Pre-army life
Prior to joining the army, I'd taken on a variety of jobs. Some were outdoors. Some were in IT. Yeah. But I'd spent some time in the Reserves earlier so I had some military experience. But I worked in IT with Foster's Brewing Group, or Carlton United Breweries. I was a... What was the word? I looked after their computers basically.
Then I ran kids' camps for a while for a few years and then I worked at the outdoor... Well, that was outdoor stuff because I organized everything and ran activities and did risk assessments and that sort of thing. And then I worked repairing packs, rucksacks and tents. I've done lots of jobs. Lots of different jobs.
The Melbourne University Regiment
I was at a place called Melbourne University Regiment. They were, they produced a lot of officers for World War I, World War II. They just cranked them out basically. But, when I was in there, it was recently in the 80s it was with SLRs and greens, Vietnam-era stuff. Our trainers were Vietnam vets. It was good training, it was a good unit.
I saw a friend I knew from ages ago. He was in a tram, in uniform. I was studying at the time to be a teacher, which is another story, and I said, "Oh". Caught up with him. I said, "Where did you go, what are you doing?", and he told me what he's up to, and I said, "Oh that sounds interesting". So I joined up. I was in scouts with this fellow. So I signed up and I was with him for probably about three, four years. It was really good. Yeah.
Motivation for enlistment
In '99, that's when I made approaches and I tried to line up my work to match... I knew I was going to join as a Reservist. But at that stage, the training for reservists and full-timers were exactly the same which I really support. I think it's a really great idea.
So, I went in '99 and that was as a result of a reaction I suppose to what was happening in East Timor, which I thought, well it was quite widely accepted that the defence force was really undermanned, under-resourced, and it was an important job to do, in East Timor, so that's why I signed up.
Joining Signal Corps
I don't know what the enlistment rules are now, but back then, before joining I looked up the website and go, "Oh, what will I do, what will I do?" I could sign up into my corps at that stage. I think that at various stages you just have to sign up as general enlistment and then be sent off to whatever specialisation. But at that stage I signed up to join Signal Corps, and my role at the time, and it has changed I don't know what it is now, but it was OP-SPEC Comms, Operators Specialist Communications, and so I marched out of there as a signaller.
Attached to Special Forces
I wanted to do something where I thought I would be useful, where I could contribute. So here I was, a signaller at the school of Sigs in 2000, and then I did really well. I put in a good effort. Whilst I was there, unbeknown to me, they were looking for good signallers to go to Special Forces. So, I was asked near the end of the course, when all the results, most of the results were in, and they could see how everyone was travelling, whether I would consider being posted to Western Australia.
And I was a little bit taken back because as far as I knew, the normal procedure for anyone posting there would be one of two ways: one is either they became, they did the Carter course, they did the selection, got their beret and were posted there. Or they were in an existing unit done really well and picked for whatever reason to go there. It was unusual to be going straight from the School of Signals straight over there, and I said look," I'll do my best" and I accepted and was very privileged to go there.
Commitment to Afghanistan
Everybody wanted to go. But the way it happened was rather shocking. I remember waking up the morning of September 11 and Laura said, "Look what's on tv. I was sort of bleary-eyed and looked and said, "Oh, wow". It looked just like a movie. And then we went into work, later that day, where we're watching tv again, watching this footage, and we just looked at each other and we thought "Oh, we're going to be busy". And we were. So, pretty much as soon as it happened, Australia committed to the U.S., almost immediately.
The Prime Minister was there in the U.S. at the time, and we are allies. So the commitment was there and we were there, I wasn't there, but the unit made its presence there pretty much right from the start that year. And I was in that first rotation the following year. It was, it's been going on for a long time, but in that first year, it was pretty rough.
Bartering and an entrenching tool
Before I was deployed, I got prepared. So I brought all these bartering items, I knew that I would be bartering over there, and one of the things I brought over was a slouch hat, brand new. I just went to the store, brand new, all fitted out. And I swapped that out for a set of Cortex jacket and trousers. That was my trade which worked out really well actually. Their wet weather gear, it was nice. We relied heavily on them for things like aircraft, so their gear was generally better but ours was pretty good to.
But little things like, I wanted to get an entrenching tool that can fold up, because I know that in a previous, one of my colleagues, I mentioned his name before, Jock Wallace, he was called out in the QRF response and they'd landed, and they found themselves basically in an ambush. And they had people using their hands and their bayonets to dig into... they were in a bad fight. And I thought, "Oh no. I'm not going to get stuck in that thing." So, I carried around an entrenching tool, so if I did have to, I'd have to use something better than a knife in my hands to get underground.
Briefings and training
We got briefs, we got lots of different types of training. I just remember lots of it was specific to that theatre, lots of it was just in case. We had, I remember fumbling around with my gas mask and the canisters. Even preparing for that sort of threat of NBC warfare. We had training on mines, I remember the instructor with all these different types of mines, Russian, Italian, all sorts of mines, just nasty little buggers.
That was a big thing that was impressed upon us because the place is just littered with them, just everywhere. The Russians sowed millions and millions of mines, and then the Taliban, they dig them up and reuse them for their own purposes.
Taliban caches
They had a lot of stuff cached up. When the Russians invaded, they brought a lot of ordinance. The Taliban, they captured a lot of that and they just reused it. They had caves just stockpiled, tons and tons of things. So they had a lot of equipment. They were pretty worried, I know one of the big fears at that time was did they have any anti-aircraft missiles.
That was the big question because I don't know the exact ins and outs but I do know that when the Russians were there, the Americans were backing the Mujahideen. One of things they did give them was, from my understanding, is they had some surface-to-air missiles. Just portable ones, but I don't know exactly whether they were all fully accounted for, but we were worried about that.
Bagram base and amenities
We did move around a bit, but most of it was based in a place called Bagram. Bagram is a former Russian military airbase. It was there, we were, we occupied a fairly large place. At that time we were there, it was very, very basic, incredibly basic, and we occupied a perimeter position on that. We had basic, we had this building that didn't have any power, we did have to run a generator.
So that base was, even though it could potentially come under threat, most of the action really happened outside rather than on the base itself, although people did try and shoot at the place and sneak in, all sorts of things. Amenities, so I had slept in a stretcher, like a camp stretcher for pretty much all that time. We got inventive. So we got the boxes that we had, we used the American meals, MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, they came in these really sturdy cardboard boxes. So I would collect those and we'd make ourselves a little furniture like shelves, and you just make yourself a home really, but we carried what we needed to do. We had a very light logistic footprint, and we didn't need an awful lot of resources, we were very…
Our shower was initially, we used, like those camp showers canvas buckets, and we'd tip that in, hoist it up a tree and that was the showers. Then that did change because the Americans they'd put up these showers which were not too far away, so after a while, this is months in we'd walk to their showers and just use theirs, so it did change. But we ate MREs for, I can't remember exactly, I mean this is almost 20 years ago. But we ate MREs for a long time because we didn't have any cooks, we didn't have any fresh rations for ages and then eventually that changed and they got people in and it was just lettuce, tomatoes, it was fantastic. So these things, logistics, amenities, they did change over time, we had port-a-loos for toilets.
I remember one day, we shared a lot of logistics with the Americans, they were kings, they were absolute masters at this, and they had a water truck one day to refill our water. Our water is housed in these like gigantic bladders, I don't know how, they were just huge, they take up a room. They were just, I don't know how many thousand litres. So this truck would come in, and they said, "Oh, we've come to refill your water". They were basically an American crew with some Afghani workers. And so they filled up our water, and they'd go, "Okay, that's your stuff for your ablutions. Now where's your stuff for the whole of your base" and we go, "No. That was it." So we ran so minimally they just couldn't believe that we didn't take up much resources. Yeah, it was basic.
A biblical landscape
It was vast and mountainous. Where we're based, it was a plain, a flat plain. I mean there are some low-lying hills. And in the distance, it was just mountains. I mean you can look it up on the internet. You could just see for miles and miles, everything was long-range. So that meant when people went out on patrol, a lot of times they didn't even cam (camouflage) up. This is like, extreme from jungle warfare to desert warfare where jungle it's engagement in meters and here it's in kilometres.
So there's not a point in camming (camouflage) up your face when they can see your silhouette two kilometres away...lot's of rocks. What really dictated the, geographically was the mountains. So that's what everything revolved around, where the valleys were, where the high peaks were. Geography, where the rivers where we often had the populations centres. It was very stark. I've heard the term other people use, biblical, and they would probably be right
Recreation and downtime
We didn't have a day off. So it was work every day. Recreation, you had to be inventive. I made use of my time when I wasn't working, I would socialise, I would chat with Americans, go around Bagram and see what was there and who's who, what's what. And things slowly changed after a while. They, I think after a few months in, they put in a cinema. When I say cinema, it was like, they got a hall and they put a projector at the back and people would sit on the floors and watch film. That probably didn't happen until late in the year. T
hey opened up a Red Cross there, I used to drop by there sometimes and check out what was going on. What we'd do sometimes is you find a way, because you do need to have some downtime. When I went over there, I thought about it and I thought, "Oh, what will I do", because I can only carry so much. So I bought myself a stainless steel teapot and a whole bunch of different tea, so when I had some quiet time, I would have a cup of tea.
And I would have this choice and it was my, and it didn't take up very much space, but it was my little, I suppose luxury time to just be able to have a cup of tea. But really, it was to visit other people and see what was going on. So I often would visit the Yanks next door and the engineers and see what they were doing.
Shopping at the bazaar
That's probably something a lot of people, in later deployments, didn't have as much of, we would go to the local bazaars and barter with people, when we could, when there wasn't a job on. We would interact with them that way. There was quite a few of them who spoke very good English. Shopping there in a bazaar was fascinating. I remember walking down one of the, they don't have any power, so you'd be walking down the street and someone would come and, "Mister, mister. You come to my shop. Come. Mister, mister." And I said, "Well, okay." So they'd come in and they'd flick on their generator so they could turn on all their lights, and they'd try to sell you, and you can buy anything there.
They had a lot of AK-47s and I don't know. Pistols, all sorts of things. They had a lot of Russian paraphernalia, they'd go from things like that to things like queen size fur blankets. I'm talking about, I don't know what it was, mink, but it was just luxury stuff. You could buy, wow. So they had some interesting things in their shops.
Friend or foe?
Inside Bagram, it's pretty controlled, outside of Bagram, it's not so much, because of the proximity and they don't want to have any fights, they do behave in general. I didn't trust them, no way. Absolutely no way. They do so many borderline things, like they had somebody there who was shot and he was firing, there were firearms everywhere. He was shooting near a sentry post, and of course, you're going to get shot. He wasn't killed, he was injured. And he goes, "Oh, I was shooting at a bird." Right, okay, you're near a defence, there's a sentry box there and you're shooting at a bird.
There was somebody there, they had a boy where we were passing and we're driving through in trucks and he had a knife and he jumped up and tried to cut someone's throat. I mean, he missed by a mile. The trooper just let it go, and the kid just laughed and just made like it's a joke. So the threats always there and the people you meet on the street, they might be shaking your hands one day, and the next day they'll be setting up IEDs to blow you up and shoot you…
Everybody had weapons. It was really hard to distinguish between someone who was armed against you or that was part of the tribal norm, because there was a lot of inter-tribal rivalry and fighting. And we're coming into that situation, I'm talking in general, Australians or even Americans coming into that situation, it's different politics, different sense of normal. We couldn't tell, we could not tell.
Signaller duties
I was a signaller, so communications is my bag. They have a saying in Sig school, you fight for comms, and that's probably even more so today compared to 100, 200, 300, 5000 years, signals have always been an important part of communication and control of your fighting elements. So we had a number of different roles, we got rotated to do different things.
So there was some people who would be going out, some people who would be staying more and doing Comms-Send, which is Communications Centre duties. There's always something happening 24/7. And then there'd be other duties, like you have sentry duties, either at the front or on the roof. We had a 50-cal machine gun set up there because as I said we were part of a perimeter so you have to work along with the other parts of the base so if you did come under attack you would be just one strong point of many they'd need to overcome. So there's always duties that were not signals related, but just soldier duties. A lot of it was Comms and stuff.
Sometimes we'd fly around the country, sometimes we'd drive. I also was rotated through what they call a QRF, which is Quick Reaction Force. My predecessors in the previous rotations is a very interesting experiences. People like Jock Wallace who ended up writing a book about his... I've never had anything as dramatic as him, he probably had the most dramatic one. So there was fort vehicle, the bulk of my stuff, although I did do various things, was on radio picket, because there's always somebody on air 24/7 and that it just an absolute must. So a lot that was doing that.
Patrolling
By the time they got to my rotation they had some not good situations in previous... so they were more reluctant to embed us in patrols. This was particularly true after a colleague of mine who was not Beret qualified, I wasn't Beret qualified, they called us Black Hats, although they were a deep Navy blue. But we were just called Black Hats, and Black Hats have often gone out and done patrols and done things with the other members of S.A.S.R. but they were much more reluctant to do that by the time of my rotation.
Jeff Craig, he ended up being in a bad situation, they caught up in a firefight where, from my understanding, they had these positions set up for inter-tribal warfare rather than actually defending or fighting against coalition forces. And they didn't know that at the time, they stumbled into that and they got into some really bad fights and I believe some civilians were killed in there and they didn't want anything like that to happen again.
A preference for helicopters
The Chinook was a very popular aircraft that we used, Black Hawks and Chinooks. I didn't mind them, I didn't like going out in vehicles. Yeah, helos, helicopters. I didn't mind aircraft, I didn't like going out in vehicles. I didn't really want to go out...
Well I should say to that, there's a preference, helos are good because they didn't hit IEDs. They didn't have, well they did have RPGs and they did take out a few of them, so I can't say they were... Yeah, there were a few helicopters shot down. But in general they were safer than being in a truck. I didn't mind.
Frodo
I felt a little bit like Frodo. Sounds amusing but one of the things, one of the jobs I had was handling the cryptography. We would sometimes need to physically go out to different places and change or update their crypto. That was one of the tasks we had. It was pretty good because we'd go out and I'd have this stuff on me and you just had to have everybody armed to the teeth and they were there to protect you.
Americans
The Americans were very generous and they were our friends and allies, they still are our friends and allies, so we stand by them. But they had different grades of troops there, so some of them were really good, some of them were not so good. They had different roles, they had different jobs. A lot of the Americans I met there were, how would I say it, they went to uni, they went to college, I think how they call it. They went to college and they had a deal that if you did reserve, join the reserves, they'd pay for your college fees. A lot of them didn't realize that war would start up, and then after they finished their training, their card would be called in, and they'd say, "Okay. You're a reservist, you did that training, we paid for your college fees and all, we've a got war." So a lot of them really weren't expecting to be in a conflict or to be even called up for any sort of service.
So there was a lot of engineers, they had an awful lot of engineers there that were recently come out of college, and they had a limited understanding of the war. They did their job I suppose, they did a lot of mine clearance, lots and lots of mine clearing. But they just handled, sometimes interpersonal skills with the Afghanis really were a bit worrying. There was one incident there where, I wasn't there it was recalled to me, where a helicopter had some engine problem and had to land.
So they landed in a field what appeared to be empty but lo and behold, all these people start milling around and the Americans, it was both Americans and Australians on the helo, the Americans hopped out and did what you would expect. They did a 360 degree defensive perimeter around the helicopter and the Australians climbed out, they went out and they shook everyone's hands and said g'day, they said hello. That was they needed to do, is to de-escalate. Just to be able to, and I think it makes a big difference in just how you treat people. We were there, it was impressed upon us that it's not our country, it's their country. How would you like the shoe to be put on the other foot? Another nation in your place? So we tried to be very respectful where we could.
I remember there was a time there, this is not far from where I was in Bagram, and they had a roadwork party, supervised by American engineers, and the work party were all these locals and they had picks and shovels. Thank God I didn't have that job, I wouldn't like having a pick and go pick, pick, pick, boom. But they were walking down the street and this either an officer or NCO was riding along the main road on top of his Humvee and he was yelling at these workers to get out of the way. He was saying, "Get out of the effing road. Can't you see... ", and I thought to myself, "What a silly way." He didn't think anything of it, but I thought to myself, for starters, that work party was under American control already.
He should have just said to the person in charge saying, "Look, buddy. Can you get your men off the road, because we need to do this or whatever?" But instead, he just wanted to throw his weight around saying, "Oh, you get out of...", and I thought to myself, if I was one of these on the work party, as I said, if I was like a 16-year old adolescent there, I would go home that night and say to Dad, "Look, Dad, I wasn't sure before, but I'm going to join Uncle Achmed, and I'll help him with his job and I'll do what he asks me to do."
It would be enough to tip someone over to saying, "I don't think I'm going to fight them " to saying, "Yeah, I hate them, I'm going to fight them ". And things like that, you've got to be smarter, and you've got to be more respectful. So , that was the bad side. But, on the fighting side, they'd do anything they could for you. They were brave. And I'm only seeing little snippets here and there, from what I saw, they could probably relate to the locals a little bit better.
