Glen Ferrarotto - Afghanistan veteran

Joining the ADF

I grew up in Greensborough or northeastern suburbs of Melbourne. Father's an Italian immigrant, Mum's a Kiwi immigrant, so a good mix. Primary school in Greensborough and then secondary school in the city, Trinity Grammar.

I had aspirations to join the military in some degree. I think originally, I wanted to be a fighter pilot because I think that's what every young kid wants to do but the aptitude was never there and so I did about four or five years in Air Force Cadets and the idea was that I'd leave school and go up to ADFA, that was the plan but that didn't eventuate. And in fact, there were about five or six of us that became very close mates in Air Cadets, and we all ended up joining the Army instead of the Air Force.

So I finished school, I finished year 12 in 1997 and Mum and Dad had suffered and worked very hard to send my sister and I to private schools and they'd sacrificed a hell of a lot, so they really had their hearts set on us going to university and all I wanted to do of course was join the Army.

So that was a pretty difficult conversation to have, especially with my old man, who was a national serviceman during the Vietnam War. And so he'd had a pretty rough experience of Army and in particular, the Army training environment. He was a skinny little Italian immigrant who was really kicked around a lot during basic training but that was then and obviously times had changed a lot. But to appease Mum and Dad and to at least give it a go, I did go to university, I got into an arts degree, barely, at La Trobe Uni but prior to starting, I went off to Kapooka to do recruit training as a Reserve soldier.

So when year 12 was finished, the majority of people I went to school with went up to the Gold Coast to hit Schoolies and other places and I went up to Wagga Wagga to recruit training and I came back. I loved being in the Army but I had to go to university, so I tried to balance the two, Army Reserve and university but the university life, it just didn't work for me and so I think about six months in, I transferred across to the regular Army and I went up to Latchford Barracks, where I trained as a mechanic.

An aviation background

I grew up with aviation in the background, so my dad, he wanted to be a pilot when he was growing up and his parents, my Nonno and Nonna, they thought being a pilot was too dangerous, so they discouraged Dad from doing that. So Dad went into finance and became a bank manager at Westpac and he was with the bank for 30 or 40 years. But he eventually got his private pilot license, so as a young boy, I'd go flying with Dad and I remember Dad going through that journey and finally achieving what he wanted to achieve as a pilot and I think Dad was...

He had encouraged me to find that dream as well, he built me a wooden plane for the backyard once and replicated a fighter jet and it was just made out of old scraps of wood and a few bits of rubber and bits and pieces and I'd sit in that for hours in the backyard. But as I said, my mathematical and physics aptitude just would never meet the standards, so it never really worked out that way unfortunately. But still a huge aviation fan and I've since gone on to get my own private pilot license since leaving the Army.

A RAEME mechanic

So the mechanic piece, I certainly didn't grow up wanting to be a mechanic at all but it was actually the only trade that I could get. So you do your aptitude testing and I'd thought well, if I can't fly the airplane, I'll fix it. So I tried to get into aviation technician type roles but again, I couldn't match the aptitude but they said, "Oh but you can come and be a mechanic." And so I think my dad and mum had said, "Well, you might as well get a trade, so go and do that instead," and so I found myself training as a mechanic…

So as a Reserve soldier, I was at 4th/19th Prince of Wales's Light Horse, so I'd done my M113A1 drivers course, so I was an APC driver and I loved that, it was a lot of fun. And so during trade training, you stay in your corps, so you're posted to the Army School of Logistics up in Bonegilla at Latchford Barracks but you stay in your corps until you complete the trade training. So there were a number of us that were either Infantry, Armour, different various corps, in amongst those who had enlisted directly into the trade training school but we didn't become RAEME, Royal Australian Electrical Engineer soldiers until you'd finished your trade.

Rifle Company Butterworth

I'd gone over to Malaysia, I'd filled the spot of a section commander within a rifle company, and I volunteered for that because I really enjoyed soldiering. So I'd jumped into a rifle company as a section commander, so out of trade, out of the workshop environment and I was told by our command at the time that, "Pats on the back if you do that, Glen. When we go to Iraq, which is around the corner, you'll be the first one on the list and you'll be good to go," so I thought, "Well, that sounds like a fair deal".

So we went off to Tully and we did some jungle warfare training there and then we went up to Malaysia for three months and did more... So it's Rifle Company Butterworth, which is a rotational program that's been on since the end of the war, World War II. And so you rotate through various training bases around Malaysia and Singapore and you work with Allied forces and it's arduous, it's all jungle warfare but it's really quite enjoyable.

Then when I came back to Darwin, the rest of the unit, the majority of them were walking around in desert fatigues, desert cams, all getting ready to go to Iraq and I thought "Oh shit, that's strange that we haven't heard about this yet because we're supposed to be going". So we were told that because we'd just been in Malaysia, we wouldn't be going to Iraq and that was a bit of a kick in the guts because Malaysia was really training and Iraq was the real deal at the time.

So I was a bit pissed off at that to be honest and I was contemplating my future in the Army at the time. And then I was given an opportunity to come down to Sydney to this new unit that they'd set up, SOC C, so I took that very quickly and my wife and I, we packed up living in Darwin and we moved down to Sydney quite quickly.

9/11

I guess it's one thing to join the Army and join the Defence Force, right? But there must be an inherent drive in all of us that we want the opportunity to serve our country on operations. And whether it's through family's service or whether it's through watching too many movies, who knows? But it was the opportunity that still existed that kept us driven and wanting to train harder and take the opportunities ahead of us.

You wouldn't sit there hoping for something to go wrong but I distinctly remember the Defence Force's whole attitude and culture changed on September 11 and I remember being in a training environment back down at Latchford Barracks in Albury, so I was posted to Darwin at the time or was I in Brisbane? I can't recall but I remember waking up, I was in a training environment and none of us really... We didn't really have too much idea about world politics or anything going on at the time. There was a few things going on at the time, so Timor was rotating in and out but it was no big deal.

Well, at the time anyway, obviously it had its moments. But my sister rang me early in the morning that the news broke in Australia about what had happened in America and my sister's a pretty passionate person, and she was in tears and I thought what's happening? She said, "The planes have flown into the building," and I thought... Because we didn't have a TV, I thought, what are you talking about? I thought, oh, maybe a Cessna's hit a building or something and that's all I could think of.

Then there was just this mood around the barracks, people had started to see what had happened and learn and then we went into where we were supposed to be on parade but that was canceled and we were brought into another room where the TVs were on and I think we all sat there just for hours, just staring at the screen. We didn't do any training that day, we just sat there thinking "Holy shit, what's about to happen?" Because none of us knew what that meant but the environment changed immediately.

So they put armed soldiers on the front gates at Bonegilla Barracks, Latchford Barracks, which is the most... It has the lowest threat anywhere in the country, it's on Lake Hume, it's a holiday destination but they had guys with... Well, they didn't know what to expect. So yeah, the culture of the Army changed at that point. So then our service really became about the opportunity to go and do something about this threat that was likely to change the world, so it got real after that. So then you were just driven by the opportunity to go over there and do something about it.

People will always say, it's like training... You feel for the AFL players, they train all their lives to play in a Grand Final and the vast majority of them never get to do it, let alone win one. And I guess it's similar in a way, you do all this training and ultimately, you want to be able to tell your kids that you've served your country, so you're driven by that opportunity. So when you go through these scenarios... And a lot of people do.

I had my bags painted for Timor at one point when I was in Brisbane. So we were supposed to go to Timor and then they decided that they weren't going to take any mechanics over there. So all the other trades and everyone else left and we were stuck back in barracks. And then it happened again to me when they went to Iraq, so I was sitting there thinking, "Jesus Christ, am I ever going to get the chance?" And I was actually close to pulling the pin at that point and just walking away from it but I'm very glad I didn't because I went down to this unit and went into Special Operations and it all changed from there.

Little understanding

We had very little understanding of what was occurring over there. I think Army started to do things a bit differently in a few years to come, whereas we didn't do any pre-deployment training. I don't recall doing any cultural training. I did do some language training, so we must've... At some point, they pre-empted that we'd be there and obviously we went through the normal medical processes and so forth. But the only thing I knew...

To be honest, I don't remember trying to learn anything about the country either and I think I've tried to learn a lot more about it since I've been home but I just knew that that's where the issue was and ultimately, that's where they'd send us. So it was a real unknown, it was the Middle East, it was a place where you'd never think you'd go unless you were in the Defence Force and certainly after 9/11, it was put on the map but culturally, very little understanding.

Politically, no idea and I don't think that was uncommon, particularly at our level. We were just soldiers, we were going over there do a very specific task and job and we just had trust in the command to know the politics of the place. Yeah, so from our point of view, it probably didn't really matter…

Service

I guess that's what service is ultimately. That's what being a soldier was about and I think that it should always be about, you trust your leadership, you trust your command.

You sign a piece of paper that says you'll do what you're told and that's just what we did. We weren't paid to have an opinion and many of us just weren't aware enough to have an informed opinion in any case.

SOCOM to Kuwait

So this little unit, it was set up to attach various logistic or trades background people to various units within SOCOM and this was about the time that... So this was 2006 and Special Forces were still in Afghanistan but they had rotated out at some point during late 2006 perhaps and then there was these rumours that we'd be going back in.

So they stood us up and they prepared us to go into Afghanistan or into Kuwait originally, to help set up some infrastructure. And we used to have this running joke at that unit that it was any given Tuesday because every week, we'd be leaving on a Tuesday but we'd never leave. So we'd say goodbye to our wives or families, take our bags, go to the unit and we'd sit and wait. And that happened for, I think it must've been two or three months we went through this cycle, just every week. And it became quite draining because sometimes, you were sure you were going to go and then you'd just go home and just get on with your life. So it was a slow process to get there.

So one particular Tuesday, I turned up to work and said goodbye to our wives and partners or whatever and I think we were just complacent at that point, that "Oh, we'll just be home tonight" but sure enough, we found ourselves on a plane and heading up to Darwin. And we landed in Darwin, the plane broke down, which is probably pretty common, it was an old A320, Strategic Airlines, it was something that they'd rented to get us over there and it was clunky, you could hear the brakes kicking in and out and we were laughing about it.

Anyway, it broke down in Darwin, so we had to do an overnighter, so we found some beer and we all got on the beers that night up in Darwin. And then the next day or a day or two later, we got back on the plane and into... I think it was... Oh no, a little island somewhere and from there, we bounced into Ali Al Salem, into Kuwait.

"You're going into Afghanistan"

I originally spent about two months or so in Kuwait with a forward repair team, so a group of us went over to get some Special Forces vehicles up and ready to be redeployed into Afghanistan and we actually had a really good time in Kuwait. We're all still very close, we had a lot of laughs and the threat in Kuwait, there was no real threat, it was just a staging area, right?

So we had some really enjoyable moments, we'd go out to markets in various places around Kuwait, we nearly drove across the Iraqi border once by accident, a lot of really enjoyable moments there. And we weren't due to go into Afghanistan but in fact, we were only supposed to be there for maybe one to two months, get these cars ready and then just go back home.

About two months later, we were still there and then I walked into the workshop area at one point and we weren't far away from going home, so I think maybe a week later or two weeks later, we were actually due to go home. So we were just looking forward to it at that point and I walked past a captain and he was from the Special Air Service Regiment over in Perth and he looked at my name...Well, he was reading some names and he read my name and I piped up and he said, "Oh, you're coming with us." And I looked at my ASM and I said, "Going where?" And my ASM, Mick, he said, "You're going into Afghanistan," and I went, "Oh shit, all right."

So again, it went from one level to another at that point for me and it was only myself and two others that went into Afghanistan at that point. So about three or four days later, we went from a really mellow, almost training like environment in Kuwait, no threat, no body armour, no weapons, to being fully kitted up and sitting on a tarmac at about midnight, waiting for an American C-17 to lower its ramp and we were just to basically get on that plane and go into Afghanistan with a whole bunch of vehicles.

And again, had no idea about what we were going to face when we got there. I was just told that my role in going over there was to set the workshops up, so that when, I think it was Alpha Company 4 RAR rotated back in, everything would be ready to go.

Tarin Kowt

So Tarin Kowt, so it's huge. I remember looking at it, particularly from that tower, you could get a reasonable view of the whole city area I guess, so it's very flat. This is all from memory a long time ago, very flat, dusty environment. The dust is something that is out of this world. So I just remember that the skin on your hands and your knuckles would constantly be cracked, you'd be pulling blood clots out of your nose every day constantly.

When aircraft would land or choppers would land, it would black out the sun from the dust and then the dust would settle. It was a really just extreme environment and then you'd go through 50 degrees in summer to maybe zero to three degrees in winter. So the extremes in temperature are phenomenal. Accommodation wise, I don't really have too much recollection of my first visit there from an accommodation point of view but it was much the same as my second.

We were living in wooden huts and they had about 20 beds in them each or thereabouts maybe, from memory, maybe less, maybe less. But you have your own bed space and that was the difference between my first trip and the second trip. The second trip, people had spent more time there, so they'd set up a bit more infrastructure in the huts in particular. What I really enjoyed about my second trip there was that I had my own bed space and it was a bit of a private space, which is really important.

You don't get any privacy over there and so to have your own space was important, you could put some photos up of your family and your dogs, you could have your own stuff there and that was your space. And everyone respected your space, no one would come in. So you could sit down at the end of the day and watch a DVD or something and just get away from it all. But they were wooden huts, they weren't insulated, you got used to sleeping in a noisy environment.

Maximus

The Dutch had this gun there that we used to call Maximus and it was a big self-propelled artillery piece and they used to sound an alarm. So the idea was that they'd sound an alarm before Maximus would fire and that way, you'd be prepared for this explosion that would shrink the walls in. If he was firing over the compound, you could see the walls from the percussion move.

But then they figured out that the bad guys would get a message to wherever the artillery piece was going to land because they'd have people in and around the place listening. So they knew that, well, the gun's about to fire. So what they started doing was changing it up a bit and they'd fire the gun and then they'd sound the alarm.

So sometimes you'd be just completely taken by surprise. And then sometimes, it'd be the middle of the night but I do recall at a point, realizing that the only reason that gun is firing is because either our guys or Allied Forces are in a really shit situation and that artillery piece is firing to kill people. And so there are moments there where you realize pretty quickly that it's no longer training, people are doing a real job.

Camp Russell

We did some work with the Canadians, CANSOF, they came in for a period of time, they were great. Lots of Dutch. In Camp Russell though, which is where we were, it was very much just an Australian... We didn't really mix with anyone else and even at times, you wouldn't even see big Army for periods of time, particularly when tempo was right up.

So Camp Russell, it's an independent camp to the rest of the Australian Army and the rest of the NATO forces and we'd rarely go down and mix with the other guys. Which I found strange but it's just the nature of Special Operations, right? But what we figured out quickly was that we were getting better supplied than they were. So we'd have cartons of Coke and cartons of Red Bull and Mars bars and all this good stuff coming in all the time, yet the guys down in big Army, they'd rarely get that stuff.

So we'd pretend we were going to go down and help them fix a vehicle or do something or take a part down to the workshops and we'd load the back of the motorbike up with Coke or Red Bull or whatever and take it down there and look after the lads down at the big workshops. And then there was a bit of a different environment down there, they had cafes and there was a little shop at one point. So, Camp Russell was its own little independent area.

A second deployment

So the first deployment I got home from and I was training to do a commando selection course at the time and I was home no more than, I think a couple of weeks, maybe a month from memory and I was due to go onto what they call CTC and that was about a month later and I was back into all my training and looking forward to that.

And then I walked down the corridor, this is back in Sydney and the adjutant walked past and he said, "How's your training going, Glen?" And I said, "It's going pretty well," and I lied a bit because I was pretty sore because I'd overdone it a bit. And he said, "Well, you've got a decision to make. You either do your course or you go back over with Bravo Company 4 RAR on the next rotation," which was literally the next rotation.

So Alpha Company was in and Bravo was going in after that and they were only leaving not even a month after that. So I think I was home for two months at the most and I was bags packed and heading back over to Afghanistan again. And that decision was interesting for me to be honest. The reason I wanted to do my commando selection course was because I wanted to go outside the wire and actually do soldiering, right? And I figured the only way that I'd achieve that was if I became qualified as a commando, stayed in my trade but qualified as a commando. And that seemed to be the general consensus, that the only way they'd take a mechanic out would be if he was a qualified commando. So I had my heart set on that but there was one company sergeant major with Alpha Company called Rufus, I don't know what his full name is but he was determined to take mechanics out with him on patrol, he saw the value in it.

The commando patrols would go out with up to 30 vehicles and to not have a mechanic with them seemed a bit crazy and he was the first guy to really push this need for a mechanic. So he influenced the unit to send me back in because I had conversations with him whilst he was there and whilst I was there with the Alpha Company at that time.

So I had this decision to make, do I press forward with this commando selection or do I just go back to Afghanistan? I vaguely remember talking to my wife about it, I can't remember what the outcome of the discussion was or how we had it but I can imagine that it was a tough conversation that I would have had to have with her, to say, "I'm going back and this time, I'll be gone for four or five months," and it was a very selfish decision to make too but for me, it was the only decision that I could make.

So going back in there was interesting and it's not uncommon, plenty of guys went back there. Some guys rotated six, seven, even more times but going back knowing what you're going into is very different to going there for the first time. And I understand why guys rotated in and out so often because it is a bit of a drug in a way.

The environment becomes addictive and you miss it and so it's not hard for me to understand why guys were going in and out so often, particularly within Special Operations. You really do become addicted to the... Lifestyle's a bad term but just to the adrenaline I guess of being there. So it was interesting. So going back in a second time, vastly different, the tour with Bravo Company was vastly different to being there the first time.

Outside the wire

Within about two weeks of being back in Afghanistan, I was outside of my first patrol with Bravo Company and yeah, again, it's one thing to be inside the camp and in that environment but to drive out the gates, it's another level and it was absolutely terrifying, exciting, emotional. I recall it would have been about three o'clock in the morning as we were lined up ready to depart and there's a lot of secrecy before you leave, so only those that are going out on patrol would be involved in the preparation for it.

You'd go and do an O group I think they called it, where you'd get your orders the night before and you'd learn what you were going to go out there to do. And of course, with our commandos and Special Forces, it was all about capture and kill and identify and bring the bad guys back basically, if possible. So it wasn't really hearts and minds stuff. So you'd learn where you were going to go, you'd go to the RAP and you'd get some morphine, you'd get a tourniquet, you'd write your blood group on your shirt.

You'd be given this piece of paper that they used to call the...I can't recall what it was called but it was effectively a piece of paper that was written in about six or seven different languages and you'd keep it in a plastic envelope, stick it in your body armour somewhere very safely. But that effectively said that if you're captured, whatever I offer to my captive, my government will validate or come good with and they'd always say, "Don't offer money, just offer livestock or goats," or whatever it might be.

And we never really knew what was written on that piece of paper. I'm sure there was English in there somewhere but all those things culminated in a very real understanding that this wasn't training anymore, this is the real deal. And I was sitting in what we used to call the mothership, which is a big... It's a Unimog that is all gunned up and has all of our spare parts and ammunition and water and bits and pieces. We'd usually be towards the rear of the convoy and it was an inspiring vision to see a column of Special Forces vehicles ahead of you.

Every car has a Mk 19 grenade launcher or a 50 cal, every car has four or five Australian commandos in it, fully tooled up. The best of the best and to be part of that convoy, it's unbelievable. It's what dreams are made of really, if you think about being a soldier when you were a kid. And I saw this figure walking up the convoy and he was moving his hand around and this is a bit strange, not sure what's happening and he moved up and I realized it was the padre and he was blessing all the vehicles and all the crew.

And I don't really have a religious bone in my body but that put the chills down your spine when you go, padre, he knows how dangerous this is going to get. So yeah, emotional, a lot of adrenaline and then off you go and every flash, every time the moon flickers off a rock, every sensory thing that could occur just grabs your attention and that's the way it is for the first few hours and few days and then you just get used to it. Then you just get on with doing your job.

"Get the mechanic up here"

As Aussie soldiers, we're always humble, right? So we don't do this a lot, we don't talk about what we do and how we do it and as mechanics, it was hard to consider yourself part of that team, part of that elite team. But the operators, they couldn't give a shit whether you wore a beret, whether you'd been in the Defence Force for 20 years or five minutes. As long as you were good at your job, you were part of that team and you realized very quickly how integral the mechanic and the patrol mechanic is to a vehicle mounted Special Forces patrol.

This is back when we were still getting around in Land Rover 110s without armour. We had one or two Bushmasters, which were the only fully protected vehicles, the rest of us were in open-air vehicles. The only armour we had on us was what we were wearing. We'd set the cars up with... You'd put the spare wheels on the doors sometimes because that provided extra protection from small arms or you'd have this makeshift armour that was like a LEGO set that they had started supplying over at the time. You'd strap that with tape and bits and pieces around your fuel tanks and that's how agricultural it was back then.

And so shit broke all the time and everything was overloaded, all the motorbikes were overloaded. I guess there'd be four or five sniper teams as part of each patrol, they're on six-wheel drive Polaris motorbikes, you'd have detachments from Perth with you that would generally have a dog with them as well or a couple of dogs. The first time something broke, I don't think I'll ever forget it. We were going through a creek line and it was only the morning of the night that we left, so the sun had only just come up.

We'd always leave at night to get through Tarin Kowt town before the sun would come up, that would give them less time to figure out that we were on our way out somewhere. And the convoy came to a stop and I got to dread stopping because every time we'd stop, it'd be because something was broken and I probably still carry that burden with me now. I hate stopping, I can't stand stopping when we're moving forward, in life in general to be honest.

So we stopped and you could just see people turning around and over the radio, "Get the mechanic up here." So you'd get out, you'd take your rifle, a grab bag of tools, I'd make my way down to the front of the convoy, you'd only walk in the vehicle tracks and one of the sniper's motorbikes was in the creek line, it wasn't starting. And I just remember thinking that the entire patrol rests on me being able to fix this motorbike right now. Not say, "Mate, we're just going to tow it and take it back to the workshop and we'll fix it tomorrow," it had to be fixed and it had to start then.

And the sniper whose bike it was was this giant and the world's best blokes but you were still in awe of these guys as well and I didn't want to let him down, I didn't want to let the entire company down. To top it off, mate, I wasn't qualified to fix that motorbike, so I had never done a course on a motorbike. And so mate, it was just put every skill you had to the test, black out everything around you and just get the…bike fixed.

And I think I ended up cutting a hole in the air intake and modifying it somehow, so that it was getting air because it wasn't getting any air because it was just clogged up with dust. And that became a constant issue for these bikes, so when we got to the end of that day, I went around all the bikes and I did the same job on all the motorbikes, just so that they could breathe. And that was the life of the patrol mechanic.

When you'd stop, if you'd stopped because it was a planned stop, sometimes the guys would go off and do a job, sometimes there's an opportunity to sleep, eat. Sleeping and eating didn't become day and night, it was just if you stop, you sleep, if you can, you eat but for the patrol mechanic it was, if you stop, you get on your feet and you walk around every vehicle crew and you ask them how the car's going. "Are there any issues?" "Did you break anything?" "Do you need me to look at anything?" And it was constant, it would never stop.

Like an air show

Afghanistan was like an air show, it was like a live air show all the time, an F-15 came in at pace and it was low enough to be able to see the bomb leave the wing but the bomb exploded just under the wing of the aircraft, so it had a misfire or a malfunction. I remember looking at it and this plane peeled off but there was this puff of white smoke underneath it and it went around and I remember hearing the JTAC, they called the boys who would talk to the fighter pilots, something about, "Go again," or whatever it might've been.

And then the plane came around again and this time, the round was successful, it left the aircraft and then the artillery piece from the Dutch was also firing back at Tarin Kowt. So this time, I was on the receiving... Not the receiving end thankfully but on the other end of that and you know that the round's in the air and you have this moment where you know there's guys on that hill, bad guys and they're about to meet their maker because you know a round's coming from a way and all these things... The intensity's amazing.

Improvised explosive devices

We were pretty fortunate, we drove over one that we found out about the next day or later that day, that we'd all driven over one. It had detonated on a Dutch convoy and I believe people were killed when it had detonated. So that was a bit of a moment where we thought... A lot of it's just about pure luck. Sometimes it was too cold, so the guys who were supposed to detonate it would go home and have a cup of tea or a meal and come back later when it was warmer.

So a lot of it was down to timing and just bad luck. We didn't lose anybody on that tour to an IED, two vehicles during that tour struck IEDs and were catastrophically damaged but only injuries, no deaths thankfully. The IED threat evolved in later years, became a much more lethal tool for them to use. We were more fortunate and thinking about it, we were very lucky because we weren't traveling around in Bushmasters, we were just getting around in Land Rovers and motorbikes.

A challenging environment

So there were times where you had to really check yourself and remind yourself that that was exactly the case, you didn't know who was Taliban and who was. We had an acute understanding though that they might be Taliban one day but they might not be the next day. So we knew that the Taliban would pay a father off and threaten the life of his daughter and sons and wife if that father didn't take a gun to the top of a hill and fire rounds on the Australian convoy the next day when they were passing through.

That was a common occurrence and so we were fighting people but there was no clear indication at times as to whether or not they were sworn Taliban fighters. My attitude really changed though when one of our commandos, Luke Worsley was killed and a number of prisoners were taken back as a result of that, a lot of Taliban were killed as well. And our attitude towards these people changed quite drastically after we lost Luke and I became very angry at them but there were guys that we were...

There were moments there where we were in charge of Taliban fighters who looked like my Nonno, an aged Middle Eastern man… But it was such an uncontrolled environment at the time, you just didn't know who was who and it became very confusing. A very challenging environment for our intelligence guys, that's for sure, yeah.

"Remember this moment"

So me and another guy were due to go out on the next patrol, same situation. So the company became selective about who they'd want to take with them and so there were a number of mechanics in the workshop but only a handful of us were fortunate enough to go and do our job out there.

And so we'd get ramped up ready for the next patrol and I remember thinking this is great because I've got another mechanic with me and he was in another car somewhere else. Oh no, sorry, that's right. We were due to leave and I'm thinking, where is this bloke? Because they were waiting for this other mechanic to go, to get ready. Turns out that he had diarrhea or gastro or something and he only just started shitting and pissing everywhere just before we were heading out.

So we went out on this patrol and I was the only mechanic again, even though I'd got to that whole point thinking, "Thank God I'm going to have another bloke there with me this time" but then when we rolled out the gate, again, I was the only mechanic…You'd do a CP picket on the radio because the snipers would be up a hill somewhere and they'd be calling in various intelligence reports and that's a whole other level as well of realisation, that you cannot be complacent when you're listening to the snipers give you information about what's happening in the village because if you miss something, people could die the next day and that's your fault, it's not the sniper's fault, they're doing their job.

But if you haven't written something down properly that they've said over the radio and you haven't reported that to the OC the right way, then you're putting Australian lives at risk. And that realisation too, this heightened sense of responsibility every day was intense and I was lying there and I heard on the radio, "Fetch Bluebell." Bluebell's the call sign for RAEME. That in itself was a bit surreal because that's the first time I'd heard Bluebell as a call sign on proper communication since I'd been there… So before anyone had come to get to me, I was already up at the command car and I was on the radio and a crew that had gone out with an SRV...

Two cars had gone out to do a forward observation post on the village for the next morning, there was due to be some work done in the village the next morning, one of the cars had a catastrophic failure of the third diff. Which was a very common fault, overloaded and the third diff, it would blow a hole in itself and it was gearbox out, change gearbox, you couldn't fix it. So the boys had said, "There's no drive in the vehicle," and I said, "Someone get under the car and put your hand up," and I gave them direction, it was nighttime, you can't use a fucking torch of course.

So I said, "Can you feel a hole in that?" "Yep"… And I said, "Well, you're going to have to tow the car back here because you can't drive it." The OC was awake at the time and he said, "What's happening?" I said, "They've blown the third diff." He goes, "What are we going to do?" And I said, "Well, we've only got two options. You either fly the vehicle out, so that means bring in an additional helicopter underslinging the vehicle and the company is without a gun car or I'll fix it, I'll replace the gearbox."…

So I can't recall if I had a gearbox on my truck or the Chinook brought a new gearbox out but at some point in the morning...The car came in and I'd set my work area up as best I could, it was dust that thick, needles out of thorns that long, it was insane, the environment. But I tried to prepare, I had 10, 15 minutes to try and get shit ready and all this is without torch of course. So the car comes in, the crew were shagged... They just dropped the car off and I started swinging spanners and taking this gearbox out.

At the same time, the OC had said that the guy who was sick, the mechanic who was due to come out, Radz, great bloke, he'd made a recovery. So this is some days later, "Do you want him out here?" I said, "Yes please."…We got to the job, we got back to the car, we got swinging spanners again. At a point and maybe... A gearbox should usually take you about, say six and a half, seven hours in a workshop environment, maybe a bit longer depending on how fast you're working. I'd determined that I was just going to do the bare minimum to get this thing moving forward because the boss was constantly, "How much longer? How much longer?" Because we were in a shit spot.

At some point, it was in the morning at some point, again over the radio, we just heard, "Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar," and that means that shit's about to get real. And there was a few yells, "Take cover, take cover," something like that. And me and Radz were under this vehicle, spanners in hand. We're bleeding everywhere because skin and metal doesn't mix but we weren't thinking about doing things gently, we were just trying to get this thing going.

We managed to roll out of the car and grab our body armour and weapon and bring it closer to us and within a second of doing that, a…105 round or whatever the hell it was landed and it was close enough to really put the wind up us. It was a reasonably effective indirect... I don't even know, apparently they just stick these things on some rocks, light a fuse and hope for the best, right? So then that kept happening, the boys got into some small arms contact as well and there's me and Radz under this Land Rover putting a gearbox back in and we had a moment, we looked at each other and I said,…"Remember this moment," because there's two RAEME guys, two mechanics in the field, it couldn't get any more important for us to do our job at that point.

Pride in service

I'd just say that in particular, my tours were conducted with our Australian Special Operations guys. I believed then and I believe now that they are of the highest integrity, the bravest soldiers and the most inspirational people that you could ever serve with and I feel incredibly proud that I had that opportunity to work alongside them as an equal and I'm very proud of my service in Afghanistan.