Michael Apperley - Somalia veteran

Joining the navy

I'm from Adelaide originally and I went to Blackfriars Priory School, which was in the north part of Adelaide, but my family home was in Tea Tree Gully and I really had a great desire to join the Navy as soon as I possibly could.

And when I joined the Navy in 1978, there was a junior recruit scheme, so I joined when I was 15 going on to 16. And I don't think you're allowed to do that anymore with the UN Convention of child soldiers but that was the process at the time and went to school, basically, initially, and then from there, I just did all my recruit training and then off into the Navy proper after that.

So, I spent 21 years in the Navy, and, you know, enjoyed pretty much all of it. It was pretty good … My father was in the Army but I did have an uncle in the UK that was in the Navy, and I, you know, got to hear about him traveling around and, you know, it sounded pretty interesting.

I have three brothers and all of my brothers joined the Navy after I did. So, there was, you know, the four brothers, the four Apperley brothers were all in the Navy at the one time, in there at one stage. So, it was fairly interesting.

Specialising as Stores Naval

We went to be over to Perth, at HMAS Leeuwin, which is now an army barracks, I think. But that was the junior recruit training establishment. So yeah, pretty much spent the first part of my time there, and then graduated, and then off to HMAS Cerberus, which is where most sailors do their, you know, initial training, before getting off to post it out to you know, the Navy proper …

I was a, what they call a stores naval, which is in a supply area … so I did my training, my specialisation training there … So basically, our role is to provide the logistics, aspects of not only shore bases, but also ships at sea, which covers a range of commodities from, you know, aircraft parts through to basically the food that's on the ship.

And, you know, making sure we account for it, you know, and make sure the endurance of the ship is loaded correctly. So that we could disappear for, you know, six months and make sure that we could get back again.

A great life and a bit of adventure

You would normally do four years on a shore posting and then two years at sea. So you'd go through that sort of cycle. That's reduced a lot. Now there's more sea time, you know, for various reasons, but because they've commercialised a lot of the shore base postings.

So when you went to sea, you could be out there, just what we used to call weekly running, so go out for the week, back in on the weekend, or you could disappear on a six-month deployment. And you know, we would head up to Southeast Asia, or, you know, different parts of the Pacific, and we'd be gone from our home port, which, in my case, was Sydney, for anywhere between four to six months at a time … it was great, you know, just a bit of an adventure at the start, but then you sort of got to work out why we were doing the things that we were doing, and that every day was something different.

And it was, it's a great life while you're single, and then, you know, after that, you have to just sort of try and compromise a little bit, because, you know, when you were single going to sea was all you wanted to do. But after you got married, then, you know, you have to sort of try and get a few shore postings to, you know, spend a bit of time at home …

I got married when I was 20. And, you know, my wife and I just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary just recently. So yeah, she come along the journey with me most of the way. It's pretty good.

Applying to go to Somalia

I was the Chief Petty Officer running, I was stores accounting officer at HMAS Penguin in Sydney and one of my old bosses rang me up, Lieutenant Tim Maher, and asked me if I was interested in going on a deployment. We'd just spent some time together, a couple of years together on HMAS Parramatta, we both came ashore.

And yeah, he rang me up and said, "Would you be interested?" And, you know, I said, Yeah, you know, I didn't know what it was. But, you know, it was on the news already, you know, Somalia was quite prevalent in the news at that time because of Operation Restore Hope and various other activities that were going on. So yeah, I said to him, "Yeah, what do I have to do?"

And he sent me all the documentation and various bits and pieces, had a chat with my boss, had a chat with my CO. And they said, "Yes, no worries at all. If you get selected to go, then you can go". So, that's what I did.

Pre-embarkation preparation

There was a very small contingent of Navy folks. There was probably about six or seven of us at the time. We were given a, you know, in the Navy, it was slightly different. When you go on a deployment, everybody goes and we just get told shortly before we're leaving, where, you know, the main places that we were going to. This massive document, in my eyes, came.

It was a pre-embarkation instruction. Be here, do this, do that, do this, you know, this is where you pick up your, your uniforms and various other bits and pieces. And I got that in the internal mail. One day I was told to report to reinforcement holding company at Randwick, which was only down the road from where I lived, I lived at Maroubra. So I could actually almost see it from my house.

And, yeah, we just spent our initial period of time there. I think it was a couple of weeks, just getting to know everybody, bit of team building, getting a bit of situational awareness of what the country was like what was happening out there and also our rules of engagement, that type of thing, when we were there, meeting up with the Air Force contingent, and also the army contingent folks doing a bit of PT, which was a bit unusual for us in the Navy, you know, so, and just a bit more team building and familiarisation with where we were heading and we did that for a couple of weeks. And then we were just waiting for our, you know, dates to then be sent off to the airport basically and, you know, get over there into Somalia.

Mogadishu: An uncertain and dangerous environment

I suppose the late May 93 to June timeframe, things started to deteriorate quite a bit over there and it was starting to get on the news quite a lot. And there was an incident. I can't remember the date, but there was about 20 to 25 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a, you know, an engagement in theatre. And that was sort of very much in the forefront of our minds as we were sort of getting ready to go.

But they were telling us that the situation was starting to get a bit more challenging because the locals were sort of reacting to some of the, you know, the forces and things that were on the ground, particularly Mogadishu, which is where we were going. So, you know, we were still getting reports back of, you know, a little bit of banditry here and there, but fundamentally, you know, we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into to be quite honest.

Travelling to Somalia

It's a bit unusual for Navy folks to go to an airport to leave their family behind for, you know, I think it was, we thought we were going to be over there for about six months. So not that unusual for us, you know, to do that, but to actually go to an airport and do that was a bit of a novel thing for us.

So yeah, we flew out of Sydney, we met up with the contingent, went through the, you know, security, immigration, you know, customs and immigration. And then, you know, just started sort of getting your thoughts together. Flew over to Perth, and then from Perth to Harare in Zimbabwe and just overnighted there, which was a bit of an interesting place to go.

First time I stepped foot in Africa, I'd always spent most of my time sort of in the Pacific or up in Southeast Asia. So overnight in Zimbabwe, and then from Zimbabwe into Nairobi, and then spending a couple of days in Nairobi, just acclimatising, working out who was doing what, and then getting a UN charter flight into Mogadishu with a bunch of UN civilians, as well as the Australian contingent that was going in on that particular day, which was very interesting, because part of the part of the process of us getting over there was we, we had to carry some weapons with us.

So, you know, getting those on to aircraft and getting them off was a little bit interesting. But once we got on to this, we got onto a, what they call an L100, which is a civilian version of a Hercules, you know, the old Hercules aircraft, got on board the aircraft and then started sort of buckling up and sitting down and, you know, getting basically told what we were going to be doing as soon as we got to the other end, and then started, you know, the reality of it all was starting to put the weapon together.

You know, we had it in a few pieces, just so we could get through what we needed to get to. And then just waiting for the, I think it was about an hour's flight from Nairobi into Mogadishu. And then, you know, you could see the civilians on the other side, which had come from all over the world to sort of help out there realising that maybe they were sort of going into somewhere as well, that was not quite, you know, as stable as what people might have made it out to be.

The flight in was pretty straightforward. Aircraft landed, taxied through to, the UN had an apron, an area where they park their aircraft. And the movement control unit at the airport was Australian, and with some Kiwis, who were helping unload aircraft and doing some of the supply work, met us on the ramp. The ramp come down, the heat hits you, you know, and then the juices start flowing because you're sort of not really sure what you're up to.

Settling into new surroundings

Straightaway there was somebody that spoke like us, met us and, you know, basically ushered us off the aircraft and got us all formed up and ready for the next part of the journey, which was the getting on the vehicle and transported through the streets and that's when a lot of it hits you, you can see that the place has been completely destroyed.

And the lawlessness and, you know, once you go outside that gate at the airport, you're basically in Dodge City, you know, it's like the Wild West, and those sorts of things, certainly for a navy person, were very confronting for me at the time. And not really knowing, you know, what I was getting myself into, but the fact that we're all there, you know, with people that have been there, and knew what to tell us what to do, you know, sort of calmed us down a bit.

And then off we went, drove, I think it was about, maybe not more than 10 Ks, maybe seven Ks up to where we were staying, which was the old US embassy compound. It had been completely destroyed and they were in the process of trying to sort of put it back together so that people could start functioning in there. And disembarking from the vehicle and meeting up with the rest of the contingent and being given a what they call an MRE, a meal ready to eat.

So, "Right, there's your lunch", you know, have that, and then just work out from there what jobs we were going to do. Swapping our weapons over because we had pistols. We were picking up our rifles, so we swapped over our weapons, and worked out where we were going to sleep for the night and, you know, did all that sort of thing. And then got a bit of an in-country sort of briefing so that we sort of had a bit of situational awareness of sort of what had been happening over the previous couple of weeks, catching up with a few folks that we hadn't seen for a while, because the advance party that we did some of our training with.

And then basically just settling into, you know, where we were staying, which was an old garage, which was commandeered, which was the Australia House, which was commandeered by the Australian contingent because it was a reasonably solid structure. And there was a, you know, a bunch of concern around mortar attack, and small arms fire and various other bits and pieces. So I think that's why they located themselves into this particular building.

The handover on arrival

By the time I'd got there, there was the last probably, maybe dozen people remained behind, just to do a bit of a handover. And then they left pretty much at the end of the following week. I think it was less than that actually, it was probably about three or four days later. I think they were ready to go, they just wanted to get out of there.

My role that I was allocated was the quartermaster. So based on my, you know, relevant experience, that was the job that I was given. So I was the ASC2 quartermaster. And my role was just to make sure that you know, all the equipment and, you know, we were able to sustain ourselves and ensure that we had enough, you know, access to the UN supply system so that we could, you know, function inside of the environment … we had the cut down carbine, they used to call it the carbine Steyr rifle because we were in and out of vehicles all the time, so the longer barrel Steyr was not suitable. So our weapon, main weapon was the Steyr.

Constant gunfire

During the day there was a bit of a presence on the streets, generally, when we first got there. So generally moving around in the streets and things, as long as you looked like you meant business, the Australian uniform was well recognised by the locals. The battalion had done a fantastic job up in Baidoa and around that sector.

And, you know, word of mouth, I think, is that the Australians weren't, you know, people that would go out of their way to make your life difficult. So having the uniform, certainly, the Australian uniform on was, I think the locals didn't mess with us as much as they would with some of the other contingents.

So, yeah, so a routine day for us would be, you know, didn't happen every day, but most days, as soon as the sun would go down, the locals are, they used to chew this thing called Khat, it was like some sort of some sort of drug that they'd get on to, and they would, you know, get a bit brazen towards the end of the day.

The compound that I was in was secured by a Tunisian contingent, and there would be, you know, concrete wall and then shipping container, shipping container, a concrete wall, you know, where a hole had been punched through the main perimeter wall. So they'd fill the gaps with shipping containers, and they were pretty good targets for rocket propelled grenades.

I think the locals thought that was cool, you know, because, you know, if you hit one with an RPG and make a nice mess, and during the evening, the Somalis would try and, you know, either penetrate the compound or fire mortars or RPGs, over the fence. So there would be gunfire most nights in both directions. And more often than not, there would be a bit of mortar fire and RPG fire into the compound from the outside as well.

The contingent, you know, the United Nations contingent used to set up, you know, a few posts around to try and I think there's a couple of sniper positions set up to try and stop some of that sort of activity. There was a bit of drive by activity as well. So that was pretty much a, you know, an evening. You knew things were getting a little bit too close when you could smell the cordite from the actual mortars. Yeah, so, you know, that that was a regular occurrence.

Brazen harassment

I think they were just, you know, making a nuisance of themselves most of the time. As our time went on over there, they got a bit more brazen. They were becoming a bit more, this was sort of just opportunistic, I think, in a lot of instances. But back towards the back end of the process they were getting better organised and they were actually coming up with different ways of disrupting and creating havoc inside the organisation, inside the city itself, and within the compound as well.

Indeed, you know, as time marched on and they were getting better organised and being a bit more brazen, they were stopping us from doing things, particularly moving around inside of vehicles and for a period of time there, the only way we could actually get around the place was through traveling in helicopters. So that changed the dynamic very much.

And then they made a determination that they needed to reduce the amount of time that they were moving through the built-up areas. So they built a road, they actually built a road around the city back to the seaport in the airport, which were the main areas where we needed to travel. Yeah, so they did affect the force. Eventually they were, you know, doing certain things that you certainly weren't expecting.

We didn't have any armoured vehicles. All our vehicles were soft skin vehicles. And so we were not quite prepared for, you know, what was actually occurring over time … the Australian contingent really only had soft skin vehicles while I was there. But some parts of the UN force, the Pakistani battalion, and the Malaysian battalion and I think there was some Egyptian APCs there, but we rarely travelled in those vehicles.

Somali workers

We had a few working for us and we were, you know, I think it's part of the Australian sort of psyche to naturally want to interact with the folks that we were, you know, over there with. We would try and pick up a bit of their language, we'd try and speak to them, you know, in their native language as best we could, which we probably butchered.

But the other thing was that we, you know, we had a good rapport with some of the locals that were working in and around our compound. And, you know, they were very, very appreciative of what was being done for them. Indeed, on many occasions a lot of them would ask how they could, you know, migrate to Australia. I think that was because of the, they saw the way we sort of treated each other and that type of thing.

Looking mean on patrol

I would go to the seaport in my specific role probably once or twice a week. So yeah, that was a, I'd definitely be outside the wire, you know, maybe three or four times a week to either the airport or the seaport …

Well, we basically had a Land Cruiser with usually myself and two others, usually whoever was available on the day and we would, you know, just get kitted up. If we could find a couple of extra flak jackets, we throw those on the floor in the vehicle as well, sit on them, you know, wear a helmet, wear our flak jacket, and, you know, just get out in the street.

Off we go … Our boss, you know, Lieutenant Colonel Jones at the time, he always used to say to us at night orders, you know, "When you go out there look mean. Do your best". So, you know, it was not trying to intimidate the locals, but trying to just make sure that they understood that if something did happen we would mean business.

Cooking arrangements

It was a fairly basic accommodation, just a concrete building with a, I think it had a bit of a concrete roof with a bit of galvanized iron sort of sitting over the top of it, none of the windows were in it, or they'd either been stolen or smashed, none of the wiring was actually in the building, all the copper wire, all the electrical cables, those types of things were all removed and, I think, potentially either used by the locals or sold off, you know.

No power, so we had a couple of generators. And we had to travel about maybe 300 metres for a shower. And we had a couple of what they call choofers set up. Never seen one before, you know, get in the middle of Mogadishu and the army have these things called choofers, which are basically your toilets, but it actually incinerates or burns, whatever the waste is, and, you know, you have to light the choofer in the morning, you know, sort of thing.

So, lost a few eyebrows, you know, not being too skilled in that area. But yeah, you know, we, the building was sort of set up in a fairly open area which we used to use for a bit of a recreation area. And then all of the little hidey holes, you know, down the rest of the building was sort of sectioned off and that's where we set up our, our cots and our bunks and various other bits and pieces. Our trunk that we brought with us was basically under our bunk.

We had mozzie nets, and we had, you know, the usual, what you certainly expect from a place that doesn't really have any sanitation and you know, any of that sort of thing, a lot of rats running around the place. Rats used to knock off our rat traps, they were so big, so you know, they'd disappear off them and we'd collect the rat trap down, you know, another part of the compound after the rat had taken it.

We mainly sort of, from a sort of subsistence perspective, we had a stash of ration packs and our main source of food was a Norwegian field kitchen and that was set up, you know, for most of the UN contingent to access for meals. We weren't big on fish and cheese, which is basically what they served up most meals, it didn't matter where they went down there for breakfast or lunch or tea, there was the same hot cheese with holes in it and, you know, fish not cooked sometimes.

And very quickly the guys and the girls were not really impressed with the food. So we sort of arranged our own, we organised our own meals, we built ourselves a barbecue area and in the end, we started basically looking after ourselves because the food that was being provided by the UN, in that first couple of months that I was there, was making people ill and, you know, various other bits and pieces. So we just decided amongst ourselves that we were going to look after that ourselves.

So we just made friends with the, there was an American company called Brown and Root in theatre providing accommodation and services for the US Army and we got friendly with a couple of the chefs there and we started eating quite well. We also had access to the supply battalion, the New Zealand supply battalion and they were managing all the food as it came in and out. So, yeah, we would go down and we were talking about how many trips to the seaport, a lot of the trips to the seaport were to either pick up passengers or go down and pick up food that we were going to, you know, make ourselves, so, interesting.

Recreation and briefings

There was a quite a lot of card playing, you know, in typical Australian fashion, there was a lot of annoying each other, you know, but we had a, we set up a bit of a basketball court outside. So, you know, whenever we could we'd go and play a bit of basketball. Eventually as we started to get a bit more sophisticated, we started building some gym equipment and various things. We had a bit of a gymnasium sort of set up eventually.

And really, of an evening, you know, the general routine was come back, we'd tell everybody when the barbecue was on or whatever we were making for tea that night, and people would sort of make their way back except for the people that were on duty. And then we'd have a nightly orders from the Regimental Sergeant Major, or from the COMASC, the commander of the Australian contingent, so we get a bit of a sit rep, we get a bit of an Intel brief, you know, those types of things, work out what we were doing the next day, if there was any sort of people coming in that we needed to know about, you know, whether there was any dignitaries coming or you know, different activities.

And basically, going through that process of an evening, which was great thing to do, because it sort of got us all back together during the day. And, you know, we had a bit of a chat and, you know, somebody would want a hand doing something for various other bits and pieces. So it was good, a nice, you know, sort of, you know, just, I'd call it quality time sort of, yeah, you know, just for an hour or two, and then go off and do your own thing.

Limited contact with home

We had our own Australian forces post office, which was AFPO 6, I think it was. I probably got the number wrong, where we could write, and the contingent financial advisor used to run the post office. So we could send mail and we could have mail delivered to us. I think that being in the Navy, the contact back with home was never really a big thing.

We wrote a couple of letters every now and again, we didn't have the internet, or we didn't have any phone contact and various other bits and pieces like that. So , you know, for us, you know, for some people, it was a big, big problem, because they just didn't have that sort of connection back to home.

But most contact back home to Australia was through writing letters, basically. And we were allowed one, I think it was a 10-minute phone call, using the satellite phone, a month. And that was pretty much all the contact that we had back with home.

Disconnection with home and the deployment

We were allowed to take a couple of weeks off during the deployment. Some people would go back to Australia for that period of time. I went over to London, and I met up with some family, my wife came over. I've got some relatives in the UK. So I spent my couple of weeks off in the UK and mine was sort of towards the back end because we had to stagger the process, so I sort of took mine about two thirds of the way through the deployment … I think the people that went back to Australia had more difficulty.

I definitely think that, probably a trick that I learned in the Navy, you know, if you're going to go away, go away, you know, don't go away for a couple of weeks and come home because you not only get in trouble for messing up the routine in the house, but you know, you're sort of connecting and disconnecting, you know, like, more often than not.

So being in the Navy, for me it was, my wife even would say, it was much better to, you know, you don't want to be away for massive periods of time, but it was much better from a stability perspective to be away for, you know, the duration and then, you know, come home. So I noticed the folks that went back to Australia some of them had a bit more difficulty when they got back.

For me, it was just, you know, I mean, I think by the time I'd been on leave or been on R&R and came back, I knew that I only had about a month to go. So it wasn't, you know, wasn't such a big deal.

A big job for a small team

We were part of the Australian service contingent, but I was part of the joint movement control unit. So our job was to run all of the road, the air and the sea movements, manage those aspects of the United Nations deployment into Somalia. A very small team of people, but a big job. A big job because, you know, we were there over a period of time where there was a lot of rotations, you know, there was certainly the French, and rotation coming in, the Foreign Legion rotation coming in from Djibouti, there was an Indian, a massive Indian presence, sort of about two thirds of the way through our deployment that had to rotate in and then get them out to, you know, the parts of the country where they needed to go.

And obviously, just the resup, the resup through the airhead, and also the resup through the seaport. So our role was to coordinate all of that, and make sure that, you know, when deployment contingents needed to move inside of the area, that it was sort of done in a controlled and, you know, organised fashion.

Warlords and a deteriorating situation

I think my view on the role that we played was that the stabilization of the country did occur initially and then there was basically a withdrawal, a drawdown from, you know, the bigger national contingencies. And what I saw in my time over there was that, yes the food aid and, you know, the things that was initially to try and, you know, help the people of Somalia not only stabilise and get out of a civil war sort of situation but also to make sure that the people of Somalia were being fed and the food was getting out to where it needed to, because what was happening was the warlords would all, you know, be controlling all of that and it was only going to where they wanted it to go. So definitely saw some improvement in that space.

However, I saw a very gradual, and towards the end it was a rapid decline of the security situation and the country was starting to basically return back to a fairly lawless … Infrastructure was very poor. We were over there during the infamous Black Hawk Down, you know, I think everybody's probably seen the movie, but we were there when that was happening.

And that was just a sign of how the locals, particularly the Aidid clan, had started to get on the front foot with the UN and all the other nation contingents and start being offensive towards, you know, taking an offensive posture towards the UN forces. And, you know, obviously everybody knows that there was, you know, quite a lot of people killed over that two or three days.

Probably overnight, really. Helicopters were shot down, you know, tanks were out in the streets and who knows what the number of Somalis that were killed. The official figure and what actually occurred is probably nowhere near what's been reported. But it was quite a significant deterioration and that was certainly a trigger point in the whole of the deployments and certainly had a major impact on the subsequent deployments of how the Australian contingents were prepared.

And, you know, we were definitely lucky that we didn't have any significant casualties. We had people that were suffering from, you know, I think they call it, you know, battle fatigue as a result of some of the incidents that were occurring. But definitely, you know, to answer your question, the situation deteriorated pretty much and I saw a declining the whole time that I was in Somalia.

Protecting the airfield and contingent

We would have to adopt a more offensive posture inside the compound, and whenever there was instances where the compound was breached, and we would go to, you know, a Stand-to situation. The mortar attacks started to increase. I spent a little bit of time down at, with the New Zealand contingent at the airfield.

The locals were starting to try and mortar the, you know, the aircraft on the inside of the airfield … we'd have to jump into bunkers and that type of thing. So, you know, it definitely wasn't getting any better. As we were leaving, we didn't really have good exit strategies for the contingent, but as a result of our security situation was deteriorating, they started putting a bit more planning into how the how the contingent the subsequent, you know, contingents were going to be looked after.

And in the end, they ended up bringing an SAS troop in to protect the Australian contingent because things started to deteriorate … I think the UN were very pleased with having the Australians there doing the movement control activities were fairly well organised. A lot of the contingents were not as well organised, you know, particularly, depending on what part of the part of the nation pool that they came out of at the time. So, I think they were happy to have a, you know, a fairly strong, well organised, disciplined team of people that could, you know, make things happen.

A psychological debrief and readjusting to home life

We did have a lieutenant-colonel psychologist come in theatre and that was another trip out to pick him up. And he came through and just had a bit of a in theatre debrief with us prior to coming home, which, excuse me, which was quite useful, actually. And he, you know, just sort of stepped us through a few things and I think that was a good thing that the army did to make sure that people when they return, you know, return back home, that they'd had at least an opportunity to, you know, have a chat with, you know, a psychologist.

[Q: Was it a group debrief, or…] No, certainly, for me, he was an individual, an individual debrief, which, you know, I did speak to him when I got home as well, he sort of followed up with a, you know, a call after we got back, you know. It was a bit of an adjustment period, getting back, you know, you're always running at this heightened sense of, you know, you're in some sort of parallel universe almost, you know, everything seems to be, you know, just in this high level of tension.

And then, you know, in the Navy, it always used to take us a couple of weeks to get home, right, after we'd been somewhere, but you get on a flight, you do a couple of hops, and you're flying into Sydney two days later, and there's your family and, you know, you're sort of trying to get back into this society that you've been out for a little while.

And, you know, doors slamming and, you know, cars backfiring and those types of things, you know, took you a little, you know, you start to duck and, you know, do a few crazy things, but after a while, you know, you just sort of settle back in and sort of try and do your best to get back on with it … It's quite weird, actually.

A game of inches and inherent dangers

You don't understand the inherent danger, probably while you're there, but then, you know, you should, but you start to think about it, and then, you know, for us, you know, I don't think any level of sort of preparation can always get you, you know, ready for the what you're about to experience, but, you know, the army certainly tried to do their very best to get you get you situated as much as you possibly can, as you get into theatre.

And, you know, getting home and just looking back and thinking, "Well, that could have gone really badly" It didn't and maybe that was our training, maybe that was just, you know, luck. I was over there when, you know, people such as the Morris Catering Group were there. One of his sons got executed while I was there, you know, so, you know, it's a game of inches, you know. Some days we would transit through a particular area and then 15 minutes later, a massive, you know, command detonated explosion, or somebody's having a go at you with small arms fire, you know. Just the luck of the draw sometimes, I think.

A job well done

My general view on this is that there was a lot of brave folks, you know, deployed right the way through this whole Somalia experience, particularly in the Australian service contingent associated with movement control unit. And, you know, I think the reason why we managed to get out, you know, without too much, you know, difficulty was because we all worked very well together.

Sometimes the training kicks in, sometimes the adrenaline kicks in, sometimes the panic kicks in. But, you know, I think if I was going to single out anybody, I think it would be Pete Evans, the RSM for the time when I was there, a guy called Norm Magher who was the RSM that replaced Pete in ASC 3. And those guys, you know, were there to look after us and make sure that we were as safe as we possibly could. And they did a pretty good job.