No Front Line by Chris Masters

Author:Chris Masters
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2017-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

As with Rotation VIII, the winter of 2009–2010 drew on a reduced task force of close to 250 personnel, mostly from the 1st Commando Regiment. Among the reservists was the usual smattering of police and emergency services workers as well as a real estate agent, a lawyer, a haberdasher and a creative director from an advertising agency.

When Private Paul deployed, he was, unsurprisingly, ‘the only Special Forces soldier in advertising. I had a privileged upbringing, which advanced a reckoning that Australia was worth fighting for. I saw the fight not so much for the country as its values. There was comfort in the worlds being so different. I was encouraged to apply civilian skills and found I could relate creative disposition to a war zone…Either that, or I am a metrosexual dickhead.’

Given ongoing concerns about combat readiness, the reservists had been in full time training since March 2009. October was spent at Australia’s mini Uruzgan, Cultana in South Australia. And before that there was exposure to high country Victoria and the infamous chill of Puckapunyal to accustom 1 Commando to an Afghan winter.

In November 2009, 1 Commando moved into Camp Russell to undertake handover/takeover routines. About one-third of the company group were veterans of Rotation VIII. They ignored the jibes about the reservists being there to mind the vehicles. Work was divided between helicopter and vehicle mounted operations.

Mirroring the soft start of the preceding winter rotation, FE Charlie returned to Charmestan on a population centric operation, handing out pencils and conducting medical civic assistance programs. But the onset of winter saw no freeze on violence, with a series of suicide bomb attacks choking medical facilities throughout Uruzgan.

The now ordained teaming of Australian Special Forces with Popalzai leader Matiullah Khan’s (MK) the Provincial Police Reserve Company (PPRC) did not go down all that well with some of Force Element (FE) Charlie. Private Nathan Mullins described MK’s militia as ‘loose, noisy, undisciplined farm boys’.9 But one mission demonstrated an even deeper unpopularity: the Afghan National Army (ANA) from the north had an abiding hatred for the PPRC from the south. Staging out of Patrol Base Buman for a night mission, FE Charlie captain Keith Wolahan saw ‘guns drawn everywhere. We expected it to go bloody’. He ordered all call signs ‘to stand to and prepare to move in ten minutes’. The Australians and their PPRC partners found somewhere else to camp. This time COIN’s mantra of ‘courageous restraint’ managed to avert a bloodbath.

The view of Matiullah Khan’s militia as a gang of undisciplined cowboys was not universally shared, however. SASR warrant officer Steve Paterson, a veteran of the very first Australian deployment in 2001, developed a different perspective. His MARTAC (Military Advisory and Regional Training Assistance Course) specialisation brought him to Camp Russell on Rotation XI to help improve the partnering dynamic and that experience more readily acculturated him into acceptance of doing things the ‘Afghan way’. ‘You need patience. It is no use yelling and screaming.’

A small number of Australians had been drawn into the warlord’s personal space.

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