Gilly from Timor in trouble

AN Australian soldier who wrote a damaging email from East Timor has been sent home and will be disciplined.

The Courier-Mail yesterday revealed details of the email which included sensitive operational information.

The young artillery officer known as “Gilly from Timor”, revealed detailed operational information including the locations and roles of units in an email to a mate.

Howdy all! Well first 10 days down in Timor!! Crazy stuff. I have managed to track down a computer on my current task so I have set up this account to keep in touch with everyone back home cos talk at the moment is for a 6 month deployment!!

Problem is the conditions of service at the moment are non-warlike so only an Aust Service Medal!

Anyway, it has been a pretty crazy first week and a bit, after flying out of Darwin we landed at the airport here and my company took over security for the airstrip. THe first few days we spent hording Internally displaced Persons (IDPs) out of the APOD and conducting patrolling tasks in the nearby village. We then moved to the Entry control point at the airport which is where the fun began.

Out front of the terminal is an absolute mess… there are 1000s of IDPs all shit scared (which is not unreasonable) and we currently don’t have the people on the ground to actually help them out with anything else than a physical presence. I mean I had the ECP running with my blokes bodies as the barriers!!

Admittedly the only people hooning around at top speed are the SAS blokes!

But anyway, we have all been given the brief to disarm pretty much everybody in the country including the Police and Army, so in the first day at the ECP we cleaned out about 15r glocks, heaps of pepper spray, batons you name it! On top of that we were also the Coy Ready Reaction Force, so it was quiet for the first day, but then the gang violence started up. It isn’t that these gangs have a political axe to grind, rather they are just using this as an opportunity to settle old scores, mainly with machetes, spears and whatever else they can get their hands on.

I had to take the RRF out 3 times on the second day at the ECP. Once in the arvo to help a fed cop out, once to disarm 3 big gangs, search them and confiscate all their primitive stuff and basically scare them into being nice, that was about midnightand then at 0700 we had to react almost the entire company to some big riots across the road. I had a section of cooks attached to me for the ECP, so i had to leave a section there, I had already sent a sect to have a look, so I left with my final section, my cooks and a dodgy old 6×6 to respond. It was pretty crazy, swords, pipes and stuff and the amount of media was incredible!!!

I pretty much got off the truck and had two cameras in my face as I was trying to set the lads up. Anyway just as we had that settled I had another call for an immediate tasking from Battalion, to take my whole PL and detach to A Company for 48 hrs (which is now 6 days!!). SO I had to drag everyone back, leave the cooks (and my OC), and jump in APCs. From there we had to establish control at the food distribution point in Dili!!

I dont know whether you saw it on the news, but it was intense, 10s of 1000s of desperate starving people and my PL plus a sect from 1 RAR were it on the ground. Longest day ever, but geez the lads were awesome, no rest, ridiculous heat and the worst part, no bloody UN/NGO in sight, in the end not only did we secure the bloody thing but we also ran the whole distribution! Eventually some UN wankers turned up and I gave it to them full barrels, they sort of apologised and I helped them come up with a pla nto keep it running in the future, a plan which a couple of 1 RAR PL COMDs managed to fuck up royally in the coming few days!!

SInce then we secured Obrigado barracks in town, and for the last 4 days my PL has been securing Parliament House, which is a pretty cruisy gig, we pretty much ru nthe outer cordon while the SAS look after the dignitaries.

Alexander DOwner came yesterday, he is lame. It is interesting here though cos we get all the inside goss on the political situation before the task group does so just training myself up for next year’s ROBC!

Looks like I will finally be back with G Coy in a few days time as they take over this AO, A Coy will then move on somewhere else. It has really quietened down here lately, to be honest I think the majority of the force has seen the most of its action, we will now just secure everything and start the long process of retraining the corrupt cops and armed forces, so it still looks like at least a 6 month deployment for us, and probably another guernsy for someone else afterwards.

FInal few comments… the air force are jack pricks who use our drinking water (which is in short supply!!) to wash their hands and shave – I don’t like them, secondly the SAS are big dudes with bad haircuts, thirdly Timor is BLOODY hot and humid and having not showered since we got here makes us smell awesome!!

Finally, having worked with the Infantry now for the last week, they are dumber than I thought and gunners can do everything that they can, but they just do it smarter and quicker! Hope everyone is doing well, send us some emails to this address and I will try and check it when I can!! And seeing as though I am here I nominate Watson to take over plans for the end of year trip, count me in cos my deployment pay will pay for it hehe!! Timor Gilly

Gilly’s has a huge career problem as the Army take a dim view of officers transmitting security information over insecure means but his biggest problem is he has dumped on the Australian Infantry, including SASR

Macca from Townsville responds to Gilly’s email

Well done mate you are a hero. Had a copy of the email you sent to your mate forwarded to me. It seems obvious you two are in an intimate relationship. Sorry to hear the conditions of service over there aren’t quite up to your expectations and you’ll have to settle for just the ASM.

Its good to see that another fine product from ADFA is getting his moment in the sun. I hope those blokes from 1RAR who were such a hindrance to you appreciate the fine 3 year, tax payer funded holiday you went on in Canberra [that] made you the tactical genius you appear to be as you used those cooks to best effect.

Obviously the honours year you did made the difference. Those 1RAR subbies were probably bakers and could never appreciate your grasp of the situation and that maybe your limp wristed response was appropriate in this case.

I understand you haven’t had a shower in a week. Obviously the artillery gets the shower unit out every time you go to High Range As you were doing honours last year, you probably haven’t been out field yet with your unit so you haven’t enjoyed that facility. It would be a damn shame if you didn’t get to share that with your mate.

Good thing the artillery didn’t deploy with their guns because that would make you an unqualified hanger on and no use to anyone.

By the way, I’m in infantry and I can spell check (it’s the ABC button on the top tool bar) and proof read my work. Just where are you ‘hording’ the tens of thousands of IDPs. (Thank you for the acronym explanation.) They must take up a lot of space in your echelon bag (sorry, for the infantry ‘ech bag’). I bet you’ve got one over there, and I’m betting the Infantry don’t.

Well done on taking over the security of the airport after 4RAR had already secured it and moved on. Just where was your ‘company’ in the OOM? Just whose company was it? Your OC’s or have you graduated to sub-unit command?

Glad to hear you had the media in your face. I, and a few others who haven’t met you personally yet, will be looking for it. Would a photo in the paper make up for not having your photo at the top of the CSC Mess stairs? How was it with all those locals running around with sharp pieces of fruit and salami?

If it all gets a bit to much and they are calling for one more push (no pun intended cabana boy) and the heat is too much and you need a shower, put your underwear on your head and two pencils up your nose and repeatedly say “wobble, wobble”. (That’s from Blackadder if you missed it while you were at ADFA watching The OC).

You’ll be on the next plane home. As an intelligence corps, non qual, we would like to take this opportunity, as mere Infantrymen, to point out a few OPSEC (Operational Security) issues you have raised. I was waiting for some news on exactly which sub-units were where and what they were doing. It was very helpful you mentioned them by name on an unsecured means.

I’m looking forward to you coming to an S2 cell near me. To everyone I’ve cc’d this to, feel free to open it up for widest dissemination. Everyone should be aware of what ‘Gilly in Timor is up to given we are not. If any one wants to continue sending fan mail to Gilly at the address above, please include me on the cc list. I’m interested to hear the thoughts of some of the Infantry who are apparently “dumber” than you thought.

Good luck champ, can’t wait to catch up with you when you get back to Townsville to hear all about it. It is a small Army after all.

Macca

I wonder what Gilly’s next career will be…journalist?