by Rob Maylor
We scanned the feature in detail from left to right to ascertain whether or not there were more individuals up there. This guy was on the far left, and 4RAR had somehow ‘seen’ someone on this feature also. Orders for a mortar fire mission were being given by the mortar fire controller (MFC) to the mortar section, which had three ‘tubes’ (mortars). Bang! One mortar was released and splashed onto the right-hand side of hill. The MFC gave a correction to his section.
Dave and I rode down to them on our 6 x 6 Polaris ATVs to see what they were firing at, and to my amazement they described the bloke we had been observing for the last hour and a half. Bang! Another spotter round was sent flying to start the MFCs bracketing procedure. Dave politely let the MFC know that the bloke they were trying to target was on the opposite end of the ridgeline. The MFC didn’t want a bar of our advice, so we sat back with our binoculars and watched the show.
‘Fire for effect!’ the MFC ordered his section and round after round was sent flying. All the time we were watching the area to see what our man was doing. The MFC then corrected his mortars onto a new location which saw his rounds disappear over the back of the ridgeline. Dave and I gave each other a very confused look. The MFC then declared, ‘Target destroyed, end of fire mission!’ Dave turned to me and said, ‘How do you call “target destroyed” when you can’t see if it has been destroyed–that is if there ever was a target up there!’ I had my doubts also. We rode back up to the rest of our patrol and they couldn’t see what the MFC was firing at either, but our man had disappeared over the back of the feature. Someone had given these guys the wrong target indication.
That was pretty much the last contact of that trip. It opened my eyes to the command structure of the enemy, which was quite loose. Some of the commanders were old-school from the Mujahideen days against the Russians, and good at wheeling and dealing their fighters; some of the younger guys coming through weren’t as confident or as aggressive. Either way, when rounds are winging past your ears it doesn’t matter who they are coming from; they are just as dangerous.
By the time we left Afghanistan it was January 2006 and when we reached Kuwait on the way home those of us who had come over as reinforcements picked up another job: personal security detail (PSD) for the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF), Angus Houston. He was on a tour of Iraq and Afghanistan and we were ready and waiting for him when he arrived in Kuwait. We had a small enclave inside an American base and he met us there. It was no more than a meet and greet but even at that early stage we all took to him immediately.
Myself and one other bloke were the recce party for this job and with the help of a liaison officer from the regiment we visited all the venues on his schedule a week before to ensure the smooth running of the PSD. Once the task had started we were the daily reconnaissance team that moved ahead to every venue and approved the route. If there was an incident or blockage on the route, the PSD would be diverted and we’d have to approve another. At the venue we would clear it and give the team leader the ‘all clear’ for the motorcade to move in.
The CDF invited us to have dinner with him one evening, to share ideas on kit and equipment. This was also an opportunity for him to guage how things were going with us, and a chance for us to express our ideas.
To protect someone’s life by sacrificing your own plays on your mind a fair bit. It certainly ran through mine occasionally as we travelled through Baghdad and I rehearsed a multitude of scenarios in my head. We were constantly alert, always seeking dodgy looking areas, vehicles or characters and thinking, ‘What if?’
The PSD was incident free and now I was looking forward to getting home to George and the girls.
13
Crash!
I had completed both my corporal’s courses by 2005 and promotion came through early in 2006, just before my return to East Timor. It was a big jump from the deserts of Afghanistan to the sweltering tropics of Timor but at least I was with the SAS this time.
In February, 404 Timorese government soldiers, out of the regular strength of about 1,500, deserted their barracks and towards the end of the month they were joined by 177 more. The troops were ordered to return to their posts in March, but refused, and were relieved of duty. They were later joined by some members of the police force.
Foreign Minister José Ramos-Horta said early in April that a panel would be established to hear their complaints but said, ‘They are not going to be brought back into the army, except on a case-by-case basis when we establish the responsibilities of each individual in this whole incident.’
On 25 April, the former soldiers and their civilian supporters, mostly unemployed youths, marched through Dili in protest. The march turned violent when they attacked a market run by people from the east of the country. The protests continued over the next few weeks and on 28 April the former soldiers clashed with government forces. Five people were killed, more than 100 buildings were destroyed and about 20,000 Dili residents fled the city.
On 4 May, Major Alfredo Reinado, along with 20 military police from a platoon under his command and four other riot police, defected and joined the rebel soldiers, taking with them two trucks full of weapons and ammunition. After joining the soldiers, Reinado made his base in the town of Aileu in the hills south-west of Dili. There he and some military police guarded the road leading into the mountains.
Violent gangs roamed the streets of Dili, burning down houses and torching cars. The civilians who fled Dili camped in tented cities nearby or in churches on the outskirts of the capital. On 12 May, the then Prime Minister John Howard announced that although there had not been any formal requests for assistance from the Government of East Timor, Australian forces were standing by, with HMAS Kanimbla and HMAS Manoora moving to northern waters in preparation.
The violence escalated late in May, as one government soldier was killed and five wounded in a skirmish. Ramos-Horta sent out an official request for military assistance to Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Portugal.
We had already strategically moved up to Darwin and had begun planning and training for the job ahead. A company of 4RAR (now called 2 Commando Regiment) joined us as our cordon force. The majority weren’t airborne-rappel or fast-rope trained, so we spent a couple of days getting the boys up to speed. It also meant myself and a few other guys gained valuable instructor qualifications during this time. Shortly after that, things in Timor calmed down slightly and I was sent back to Perth for a week to complete the SAS roping course that I had missed in 2003 due to my knee operation.
About three days into the course the boys deployed to Timor; I was disappointed that I had missed it and was keen to get over with them. As the boys arrived, there was trouble in Dili and they reacted soon after.
I flew there direct at the end of the week and was assigned as 2IC of a patrol commanded by SE. We were responsible for Xanana Gusmão’s close personal protection and security for the next two months.
XG, as we called him, lived up in the hills with his Australian wife Kirsty and their children. We would travel there from our accommodation at the airport each morning to escort him to his office. He’s very much a people’s man and that made it tough to protect him. We’d ask him to change his routine, vary his route (which is not easy in a place with so few roads) and vary timings. We also asked if he could close his car window because it was all too easy for someone to walk or ride up beside his car and drop a grenade into his lap. But he wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘I love the people and the people love me. They wave to me, I wave back.’ And he did that every day, to and from the house.
There were a couple of crowd situations that had the potential to be dangerous, but the locals just wanted to get up close to him. However, we had a job to do and couldn’t afford to lower our standards. We formed an outer cordon around him close enough to respond to any threat. He also had his own trained security team alongside him, so he was pretty secure. After a while we figured we’d be hard pressed to find someone who’d attack XG at that stage, alt
hough it did happen a year or so after we had left the country. On 11 February 2008, national television reported that the motorcade of Gusmão had come under gunfire one hour after President José Ramos-Horta was shot in the stomach; according to the Associated Press, the two incidents raised the possibility of a coup attempt. I suspect whoever fired the shots was paid an awful lot of money to carry out the task.
XG’s office was well protected and his own East Timorese guards provided 24-hour security for him. On arrival at his office in the mornings the recce team would talk to the guys on the gate asking them if anything had happened or if they’d noticed anything out of the ordinary overnight. Most of the time they said no, so the boys would go ahead and clear the office to make sure there was nothing planted there waiting for him.
We also had to look after Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Alkatiri as well because we couldn’t be seen to be showing political favouritism, but they had separate teams. However, the fact is that Alkatiri was organising people from outside Dili and paying them to travel to the capital to stir up trouble. Half of them didn’t even know who Alkatiri was, they’d just take the $20 and do as they were told.
SE was the personal security officer (PSO) and placed himself in a position so he could react to any threat or danger to XG’s safety but also maintained his freedom of movement as much as possible. I organised the boys into shifts for the jobs we had to fulfil and maintained a link with SE.
A couple of weeks into the job, John Howard and Angus Houston came to visit XG at his office. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) arrived a few days earlier to do their security evaluation and received a brief from SE. The AFP also had a unit from their overseas recovery team.
These blokes were dressed almost identically to the GNR (Portuguese special police), who were also involved. Every man wore black boots and black military-style cargo pants and a black T-shirt two sizes too small, black sunglasses, a belt kit and a chest rig. Everything was black and tight enough to stop you from producing kids. It might look cool but not the most appropriate gear for that heat in Timor, I’m afraid.
I was providing security at the door by that stage and John Howard was as pleasant as always. Angus Houston recognised me from the PSD I did for him, so he stopped for a quick chat.
Part and parcel of working in the tropics is the constant war against harmful bacteria, especially when sanitation is overlooked, so 24-hour stomach upsets are very common. And when I went down with one I just wanted to curl up and die. The heat and humidity didn’t help things and neither did spewing and shitting myself at the same time at XG’s office. I would’ve normally been embarrassed but I was too sick to care less.
From what I could gather on the ground, the political trouble really arose from a power struggle between Mari Alkatiri on the one hand and XG and José Ramos-Horta on the other. XG forced Alkatiri to resign in June and Ramos-Horta replaced him as prime minister but even then the new prime minister also had his eye on the presidency. But he and XG got along really well and they weren’t going to start fighting each other. They knew that would have torn Timor apart.
The place had calmed down by the time we left, but it’s always going to be a problem until they sort out the economy and stop the corruption. The East Timorese are nice people but we were all anxious to get home once the job was done. We flew direct to Perth and George was waiting with Lauren and Ash. We had bought a nice home in the northern suburbs of Perth within easy travelling distance of Campbell Barracks. And by now we were getting financially sound and house prices were on the rise which meant we had a bit of equity behind us. George continued her studies and started a degree in psychology at Edith Cowan University, which wasn’t too far away.
I had always answered any questions she had about my work but being from a military family she knew what not to ask. And of course she knew the risks that came with being in the regiment. But neither of us were prepared for what happened next when, out in the Pacific Ocean, death tapped me on the shoulder.
The crash of the Blackhawk helicopter off Fiji that killed two guys when it smashed onto the flight deck of the Kanimbla, spun out of control, landed in the ocean and sank has always been presented by the authorities as simply a training exercise gone wrong. But in fact we were on core business, preparing to rescue Australian citizens. When the call came, 1 Squadron was picked to carry out the task. I was instructing on the SASR sniper course at the time, but 1 Squadron were short on snipers so the whole course was deployed. We flew east and boarded the Kanimbla, which reached the standby area off the coast of Fiji four days later. There we began rehearsing several scenarios that might present themselves should the need to conduct the recovery arise.
The Blackhawk guys were working up their own training of dry roping serials while we were conducting aerial fire support activities. The dry roping serial involved positioning the helicopter over the Kanimbla while the crew practised the calls they would make to each other when our guys fast roped down from the helicopter to the surface. On the approach to the Kanimbla the pilot would turn and flare, taking the nose up to bring the speed down, then level off above the deck. The two ‘loadies’ on board would go over their hand-signals and calls over the radio, the pilots would acknowledge this and go through their calls as well.
At the same time I was supervising a sniper scenario where we would provide fire support from the helicopter. I followed the standard format–the sniper supervisor tells the pilot where he wants to position the aircraft, and once there the snipers can engage designated targets. Arcs are limited from the door of the aircraft and you also have to be mindful of the step fitted to the underside and the rotor blades above. You can get the pilot to roll the aircraft 10 or 15 degrees and he’ll do that quite happily to get a door shot. Otherwise you can tell the pilot to move the tail left or right, or whatever you need to open up the arcs.
On the day of the crash I took the place of one of the other PCs who was crook. We were going to do a few dry roping serials and then we would practise a dry helicopter sniping serial. Before we boarded we went through the mandatory briefings and safety precautions. There was a little bit of waiting around before we headed out to the aircraft, which was being wheeled out of the superstructure onto the flight deck. I noticed Bingers chilling out and relaxing towards the back end of the hanger. When the time came we put our life vests on and moved out to tail number 221. I sat on a coiled 90-foot (27-metre) fast rope that was secured to the floor by a ratchet strop just inside the right side door and clipped my strop to one of the rings on the floor; Bingers (now Captain Mark Bingley) was in charge and he and Grizz started their pre-flight checks.
I had borrowed a set of Peltor earmuffs from one of the blokes that I could plug into the Blackhawk communication system to talk to the crew and pilots. Comms worked fine until the engine was started and then I couldn’t hear a thing.
We went into an orbit to wait for the other two aircraft to get airborne, and flew about 10 kilometres in front of the ship. We then turned and came back approaching the bow. This approach was going to be the first of a series of dry roping serials for the crew to square away their calls and drills. No-one was actually going to fast rope. There were two ropes coiled on the floor, one on either side, and just in from the doors. There were two blokes sitting on the floor in each doorway and Shep, who was on the rear seat recording the action on a video camera. The sliding doors were open and locked into place.
It all went according to plan until we approached the ship. We came in from the bow and turned hard left in the direction of the flight deck. Bingers tried to put the aircraft into a flare over the deck, and then I suddenly noticed that the engine started to make a really high-pitched noise, and then realised that we were rapidly descending.
I remember hearing someone shouting ‘Shit!’ over the headphones. We were going to crash. The flight deck was rushing towards us and I thought, ‘This is going to hurt; if I’m sitting up I’ll smash my back,’ and I tried to make myself horizon
tal to the floor but I didn’t quite make it. As it hit the flight deck I smashed into the floor of the aircraft face first, probably making the impact even worse for me. I can still remember hearing the impact of the crash, and a high-pitched screeching noise, then a feeling of centrifugal force as the aircraft began to spin. My quick-release strop tightened, stopping me from being flung out of the door. I could hardly breathe. I bashed my face quite badly on impact and then lost consciousness as the helicopter plunged into the water.
I came to underwater with a lung full of ocean. I remember initially seeing lots of silver bubbles, realising how quiet it was, then realised what was happening. The Blackhawk was sinking fast and I was being dragged down with it by my strop. Both side doors had been locked in the open position so we could conduct our practice, and luckily they were still open. I carried out a drill which is used for emergency braking while abseiling. If you run into difficulty and your hands have come free from the rope or figure 8 descender, the drill is to clap your hands onto the rope in front of you and drag them to the body to make contact with the descender and regain control. I used this to find the quick release device that was clipped onto a steel ring on my belt.
It released instantly as I pulled on the lanyard, but the aircraft was sinking so fast that I hit the roof on the inside. I could see the opening of the door, as the light was still coming through. As I reached towards the door I grabbed hold of the roping anchor point and pulled myself out. I was now about 20 metres deep and could see the bottom of the ship. I was in serious trouble. I instinctively reached down and pulled the toggle on my life vest to inflate it from a CO2 canister, but it just hissed for what seemed like ages. It didn’t inflate because the gas had been overly compressed due to the water pressure at that depth. Initially I thought that I’d be lucky to make it to the surface, but I wasn’t going to die like that. I had too much to live for.