Third warrant officer

Transcription

It was my third deployment at that time. I had been with my wife for eight or so years by then and we had a young son. So leaving my wife for the first couple of trips was obviously hard in itself, and by the time I left for Afghanistan I had a one year old son and that made it just that little bit harder. None of us had been to the Middle East generally before. There was a handful of members that had been to Iraq and what not, but generally, a lot of us hadn't been through that before and I was very wide eyed and bushy tailed going into that. We were the first task force to move into Uruzgan in that time that broke away from the reconstruction, sole reconstruction task force duties, where they would go and monitor the engineers building bridges and public things like that. Where we went out with our sole purpose of mentoring the ANA, the Afghan soldiers, and ensuring that they had the facilities, the training, etcetera, and the support to - to continue on with their military presence in that area after we had left. ...you had to switch off your emotions a fair bit 'cause we were seeing a lot of injuries and what not, not just for - from fighting, but a lot of civilian injuries and children who had been injured, you know, by wild dogs and what not. And, you know, you had to become quite cold in that sense. We came into a roughly spring type weather and it was quite mild and nice. Had some pleasant days there. But as we moved into the Christmas period, it became quite cold and, you know, even snowed. And that was an amazing experience, to walk out one morning and the entire desert was covered in snow We were quite lucky in the forward operating bases that we had satellite phones that we could call home on. Essentially they were a double Hesco wall in a large square with four towers in each, a row of tents, you know, a few conexes [conex - prefabricated building], and some very, very basic hygiene facilities. Some had none. Some we were still, you know - had no running water, no showers and that was true for my whole - in one base in particular, true for the whole of my deployment. No running water whatsoever. And towards the end of the trip we were even luckier to have, you know, internet in some of the forward operating bases. No running water or showers but plenty of WiFi. On 4 January, myself and Lieutenant Ben Goolie, now Captain Ben Goolie, took a patrol of approximately 20 ANA to a place called Kakarak. It was known as a very dangerous area. We had been given intelligence from our higher headquarters that, you know, there was some qalas or buildings of interest on that side. We left very early in the morning and patrolled. It was always going to be a long patrol, roughly 18 odd 'k's. And we'd got out to around about the seven and a half kilometre mark incident free, searching a few qalas along the way. We were approximately 300 metres or so from the main house, or the main qala that we were, you know - that was our patrol that we wanted to go and search. And we started moving towards that. We had a group at the front which was my section plus. We had eight, eight or so Afghans and myself pushing forward, and the command group with Lieutenant Ben Goolie to the rear. We were walking down the road in staggered fold, so walking down on either side of the road behind each other, so single file, each side of the road. And the road came to a bit of a slight bend where it pushed off to the right. We'd just moved down past that bend as a rocket propelled grenade went straight through the centre of our section at head height. And it was quite a surreal moment. They actually move quite slow in that sense. And that's one of my most vivid memories from Afghanistan, was that rocket propelled grenade going straight past our heads and, you know, through the centre of the sections at head height. And by the time I sorta had turned my head, that had exploded on a wall right next to the command group and knocked them all on to the ground. From there the - it was a planned ambush, in a sense. From there the ANA soldier in front of me, a couple of metres if that, was shot just above the heart, just in the top of the chest. And it went through his chest, through his lung and went out the back of his shoulder blade. So he fell quite heavily. He was the PKM gunner. We had a few other members move forward, pick up his weapon and return fire. I, myself - I had taken cover by this stage and attempted to apply first aid dressing to that injured soldier, who refused it. The ANA section then started to reorganise themselves and grab ahold of this injured member and start pulling him back, which left one ANA sergeant, which was their section commander, and myself at the front Myself and that sergeant stayed forward of the command group while Lieutenant Ben Goolie was placing the ANA into firing positions under a heavy weight of fire, and moving that injured personnel. He also had an injured ANA soldier who had vision problems and in the end was blinded by that strike of that RPG The entire time was probably about 30 minutes that we were out there in total, just by ourselves, and we held the ground of the advancing enemy. As they started moving forward, they had two fire positions up on a hill to my half right - oh, correction: on top of a qala to my half right, which had fortified areas. I had a 40ml grenade launcher so I released over ten rounds of that into that building and around the surrounds of that. Also, as the enemy moved forward, engaging the enemy as they moved forward, with the ANA sergeant. It was at that stage that I started noticing rounds on the inside of my cover. It was quite comical, you know, looking back now, and it happened in a split second, but I started seeing rounds on the inside of the wall, right in front of my face, you know, a metre away and striking the ground in front of me. In a, in a split second I started, you know, thinking, hey, how are these rounds hitting here when, you know, the enemy that I know of is half right to me. I had no idea. I have a look over my left shoulder which was a barren field at this stage with a couple of trees but no shrubbery or anything like that. And we had an advancing enemy trying to flank us in that sense. So straight away I thought, you know, these guys know they can't advance up the road 'cause the sergeant and myself were there negating that, so they've moved around the rear of their position and started to flank us from the left. So at that stage the ANA soldier and myself sort of looked at each other - and soldiers being soldiers, no - um, he didn't speak English, I didn't speak Pashtu, so he knew to - to keep engaging forward and I turned left and engaged the flanking elements there. So - and - and stopped them from taking our flanking position as well and overrunning us at the front. The ANA sergeant and I then started to move slightly back to where Ben Goolie was, and the command group. So we then started to push on. We went around the back of a small qala complex into what was a 400 odd metre creek line, or a drainage system that they have. And we pushed through that and moved out back on the patrol route, back towards our emergency rendezvous point Just prior to the end of the creek line finishing, soldiers from the Khyber Forward Operating Base, which is a solely Afghani operating base, had heard the gun fire, knew that their mates, their Buman ANA were in contact along with us, and moved down under no orders and and came down to give us assistance We knew the commander from a previous forward operating base - fantastic - and he pushed forward and got ahold of the two injured members and took care of them while we pushed forward approximately a kilometre, a kilometre and a half of open ground. And we were being engaged by almost all cardinal points at that stage as we tried to move along this open ground through the fields and it was quite intense and quite a fast run at some stages. The weight of the gear certainly hampered a sprint, but we got there in the end, So we moved down to a river system which was just shy of our emergency RV. We moved down to the river, got past there. At this stage we had a - an Australian platoon, motorised platoon in PMVs, move forward and pick us up at that stage and take us back to Buman, a sight for sore eyes. And quite relieved on the drive back. It was quite - quite surreal once we - we got back to Buman. It was hard to let go. You wanted to - to congratulate everyone and get on with it, but we still had the two injured members to treat. So on the way back we certainly called for CASEVAC and medical support to be waiting when we got there. We were quite - quite happy to be back. I mean, it hadn't sunk in then and the adrenaline was still flowing. It probably took a few hours post evacuation of those injured Afghanis to realise, hey, we just got out of something that we probably shouldn't have. And quite a, you know - a solemn mood. It wasn't high-fives or hugs all round or anything like that. It came in a few days later and - from the intelligence reports... ...we had walked into what was an insurgent shura, or insurgent meeting, with a number of high value targets and their bodyguards.... ...And they knew we were coming and they were quite well prepared. So in a sense, yeah, extremely lucky to get out of there You know, I wouldn't change anything that I did, or anything that the team did, or the way that I would have gone over there, at any stage. You know, it's made me a better person now. As a whole, I think it was worth it. It was - ah, I thought we did really well - good things. In that first mentoring team that we had, for, you know, the 60, 65 blokes that we took over in the team, we did amazing work for what we had.