A non-military option
The role was to give the force commander, cause in, or the first tour, the boss, as far as the UN Peacekeepers were concerned, was the force commander. In my case, the particular one with the first one was a Canadian general and he was replaced by an Irish general. So to give the force commander a non-military option for whatever might occur and also to conduct the investigations on behalf of the UN for anything that happened within the buffer zone between the Greeks and the Turks.
There was, let's be honest, the majority of both sides would've been quite happy for reunification. But there was an element on the south and an element on the north, very strong elements. They said, "No, if you put us together, we'll start killing people again." On the south, it was actually pretty well led by the Greek Orthodox Church.
Observing patrol boats
The UN were invited to send people down to the launching of, well actually, no not the UN... Australian police were invited by the Greek Cypriot Police to send people down for the launch of new the patrol boats that they had with the British army officer there, who I got to know, who was in intelligence said, now, sat down with me for half an hour to brief me on what he wanted from what... by observations of these boats.
But when I got there, we're just standing around there, no, hat on or anything. And the Archbishop walked past and shook me hand and said, "Welcome." And I put the beret back on for the ceremony and when he come back, he saw it and he just looked at me and the change in his face was enormous. And he turned and walked right away from me. Would not come near anybody from the UN. But I did get a very good description of the police boats for the British military.
Australian CIVPOL contingents
The contingents then were 20. We had a commander and it was, Harry Bryant was our commander. He had three superintendents and 16 troops. And we, in that stage, looked after sectors one, two and three, and the Swedes were in sector four. So you literally work separately except for major events when you could pull people together to it's just each other, working with the Swedes was good. Very good.
The Swedes
The Swedes were pretty well upfront and all prepared to work. But the interesting thing was I learned from there, and the start of my learning of CIVPOL and the UN more than half of them had never actually been a police officer. They were, because the police in Sweden include the people that sit at the border immigration control at the borders, and that's all they did.
So there were a lot of people within the CIVPOL, some there and later, a lot more, in different other places where they really weren't police, as we know the police. And you start to get the understanding that, you've really got to work hard to figure out how this all works, but they were easy to work with.
We got on well, and yeah, no problems whatsoever… they shaped their own deployment in their own area. But every time we tasked them to come with us, because we had a major event that needed everybody, not a problem. They came, they were prepared, and they worked well without a problem.
Gum trees and wattle trees
The interesting thing when I first arrived, the thing that struck me first about Cyprus was the number of gum trees and wattle trees that were there everywhere you went. Driving from the airport drop to where we were to live was gum trees and wattle trees.
They were introduced by a British governor-general, somewhere in the '30s because he'd been to Australia and he, the trees in Cyprus had all been knocked down years, centuries before. And he said, "I know what'll grow here quickly," and he introduced them from Australia.
Hunting in the buffer zone
There was a big change with the second tour, a lot of change. But probably the first tour, just to concentrate on that a little bit, in that, that was a perfect opportunity for me to learn how the UN works, because you could pick up the diary for any year, proceeding the one you're in, flip through the page, and you'd find what's going to happen tomorrow, because the same things happen.
The severity of them varied, but the two main events that caused this problem were the hunting season, small game and big game. Now big game is rabbit in Cyprus and the two demonstration seasons. Now each of those is about six weeks, so you've got somewhere between 18 and 24 weeks of the year, where there is a lot of problems, and you've just got to meet them.
Some years, it's not too bad, some years the demonstrations get worse. After I left, there were people shot at demonstrations. One of our problems was the hunting season because all the Greeks wanted to go and hunt in the buffer zone. Traditionally, that's where we go every year to hunt. Well, they never used to. But anyhow, because they couldn't go in, they went in. And we ran into one group in the middle of the buffer zone. And I was there with one of our patrol. And I knew the bloke that was leading the hunters. He was one of the senior Cyprus police officers. And one of them fired the shotgun overhead a couple of times.
And that's when the British section that were behind us, came up and stood in front of us, and they decided to go home. But he had with him, the first secretary of the Russian embassy, or it was the Russian embassy then. He was taking him hunting, and he was embarrassed he was being ordered out of the buffer zone. So, that was sort of thing they ran. The demonstrations, sometimes they were violent, yes. But the secret was, if it looks like turning really bad, get behind the barbed wire and shut the gate. It's that simple.
The game-hunting season
There was a three or four-week small game hunting season. That's when they went out and shot birds, tiny little birds. And then the big game was another three or four weeks, about a month after the first one.
The second time I was there, they'd been condensed to a one six-week period for the hunting season, full stop. But there'd been a change and they weren't worried about the buffer zone then because they'd been banned from hunting in the national park, because some of them had been shooting the mouflon, which is sort of a cross goat, mountain goat, but it would become endangered. So now they were in there trying to hunt in there… And weekends, they're a lot more.
Even during the week, when they're normally working though, they were out there hunting. You get two or three groups of four or five with their dogs. But on weekends, across the length of the buffers zone, you could have up to 30 or 40 different groups in there.
North and South
North is Turkish and the south is Greek. The area in between can be as narrow as 11 metres and as wide as 11 kilometres. And basically it's where the troops stopped when the ceasefire was called. Technically, they're still fighting and both sides have got troops along the edge.
The 11 metres is in the centre of Nicosia, what used to be the capital... Well it is the capital city for both sides. And then you've got a road that runs through there, and buildings on one side of Greek, Greek Cypriot buildings on the other side of Turkish Cypriot. And they used to poke bayonets at each other on long poles at different times.
Checkpoints
There were three main points. The Ledra Palace crossing point, which is in the centre of Nicosia, a place called the box factory, which used to be an old box factory, and it was now, that stage was a British army base, and that was another major crossing point; and down at the other end in the Swedish little town called Pyla, which was actually inside the buffer zone. And it was a town with both Greek separates and Turkey separates living in it. And that were the three main... And the fourth one was right down on the coast of the Eastern end, Varosha, where you had this, what would've been a magnificent city in its day, the major tourist resort. And the Greeks had evacuated from it back to a point, but the Turks didn't advance.
But it was then said, "No, it can't be touched." And so the patrol through that area, you got the hotels just falling apart. And there was one hotel that was owned by a German company that they got permission to go in every year and renovate, and make sure the building... because they figured they were going to come back at some stage… at Ledra Palace, it was easy, because you had barbed wire leading down, and you had a big fence that you could shut off, a big gate that could be shut off.
So there, if they looked like they're out of hand, you just pull back behind the gate, shut it, and that was it. The box factory... They'd run around you, but you had to be careful, because there mine fields there, plenty of them. But you tend to notice that if they got around you and started running towards the Turks, after a little while, they would slow down and they'd be looking over their shoulders just to say, "Well, when are you going to stop us?" Because the next line was the Turkish army.
And none of them actually wanted to run into the Turkish army. So the ones we had, there were no real problems, because nobody actually tried to get all the way across, which happened a few years later with one of the other groups. But we had a couple of ones where they got a bit nasty at Ledra, and their aim was to try and hurt the UN people. They definitely didn't want to get in amongst the Turks. But second tour the demonstrations would ease a bit.
A changing society
First tour, you would not see underwear on display in any shop of any kind. You walk in any shopping centre, and on the Greek separate side, you would always see a priest walking around, looking, making sure they were following the rules and behaving themselves. You could see the power that the church held over the south.
Second tour, the whole place had changed. You hardly ever saw the priest. There was still plenty of churches there, but you hardly ever saw the priests out in public. Shopping centres were completely different. The behaviour of the youngsters, young ones was different. Interestingly, the population had almost doubled in 10 years.
Now on the north, a lot of that was expat Brits or expat Germans. And they built three universities there, and they were universities for basically the various Muslim countries in the Middle East. That's where this students come. So each university held 20,000 students. Now they just hadn't been there 10 years before.
Backwards and forwards
In the south in Limassol, you had a lot of Russian expats, and in Paphos, a lot of British expats, basically Limassol was a Russian town, and they were there. Well, there was a lot of trouble in Limassol, cars getting blown up, people getting shot now and then. It was the Greek separate mafia and the Russian mafia trying to control the port. Because through that port a lot of ships would come in there, not unload or anything, but would get new paperwork and sail.
There was a lot of... Yeah, a lot of the money coming into Southern Cyprus was ships of convenience or flags of convenience. Offshore banking were located. We met two Aussies that were there. They were the head office of such and such a bank, but I can't remember which one it was now. But they were just there as figureheads to say that the head office was there. They were paid for basically doing not much at all. But they paid a lot less taxes than they paid anywhere else.
The port was well and truly in Greek Cypriot side, nowhere near the buffer zone. What we did have in some areas living in the south, you had pockets of Turkish Cypriots that were still there. Same as in the north, there were pockets of Greek Cypriots still living there. So we used to go and visit them weekly, to make sure that they weren't being harassed or whatever.
With the ones in the north, we'd take food up to them from the south. And next thing, you'd find them coming back through and delivering the food, selling it in the markets down south. But they didn't really need it, but it was the thing they wanted to do. The military provided the vehicles, and we always sent people along just to talk with local police and keep it calm if anybody was going to get upset, and to do the checking, to make sure they were all right, nothing was being done to hurt them.
The one crossing point that was there... Well, at Pyla, they could go backwards and forward. The Greek Cypriots could come into the village of Pyla and go back out. Turkish Cypriots could come in and go back out. Now some of the Turkish Cypriots actually went through because they were being employed, particularly in the peak tourist season, because they were cheap labour.
At Ledra Palace, what could go backwards and forwards were the Armenians. There was an Armenian community mainly in the north, but they travelled backwards and forwards, and both sides allowed it. They just had to check in. That was the first tour.
Face off and cribbing
While I was there, the second tour had all changed. Not only was the place bigger and the roads were tremendously better, because the Turks built a four-lane road, but it was mainly designed to be an airstrip in case they needed it. So when the Greeks saw it, they built one, and then they built more. But the second tour, it had changed. And well, to start with, the general was no longer the boss.
We now had a chief of mission civilian. So all of a sudden, little issues weren't as easy to resolve as they used to be. Like one example, on the first tour, one of the jobs of the military was to make sure no fortifications were moved forward at all, or had extra fortification put on. They could replace what was there, but not add to it. And there was one in the Canadian area where they started to dig a trench, just a slit trench, but it was five feet forward from the line.
So the Canadian battalion centre section up there told them to move it back and they didn't. So all of a sudden, they had a platoon of Greek Cypriot national guard there confronting the Canadians. So the Canadians sent a platoon and gradually built up. So eventually we had a better battalion with a couple of tanks on the Greek Cypriot side and the armour personnel carriers on the UN side facing off each other. But the one thing that was happening at night, all the Greek Cypriot national guard went home, and then came back next morning.
So on one particular night, the general and the battalion command just said, "Put a bulldozer and fill it in," and they did. Came back and they said, "Oh, okay. All over." That was it. Second tour, a similar thing in a slightly different area, but a similar thing. This time, the Turk's trying to move forward, and no you can't confront, because we're now run by a politician or diplomat. We will negotiate.
Well, when I'd left for about five months later, the damn thing was still there and they'd actually moved it forward even further. Now, fortunately, it was in an area where the Greek Cypriots couldn't see, it because it was only up against a UN post. But if the Greek Cypriots had known that they'd moved forward, there would've been a lot of hell raised. But getting a decision out of a politician diplomat was not easy. So things had changed in that respect.
Good relations
We ate out a lot. And you went to the Greek restaurants, you went to Turkish restaurant. There's not much difference between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot. In fact, I heard somebody who said, in fact somebody had done the DNA, and said they are actually closer together than the Turkish Cypriots are to Turks or the Greek Cypriots are to Greeks. Yeah, you went to the restaurants, the restaurants were there.
On the first tour, the Turkish army that was there, the soldiers were never allowed to take their uniform off. So whenever I went north, I'd be doing a lot of saluting when I was in uniform, because they recognized the Australian officers immediately. And we had an excellent reputation with them. And obviously, it goes right back to Gallipoli.
I remember one time I was taking a carton of Victoria beer to our jeweller on the north, who was a Turkish Australian. He'd gone back there and he asked me, because we'd got some imported, and he said, "What can you do?" And I said, "Well, yeah I can sell you one." So I sold him one. But I'm trying to carry a carton of beer and salute the Turkish soldiers all at the same time. But yeah, it was good. We had good relationships everywhere.
The best thing was, the first tour was even better, was giving out in the little villages on both sides. It was great. Second tour, because the whole country, both sides had changed. You had all the students in the north and, the little villages in the south had now become just dormitory rooms, suburbs for the cities, and you didn't get the little villages running like they used to before. It had become sort of just dormitory and people migrating from there to work in the cities each day.
A failed negotiation
The political side on the second tour was something. You had an independent UN group of politicians who were doing the negotiating with both sides, trying to come up with a solution which wasn't happening at all on the first one. It was just sit there, it's rolling along. Nobody's killing each other. So, war hasn't started again, so we are meeting our mission statement.
But second tour, I heard them say... The message came that well, they're flying the Secretary General in, because they've told him that all he's got to do is turn up and both sides will sign the peace agreement and open the borders. And I looked at him and said, "Who said that?" I said, "People are up there in the UN, whatever it is." I said, "It's not going to happen." "Okay, yep. It's going to happen."
So we had the Secretary General flying in. Now, all we had, "He will be arriving at this time on this flight. There will be negotiations. He'll be here four days and he'll be leaving." Nothing else. Plan. Yeah, right. Okay, so we planned the route to get him from the airport to where he was staying. And CYPOL secured that route and cleaned out, did all the bomb checks of everything that was dangerous.
But for the rest of it, we thought, "Well, we don't know where he is going to go. So how's anybody going to know where he is going to go, so we don't have to worry about checking for bombs on routes or anything because we don't know." But the thing is we got his armoured vehicle' it was the number three vehicle for the president of Greek Cypriots. And one of my guys got to be the driver. And he said, "If ever somebody stopped in a hurry in front of us, we were going to hit him," because [00:24:30] that things brakes were bloody awful.
But he came in, and we got them all. Now the first day of the conference, the secretary general drove into the compound with his 17-vehicle convoy. The Turkish Cypriot president, Denktas, drove in with his 17-vehicle convoy. Greek Cypriot president drove in with his 17-vehicle convoy. And the past president from the Greek drove in with his 11 separate convoy.
Now, then they're all going to the chief admissions house for lunch. So I'm sitting down there with a British major and we're trying to figure out how we're going to get these convoys from there and into here, which is a very narrow turnaround; not enough room for five vehicles, never mind 17. And we'd almost come up with an idea. And the young corporal there said, "Excuse me sirs, I wouldn't worry about that." I said, "What?" He says, "Look at the television."
And there was the Turkish Cypriot president and his convoy leaving and going back to north, immediately followed by the Greek Cypriot president heading south. It was over. 40 minutes in of what was supposed to be three days of negotiations. And they both refused to comply or cooperate in way whatsoever, and it was finished.
But I got to meet the Secretary General of the United Nations, and he shook our hands and thanked us. And I got to push a few journalists around, especially the Greek Cypriots thought they ruled the roost there. "No, you're not getting closer to my boss."
Mines in the buffer zone
There was one Australian, a farmer, who went in and drove his tractor, and he hit a mine in his farming field in the buffer zone. Because we were always trying to get farming back into the buffer zones, so we could try and normalise that whole stretch. And it was definitely the patrol track was the dividing line. South of patrol track, the Greeks could farm.
North of the patrol track, the Turks could farm. Turks, first tour, no way. They just did not allow it. The Greeks allowed some, but yeah, this had been all a few years before. And an Australian went in, got him out and brought him back out. There was one UN Land Rover; it was one of our Land Rovers from the earlier times, drove over a mine. Because in fact, when I went there, nobody really knew where they all were.
By the time we got there, everybody knew where they were, they were well marked. And so you didn't worry too much about the mines. You had barbecues sort of 10 metres from the mine field, but they were so well marked, and yeah, everybody knew where they were. But there had been troubles in the past.
Anzac Day
Just on the first tour, the Anzac Day, in the middle of the buffer zone is a Commonwealth war grave cemetery with five Australian/Kiwis, all airmen buried there. So Anzac Day, we have a Dawn service there. The UN in Cyprus allowed each country, each nation to... You had so many public holidays for everybody, but then each nation could have three of their own.
So we had Anzac Day, Australia Day, and Melbourne Cup Day as our public holidays. And every year, there was a service at the cemetery, a Dawn service there. And then you go back to the mess gunfire breakfast with all the dignitaries and everybody invited, and then we'd have a party in the afternoon.
And the first tour, when we got there, standing on the boom behind the cemetery, were Turkey soldiers in uniform, standing there at attention. And at the right time , they presented arms, and it was just awesome to see that.
A lack of road safety
On the first tour, my first demonstration when I was working there, I went and sat down and chatted with the Greek Cypriot, who was running their side of it. And we got talking, and he says, oh he'd just been promoted to be the officer in charge of traffic for Nicosia. And I said, "Yeah." He said, "I hear in Australia you have traffic campaigns." I said, "Yes." He said, "Oh, what do you do?"
So I started explaining how you organise and run a traffic campaign media and all that. And then I got to the hard part. I said, "Then you go out and you enforce the law." And he looked at me, "On everybody?" I said, "Yep. If you pick that particular thing, no matter what it was, you go out and you book everybody that breaks that particular law." "But what if they have a relative who is a senior police officer or a member of parliament, or one of the priests?" "You enforce the law." "Oh, well it was a good idea. I'll put it aside. Not going to be done."
They were killing more on the roads than we were in Australia. And the population, at that stage, it was only 360,000. And that's an act of God. So yeah, road safety was your biggest problem, and as far as I was concerned.
Arrival in East Timor
Well, Habibi had said you can have a vote for independence, and the UN was invited to run it. And it was actually run by the UN. The ballot complete, from start to finish, was run by the UN. Australian electoral commission provided all the electoral material. You had 247 UN police as they are called now, not CIVPOL from all over the world. With me, there was Spanish, Brazilians, Senegalese, Malays, Pakistanis, Australians, Kiwis, I keep forgetting the last one, but yeah eight different nations in 24 police. Oh, Americans were the last one.
Yeah. Now, I was in the Amira Regency. I remember when we arrived, we flew in, in three groups, the Australians. The Australian contingence was 50. And there was three groups flown in one week apart, so it didn't look like it was an all-Australian operation. You mingled in with a bunch of others all the time. And I always went on the last group to fly in.
We flew in. And I met the commissioner, and he told me where I was going. He said, "You'd be going to the regency district of Amira," and I'd be the boss. He said, "But I'll probably have to replace you later on with one of the South American contingent commanders that will be coming in, because they're coming in with large contingents." "Yep, not a problem. I can do whatever job you give me."
The funny thing was, we arrived one morning, in the morning, we were supposed to get a convoy of six vehicles, each three different groups of six to go via three different areas. Two of the convoys turned up and headed off, and two vehicles of my six turned up. And I talked to the drivers, "Oh yeah. Well the other four turned up and went to different direction." Right, now those are four vehicles the UN will never see again.
So we're sitting there, and eventually, we didn't know what we were going to do, but we eventually said, "Right, let's go and load up." Somebody came in with a minivan, and we loaded that, used that to put some stuff in. And we went down and filled up whatever we could from the store. We met JJ. He was a British storeman who ran the place. Excellent guy. Turned a blind eye while we stole him blind, robbed him blind, because he just believed, "I don't need it in here. I need to get it out."
Then we drove to the headquarters there. I walked into the operations room and was met by a liaison officer. And he said, "Well, they're busy." He said, "Sit down." So we sat down and we were just having a coffee. Me and him, well we actually had two, and I could listen. There were two Australian officers in there, and some of the Indonesian senior officers. And it was just pure accusing each other of everything. And there was no attempt to compromise from either side. And it was just a damn mess. And they stormed out, never said hello to me. But I said, "Okay."
Well I finished my coffee, and this young fellow went over, and next, the two officers come down, there's another coffee. And we're sitting down, and said, "Look, I'm sorry, I'm late." Told them the story about the vehicles. And we all agreed I'd never see those four vehicles again. "Right, so what are we going to do?" I asked, I said, "Well, what do you suggest or what do I need to fill in to get an escort for tomorrow to go up to where I want to, and where do you suggest I put my people up for the night?" And he said, "Oh." He was the head of the Brimob in East Timor. Well he said, "Yeah, I will be your escort and we'll go now." It was just a simple matter.
And this is where stuff from the training team and working with people really was excellent. So he became our escort, and we drove to Gleno. And when we got there, there were the other four vehicles already there. They thought that the two I had, were the ones they'd never see again. It was something we learned about the Timorese is, they might try and kill you, but they wouldn't steal from you. It was amazing.
Comparative loss
The UN police job, the mission statement was to advise the Indonesian police, and protect the ballot boxes. That was our job. Now, I stretched both. If I didn't know what was going on, how could I give advice? So I could send people out to investigate different things that were reported to us. If we didn't protect the ballot process, how could we protect the ballot boxes?
And well, the first person I met and sat down and talked to, was the local T and I battalion commander. And basically his main theme early in that conversation was, I'm wearing all my ribbons, because the army guys that helped us with our training said, "One thing with the Indonesians, make sure you wear your ribbons. They know what every one of them means. And make sure as a senior officer, you look good each day." So I did, always. And he is really inquisitive. "Are you really a police officer or are you a soldier that's in disguise?"
And eventually, I was able to convince him, and we actually spoke many times later on. It was interesting. One of his conversations and that conversation he said, "You will probably, being a Vietnam veteran, you will understand how I feel if we are forced to pull out of here." He said, "You lost people in Vietnam, and I'm sure you lost friends." And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Well, I've lost friends here. And if we pull out, then I've lost them for nothing." And it was an interesting statement.
Threats
There were threats. Every time we went to a different village, you could guarantee, within 48 hours, something would arrive at our base saying, "You return there, and you will be killed." That was one time. It was actually a typed letter, just found on the desk, inside the office. Another time, it was a young kid who came in with a written note.
So different ways of getting to us. And I implemented a policy, the minute there was a threat, the very next day, we would be in that village. Now it could be myself or a patrol or the UN military liaison officers we had with us, which initially it was a Malay Lieutenant Colonel and an Irish major. And they were joined, not long after, by a Russia Naval officer, Erie; top fella.
The three of them were good. Now, on the day after a threat was received, at least two of those three would turn up in that village every day. And then the next day, we would go back again, and a couple of times. And then this was our way of saying, "Well, have a go." But really, what I was expecting was they wouldn't do a thing, and we would put a bit of spirit into the village.
I personally adopted a policy of, I would be out and about and seen as much as I possibly could. So if you want to make a target, and this is a decision I made, personally, and I never told anybody, and it's in the book, if you want to make a target of my people, now you don't want my people. I'm the target.
And often, I would come back and my counterpart, who I got to know and we became friends; let's be honest, we were friends, he would abuse me and carry on because, "You've been out without your escort again," because he had Tommy. He said, "Never go without an escort." Well, sometimes I did. I had to. But I had one where I was out with the escort, where we were fired at. And there were all sorts of little things all the way through…
Standing firm
I remember one night in Gleno, in the village, little town, every night, there were three militia posts set up, one at each four; one at each of the three major entrances, and one in the centre of town. Now, when I was coming from the office to the house I lived in, I had to drive past that one. And I went and said, "Well, stuff it." Pulled up, got out, and walked up very slowly. Didn't rush, and they all grabbed their... all they had, were homemade guns. And they're looking at me and we got talking. And one of them had a basic of English. So I said, "Right, I'll come back." And the next time I stopped, there was a bloke there who spoke English. And I got a lot of information from them about what the militia was.
Basically, there was a hardcore group who believed that they should remain part of Indonesia. There was another group that had family that was split across the board between east and west Timor. And they didn't want independence for East Timor yet, they wanted independence for Timor. There was a biggest group, who were just there because it was the safest thing to do. As long as you were a member, your family wasn't going to get based up.
And then there was the worst group, and the smallest group, who were just criminals. This was an opportunity to get away with whatever they wanted to get away with. And at one stage, talking with Fretilin leaders, because I got to know them quite well, he told me that they protected 60 of their members for 18 months, because the Indonesians wanted them, because they had actually been in and killed 19 villagers.
And as soon as the militia were up and running, they switched sides and gone and joined the militia, because they figured that was the safest place to be. And he said they will kill at the drop of a hat. And they were more frightened of them. They had to completely change all their bases and everything because they went across. So they were there all the time.
On the ballot day, the day before, one of my outposts was attacked at about 11:30 at night. They were firing automatic fire into the roof of their house, or just about right up about 2:30 in the morning. And I found out later, when I went back 20 years after and I met a bunch of people, amongst them, two fellas] came up to me there and said, "Mr Jeff, you don't remember us? And I said, "No." "But we were part of the militia." "Oh, right."
One of them said, "I was in at Sabi when we started shooting at your people there on the night before the ballot. Why didn't they run?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, they were supposed to run to you, and then you were all supposed to evacuate and go to Dili, and that would've been the end of the ballot." I said, "You ran into some Australians, didn't you?" "Hmm, yes sir."
Under attack
On the ballot day, I had 21 polling sites. By 3:00 in the afternoon, 14 of them were under attack in one way or another, and we got them all out. I was standing... Well the big, first one came at 12:00. They attacked the one in Gleno itself. I went racing down there and couldn't get my vehicle through because the Poli was stopping it. So I got out and all of a sudden, Poli was stopping me.
And then the sergeant said, "No. The colonel says you can't go in until he says it's safe enough for you to go in. So then right, you can come in, but I have four Poli on every corner." And then finally I go, "None of them come above my shoulders." So the head was completely exposed if somebody wanted to have a shot, but it didn't matter. Went in there, my counterpart was there with a couple of the militia, standing in the background and they were armed with handguns: revolvers, things like that.
You could see one very well dressed, very tall, obviously Indonesian, and I would suggest by his statute, the way he held himself, he was an army officer of some sort, standing amongst the big group of militia that were there that had come in and attacked this place. We reached a negotiation, [00:54:30] we reached an agreement.
It would reopen, but only UN people, UN internationals would take the boats, that all the local staff would not be involved. Because they were accusing them of telling people how to vote. There was an issue behind that, but not a problem. Anyhow, yep, so that's fine. And then the commissioner flew in with a couple of others, and they were heading off to somewhere.
We got it underway and yap, got everything finished. And then from there, I went back when the counterpart stood outside his comms room. And we just managed all the troubles that were happening all over the place, and people got attacked everywhere. That night, they attacked our headquarters.
Gunshots into the building, because I have no idea how many of the local employed staff were sleeping out the front. So we got all them. And the CIVPOL stood out all night. The next morning, when we tried to get our ballots out, they attacked us again. And then a few days later... While that [inaudible 00:55:49], the UN had been attacked a few times before, and every time it evacuated immediately, and then negotiated back in later.
Other places [00:56:00] got attacked and evacuated immediately and went back. But at least, they were attacked after the ballot was finished. We were the only ones attacked on ballot day. And we stayed from the first attack to the end of eight days. And we got out, and we tried to patrol, we did what we could.
At 11:30 on the 4th of September after the ballot, next door had a phone. The UN security officer, and it was my counterpart ringing to tell me that he had been ordered to withdraw my security, withdraw his security from the UN at midday the next day and not see what happened. So that's when we evacuated the next morning.
Evacuation and exhaustion
We were evacuated to Dili. Now, I ended up getting my helicopter flight, I'd been asking for all the time. I wanted to see an aerial view of the district. I had a pretty good idea, because I'd driven all over it. But finally, when we got down there, one of the boys, I sent one off to get food, one off to get water and one off to organise accommodation for the group of us.
And it didn't matter what nationality. And anyhow, one of the other guys was basically in the company said, "I've just broken the rules and been out of my house." He said, "They've stolen everything," he said, "but they didn't touch the fridge. I've got some..." And there was enough for about half a can of beer each and one of the boys said, "Boss, relax. You got us here. We're alive. Somebody else is making the decisions now." Last thing I remember.
The next thing I remember is I'm waking up and I looked up and I thought I'm in inside of a C-130 and I'm on a stretcher. And I sat up and had a drip in. Sat up and the loadmaster was there. And I said, "How'd I get here? He said, "Lay down mate. You're 10 minutes from Darwin." In the last five days, because there was no food available in the town, the town was empty. We each had four days Australian rations. I'd used two of them.
After about 70 plus hours of no sleep, it was about two hours a day. So yeah the body just said... As soon as it's, "Hey, somebody else is doing it," bang. And apparently, they flew me to the airfield in the helicopter.
