Brad Dunn - An Indonesian Army Reserve

Transcript

In all honesty, I think the Indonesian units that had been there for years had set up kind of an A-Res, an army reserve kind of thing with locals. They'd recruited locals into the Battalion and into units. There were local kids, local East Timorese, living and working with the Indonesian army. Same as if we were there, we'd employ them, and you become friendly. Now they were having to leave and that meant that's the job done, so it was a lot of conflict in young kids' minds.

I never once saw a militiaman, an independent militiaman. I saw a lot of Indonesian soldiers, we came across a room that had lots of rubbish that you could put an Indonesian soldier into, and that's not something I say too easily. It was confusing. The Indonesians were withdrawing from Dili. They had their old World War II, big landing craft, huge bloody things, and they were getting on board and leaving. We secured Dili, then the rest of UN forces started coming in and then we busted out and headed west.