Transcript
So I was at QRF for 31 October 1994. About 4:35, I got a call out saying that a local woman and her son have been getting shot at, someone's trying to steal their cow, or something, or harassing them. So I got a rough grid to where it was in rough directions. Now, this was being conveyed by an Indian liaison officer from the UN, whose English wasn't as great, to the UN headquarters at the stadium to our headquarters and then down to me through the op cell, through Captain Frewen and his team. Got a sort of grid, so on the map, off I went.
I went all the way to this location, which, on the way there I had to run what's called an RPA or RPF check point, which was a kid with an AK, a radio, and two milk crates and a bit of string. And I'll tell you now, milk crates and a bit of string won't stop an armoured vehicle. So he tried to stop me and I said, "Look, get out the road, I'm going." And I literally went and here's the milk crates dangling behind my tracks as I'm driving off. I went to this position, went past it.
On a radio I had communications, and I said, "Look, I'm now off the map. I've passed grid." They said, "Keep going. You should be..." And they were sort of round guiding me to the direction of the area. And I literally got to exactly what they described. It was some kilometres past, so I couldn't give them a grid where I was. Could where I was last off the map. And I got there. Now, lo and behold, this kid that I ran through that roadblock had got a radio and called the QRF of the RPF onto me. So what that meant was three technicals, which are like Hilux's with about 40 kids in them with RPGs, RPK machine guns, AK's, and a major. So an adult and kids.
I got to this position, put the infantry out. They started searching houses looking for these things, couldn't find it, but at that stage, I had got surrounded pretty quickly. It's, luckily, well, the infantry section I had who'd jumped out, they'd gone to ground because they saw what was going on, but the kids didn't know where they were, so that was a bit of a bonus for me. I literally sat there, so it was about 5:00, going towards dusk, and this went on till about 9:30, 10:00 at night.
And every time I'd tell my driver to start up because the headquarters, I'm saying, "Look, I'm surrounded now. These kids are going to... I don't know what's going on, but it's not good." That RPG's two to the front, one to rear. And now, these RPG's could make butter out of me, and would kill us; they're bad. Machine guns, not so much. But bear in mind, these are kids holding these things, and when I mean kids, I'm talking about 8- to 13-year-olds. And it's pretty scary. I remember one funny thing: my driver who was great, he did his drills, he dropped his seat so they couldn't see. He said to me, "Look, what do we do?" Because he's new in the army.
And I said, "Mate." I said, "How do I know, I've shot at Figure 11 targets all my life." I said, "This is new for me." I said, "But look, I'll come up with a plan, we'll work it out." So we had communications. Ironically and silly, the platoon commander and the platoon sergeant jumped in the back. Now I have one section, those two people command three sections or a platoon. Reality, they should have stayed behind, it should have just been me and the other corporal. But they were excited, jumped in the vehicle, and came with us. Now, ironic, the platoon sergeant forgot his webbing, so he had to borrow mine. It was a calamity of errors, but I had top heavy of the platoon command there. I didn't need them but they turned up because they wanted to come along. And that was it. So because I'm the armoured crew commander, I have responsibility of them and the vehicle.
So I have sort of control. Yes, he's the boss, but I'm ultimately responsible tactically about manoeuvring and I just said, "Look, if this goes off and one of these kids accidentally pulls the trigger or trips," I said, "It's on. I'll kill as many as I can, and then try and do push down, do a dogs leg, mount the infantry up. If everyone's still alive by that stage, we'll try and get back." It just panned out, and every time I'd tell him to start up, and here's the CO and everyone back at the headquarters saying, "Get out of there," I'd tell my driver to start the armoured vehicle up. Up comes the RPGs and they said, "Look, you move your dead."
It got to the point and I said, "Well, you're the first I'm going to kill," and that was the major because he was the boss. And, hopefully, I don't know what would happen with the kids but I'd just kill as many as I could before I had to...It ended up, about 9:30, 10:00, I said, "Look, this is going nowhere. We can stay here all night and do this." And he sort of agreed in broken English. And he said, "Look, I'm going to take you back to our military compound." Which ironically, is next to our compound. Literally next door.
So I said, "Yep, fine." So they sort of... Two in front, one behind, took us back. Now, here's the funny thing. As we were coming past our gate, I've already radioed ahead and said, "Look, I want everyone, as many people you can, there were guns because there's a fair few of them." When I come past, I'm like, "Lift the gate up, I'm going to come in, close the gate, and then we're good to go." And it's, how funny. We did. I came hard left, went into the gate, closed the gate, everyone was there literally, even the op cell on the building had guns pointed out of it, which was funny. Everyone had guns, and the other vehicle was manned. And they pulled up in the cars and just went out, "Ah, damn, didn't think of that one." But that saved the day. And my adrenaline and that was going through the roof because it was pretty scary stuff to be surrounded by kids with guns and RPGs.
