew to scrub and disinfect the area the smell of rotting fish still filled the room. After several days, that and the sound of the sea bashing the hull where we slept had us feeling far from fresh.

Each morning our SAS obsessiveness would kick in and Buzz and I would have a workout on the roof above the bridge during shift handover. The Namibian members of the boat's crew often watched and made gestures with their dark, muscled arms – as if to indicate that they would like to join in. The workouts ranged from chin-ups off the side of the superstructure to exercises using pieces of pipe as gym equipment.

The navy steaming party was unarmed, with the exception of the watch officer, a man whom Buzz and I quickly grew to dislike. At one point, this man approached me – I was the more junior SAS operator – and confessed that he had lost his pistol. I was horrified, both that it was missing and at his visible lack of concern. I instructed him to find his pistol immediately before it was picked up by a member of the crew. It took almost 30 minutes before the man returned with his holster filled. Part of the problem was his enormously fat stomach, which made wearing the appropriate military belt difficult. When he attempted to wear the belt above his stomach, his pistol sat just underneath his armpit. The alternative, a low-slung position where the pistol was buried under several rolls of his stomach, was hardly an improvement. This was surely an example of a man being ‘too fat to fight'.

If losing his pistol wasn't a big enough reason to dislike
him, the watch officer was also obsessed with receiving a medal for his actions in the operation. We found this quite amusing: ‘What, you want a medal for hanging out on a fishing boat?' We would just shake our heads in disgust. He was career-oriented in an utterly self-serving fashion, with little capacity for leadership. His indiscriminate and regular abuse of his subordinates would not wash with Buzz and me, whose SAS training had placed very little importance on questions of rank. The arrogance of his constant berating of his staff was particularly galling given the professional and diligent nature of his team. They deserved a leader of their standard, not this clown.

One evening during the security shift handover, I showered and changed into a clean set of overalls. I felt invigorated and returned to the bridge in a good mood to say goodnight to Buzz. Although I disliked the watch officer, who was there with him, I remained civil. I would generally just keep to myself when we were on shift together. With both my arms cradling dirty clothes and supplies, I turned to leave the bridge and return to my stinky fish-box bed. As I reached for the door handle that led outside, the watch officer spoke up: ‘I wouldn't go that way. That's the sea side. You'll get wet.'

His condescending tone grated immediately, and I promptly decided that I knew best so I disregarded the advice from Mr Obnoxious. No sooner had I opened the door than a tremendous wave broke over the ship's side – directly into my face. The freezing-cold salty water took my breath away. This was rapidly followed by a two-foot wave that swept straight into the bridge.

My cheery disposition was gone. The naval officer, surprisingly, kept quiet and I walked past Buzz offering nothing more than a roll of the eyes. I was soaked from head to foot, my boots squelching with salty water. Back at my fishy sleeping quarters I changed back into my dirty overalls before burying my shivering body deep inside my sleeping
bag, all the while reflecting that even wankers can be right from time to time.

The middle of the operation might not have been the ideal time for tomfoolery, but when I was bored my irreverence always came out to play. During heavy seas, the skipper of the fishing vessel would wind down the speed to no more than seven knots. After doing a quick calculation I realised we would take another seven days to get home: a speed of 12 knots would literally take days off the journey.

I waited until the skipper went for a trip to the toilet and sneaked over to the controls. Looking around, I wound the vessel up to 13 knots. When he returned, the skipper was initially oblivious that our speed had virtually doubled. As I watched him from the other side of the bridge, I saw him give a double-take, looking at his GPS. His surprise was obvious and the look he shot me left no doubt that he knew who was to blame. He chuckled before winding back the speed to five knots. It was going to be a slow trip home.

After 12 days the vessel entered the vicinity of Garden Island, Rockingham, and was boarded by the Australian Federal Police, who detained the crew. We were extracted from the vessel and returned home, bleary-eyed and smelling like a tin of sardines. We wouldn't be racing out for fish and chips any time soon. As a first taste of active duty, it hadn't quite been the adrenaline-charged test of our training that I'd hoped for, but that was to come soon enough.

My time in East Timor was a baptism of fire.

The International Force for East Timor was deployed under the banner of Operation Warden on 20 September 1999, after violence erupted following the referendum for East Timorese independence from Indonesia. On 30 August, 344,580 people – 78.5 per cent of those who voted – sanctioned the move towards independence. In response, pro-Indonesian militias were executing a scorched-earth policy, wrapping the country in a blanket of brutality.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of East Timorese were killed. A further 500,000 were displaced – many of them transported against their will to camps across the border in Indonesian West Timor. There were also reports that soldiers from the Indonesian Special Forces – Kopassus – were orchestrating the violence. In the Regiment this was a touchy subject, as many SAS soldiers had been involved in training teams with Kopassus.

The first task for the Australian Special Forces was to secure Komoro Airfield before moving on to the port in the capital city, Dili. This security preparation enabled the International Force to rapidly infiltrate the city and establish it as a base for taskforce operations.

I was deployed as a member of a six-man patrol to reconnoitre a village just 15 kilometres from the border with
West Timor. The district was a hive of activity, with intelligence reports indicating that over 100 armed militiamen were causing havoc in the area. Despite the threat, squadron headquarters wanted to insert a patrol in the area to ascertain if this information was correct. If the patrol identified armed militants, a squadron-level assault (by up to 60 SAS soldiers) would take place.

I was relieved to be included in this patrol, as there had been a chance I would be left out. After returning from a medical detachment to East Africa, I had ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament in an accident. I had already participated in a six-month Indonesian language course, and with the possible East Timor deployment in the winds, I was beside myself with anxiety about missing out on potential action.

Within three weeks of my knee reconstruction I was, against the advice of the Regiment's physiotherapist, tearing around the street on my pushbike, desperately trying to regain the strength in my leg. All was going well until I ran into my dog – who was fine, but not overly impressed. I flew over my handlebars and into the bitumen. Hobbling into physio the following morning, I was not only missing a fair bit of skin, but had torn a hamstring that had already been weakened by the removal of a tendon graft.

Despite this, and true to impatient form, I continued to push the limits of my training, determined not to miss out, and 10 days later I was back to squatting 100 kilograms in the gym. I'm surprised those pins held my new ligament in place, and although I did stretch the graft considerably, I quickly began to regain function and strength. I held off from running until 11 weeks after the operation, but soon after that I was hitting the cross-country course.

Two weeks prior to the deployment I went to see the regimental medical officer (RMO), hoping to be cleared for operational deployments. I was ‘med class three' – no para
chuting, no deployments. I wanted med class two – no parachuting, but able to deploy.

Despite my pleading, the RMO laughed at my request. Her diagnosis was brutal: I would remain med class three for a minimum of 12 months.

Never one to take no for an answer, I waited a week and went to see a civilian doctor who worked for the Regiment on a part-time basis. He had less to lose, and when I told him what I was achieving in the gym he asked me one question: ‘Can you duck-walk?'

I had no idea what he meant.

‘Can you walk like a duck?' he said. ‘If you have regained enough flexibility in your knee to duck-walk, I'll give you med class two.'

I was so excited by this that I squatted and waddled around his office for a good minute, even throwing in a couple of quacks for effect. True to his word, he lifted my rating to med class two.

But his parting words were cautionary: ‘Look after that bloody knee of yours. I've gone out on a limb to upgrade you this early, so don't let me down.'

Within six weeks I was stomping around the mountainous jungles of East Timor with nearly 50 kilograms on my back. My balance was not great, especially at night, but I was deployed. Life was good.