Whose Name We Share

50 On October 7 th 1999, select groups of the 103 rd Battery deployed to East Timor by air with the wider regiment under the 5 th /7 th Battalion Group as part of INTERFET (International Force East Timor). The Battery provided members to fill spots as vehicle drivers, filling agreed upon vacancies within 5/7’s various Companies as well as Regimental Police whose straightforward role saw them primarily performing security operations around headquarters and the CML was integrated within their companies. The arrival of the battery and 5/7 allowed the other battalions to move out to the western borders of Timor and facilitate the arrival of other international forces. The primary area of operations was Dili, the capital, and the battery predominantly deployed there in 1999 but spent a small amount of time in the western border towards the end of the first rotation. INTERFET was a multi-nation effort, primarily consisting of Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. Other countries involved included Brazil, Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the United States and more. Operating under the United Nations umbrella was a challenging endeavour and at times frustrating. The Battery’s CML was at one point even criticised for being too active in its role when the expectation was that since they were military they should stay in their lane. This of course was not the Battery’s style whatsoever. Matt Anderson and his CML party discovered valuable intelligence in terms of the East Timorese Society and Political Structures which informed the wider Battalion’s operations. The 103 CML worked with the UN Food Programme to revise the fundamentals of how food aid was provided and were favourably given the lead to distribute a month’s worth of food aid to civilians in a 24 hour period. This freed the members up to conduct traditional security tasks and to enjoy some down time, which was hard to come by. The tempo in Timor was incredibly high and the demands of the operation were taxing on all members involved. The battery across all levels from BC down were subjected to many disconcerting things throughout their stay. This included acts of vigilante violence as well as interactions with victims who had been accused of working with the milita. Many members of the public had been subjected to violence behind closed doors for a variety of reasons including taking advantage of the political situation to settle old scores. This occurrence of violence is what made the stadium in Dili a noteworthy landmark, which had been converted to become a refugee camp to house those displaced by the unrest. A stadium however is not designed to house people and reportedly had become, for lack of a better term, a cesspool. The 103 rd Battery’s CML was keen to turn the refugee camp to a stadium again, which would ultimately demonstrate a return to normalcy to the locals as well as a sense of INTERFET’s progress. With the logistical nature involved with issuing safehouses and providing repatriation efforts as well as clean-up it was a slow process. After much effort from all sectors involved, the conversion was eventually achieved. This was even to a standard high enough to host the Tour of Duty Concert for the Troops on the 21 st December 1999, headlined by none other than Kylie Minogue for approximately 4000 people.