Read Online Mercenary Mum: My Journey from Young Mother to Baghdad Bodyguard by Neryl Joyce - Free Book Online
Authors: Neryl Joyce
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didn’t have a clue what was going on in Cambodia. I’m not sure I could have even pointed to it on a map. Geography had never been my strong suit.
After the briefing, the three of us returned to our unit and immediately began sorting through our field equipment and personal issues. Our operation was deemed secret so we were only allowed to inform our families that something was going on and that we were required to deploy somewhere at short notice. I rang Mum to let her know I was going away, but that I couldn’t tell her anything about it. I told her to watch TV and put two and two together. I then rang Bruce to let him know the same.
At 9 a.m. that same morning we had to return to 4 Fd Regt with all our kit. We were then issued additional equipment: Kevlar helmets, body armour, ration packs and so on. By then, I had listened to a few radio reports. The Cambodian Second Prime Minister, Hun Sen, had launched a coup against the First Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. The country had subsequently fallen into chaos. We were to be part of the team sent in to help evacuate approved civilians.
This was the reason I’d joined the army. I wanted to help people. I wanted to do something for my country. I was going to be part of something that counted for more than just meeting a Woolworths ‘key performance indicator’, like grocery-scanning speed or whatever. This was history. I was going to play a role in it.
The day wore on. There were more briefings, intelligence reports, equipment issues and a lot of waiting around. At lunchtime, I met more of the artillery detachment we would be deploying with: there were about forty soldiers all up. I knew that my job would mainly comprise looking after security issues such as searching people before they got onto the military aircraft and access control of our command base. I hadn’t received any formal training on evacuation procedures, and there was no doctrine available about these kinds of operations (or at least none that was made available to me), so I began to pump Murphy for information. What kind of procedures did we follow before allowing civilians onto our aircraft? What was our screening process? How thorough were our searches? What did we do with dangerous or unstable evacuees? What were our rules of engagement?
Murphy did his best to answer my questions but seemed to think I was asking too many. It might sound corny and maybe even ridiculous, but I just wanted to do as professional a job as possible for my corps and my country. I’d gone from having a dead-end job and a lazy boyfriend to a life that involved rescuing people from possible harm. I wanted to be as well prepared as I could.
By mid afternoon, we had deployed to the Amberley RAAF base to await our flight to the base in Butterworth, Malaysia, where we’d run the operation. It was there that the stories of previous failed deployments began to surface. Corporal Monroe recounted how he’d sat at the very same airport, waiting to deploy to PNG for an operation. They’d been sitting on the tarmac, waiting to get on the aircraft, when the deployment was stopped.
I hoped and prayed that this would not happen to us. While we waited, we were given briefings as new information came to hand. At this stage, all forty-odd of us would be deploying to Cambodia to conduct a full-scale service-protected evacuation.
At eight o’clock that night we were still sitting on the tarmac. The C-130 plane scheduled to fly us to Darwin kept being delayed. It was driving me nuts. I just wanted to get on the plane and go. I curled up next to my webbing and tried to get some sleep. I’d only closed my eyes for a few minutes when we were suddenly hustled awake. The Hercules aircraft was about to land.
It was 2 a.m. by the time we arrived in Darwin. We were hurried out of the aircraft and taken to the transit lines for the rest of the night. Murphy and Monroe were still sceptical about our actually getting out of the
After the briefing, the three of us returned to our unit and immediately began sorting through our field equipment and personal issues. Our operation was deemed secret so we were only allowed to inform our families that something was going on and that we were required to deploy somewhere at short notice. I rang Mum to let her know I was going away, but that I couldn’t tell her anything about it. I told her to watch TV and put two and two together. I then rang Bruce to let him know the same.
At 9 a.m. that same morning we had to return to 4 Fd Regt with all our kit. We were then issued additional equipment: Kevlar helmets, body armour, ration packs and so on. By then, I had listened to a few radio reports. The Cambodian Second Prime Minister, Hun Sen, had launched a coup against the First Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. The country had subsequently fallen into chaos. We were to be part of the team sent in to help evacuate approved civilians.
This was the reason I’d joined the army. I wanted to help people. I wanted to do something for my country. I was going to be part of something that counted for more than just meeting a Woolworths ‘key performance indicator’, like grocery-scanning speed or whatever. This was history. I was going to play a role in it.
The day wore on. There were more briefings, intelligence reports, equipment issues and a lot of waiting around. At lunchtime, I met more of the artillery detachment we would be deploying with: there were about forty soldiers all up. I knew that my job would mainly comprise looking after security issues such as searching people before they got onto the military aircraft and access control of our command base. I hadn’t received any formal training on evacuation procedures, and there was no doctrine available about these kinds of operations (or at least none that was made available to me), so I began to pump Murphy for information. What kind of procedures did we follow before allowing civilians onto our aircraft? What was our screening process? How thorough were our searches? What did we do with dangerous or unstable evacuees? What were our rules of engagement?
Murphy did his best to answer my questions but seemed to think I was asking too many. It might sound corny and maybe even ridiculous, but I just wanted to do as professional a job as possible for my corps and my country. I’d gone from having a dead-end job and a lazy boyfriend to a life that involved rescuing people from possible harm. I wanted to be as well prepared as I could.
By mid afternoon, we had deployed to the Amberley RAAF base to await our flight to the base in Butterworth, Malaysia, where we’d run the operation. It was there that the stories of previous failed deployments began to surface. Corporal Monroe recounted how he’d sat at the very same airport, waiting to deploy to PNG for an operation. They’d been sitting on the tarmac, waiting to get on the aircraft, when the deployment was stopped.
I hoped and prayed that this would not happen to us. While we waited, we were given briefings as new information came to hand. At this stage, all forty-odd of us would be deploying to Cambodia to conduct a full-scale service-protected evacuation.
At eight o’clock that night we were still sitting on the tarmac. The C-130 plane scheduled to fly us to Darwin kept being delayed. It was driving me nuts. I just wanted to get on the plane and go. I curled up next to my webbing and tried to get some sleep. I’d only closed my eyes for a few minutes when we were suddenly hustled awake. The Hercules aircraft was about to land.
It was 2 a.m. by the time we arrived in Darwin. We were hurried out of the aircraft and taken to the transit lines for the rest of the night. Murphy and Monroe were still sceptical about our actually getting out of the
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