Lieutenant Dave Schembri

Ever since I decided to change over to the Dark Side, and complete Officer Training, I have considered myself to have had a dream start to my new job.

Four days after arriving at the Squadron I was sent on my first operational deployment. This started a 12 month period of almost constant operations. The highlight of which was deploying to East Timor in command of a troop of Australian soldiers.

Initially, I was in command of Support Troop, 176 AD Sqn. This was a group of fairly diverse sections that provided the personnel and administrative support for over two hundred people. The troop was made up of a Headquarters, a Q Store, an Orderly Room, a Squadron Aid Post, a Kitchen and a Forward Repair Team. As a throwback to my command in Darwin, I was also placed in charge of the already established AFPO 5 at Komoro Airfield.

Due to the highly specialised nature of each of the various sections, commanding them and persuading the soldiers to come together under one troop identity was a difficult task to say the least. Slowly, but surely, and with a lot of gentle (and not so subtle) persuasion, the various sections began to accept their group identity.

On 1 Mar 00, I was officially placed in command of the Army maritime assets in Timor: a section of LCM8 landing craft. At the same time the man who helped most with bringing the new troop together was also brought in. WO2 Rick Tassell, who previously languished in Squadron Ops, became 176 AD Sqn's first ever Supervisor Marine.

Tass not only brought with him a wealth of marine operations experience but also a firm and stabilising influence. The boat crews, as boaties normally are, were highly flexible and accepted their new chain of command with a shrug of their shoulders and another hot brew. With the new, improved troop on the rails and working well together, I decided it was time for a new name to formally recognise our status as a task organisation. After much discussion (and some whinging from 2 Troop) Support Troop was officially renamed the 3^rd Distribution Support Troop or 3 DS Tp for short.

The troop certainly had its fair share of characters, WO2 Mick Rigby, who ran AFPO 5, probably stood out here. Among other things, he had an interesting method of stress relief (it also scared his soldiers into working harder). Every night he could be found out the back, throwing knives into the head of a person he drew on a piece of ply! He also had some very interesting methods of training the LECs that "worked" for him, but we won't go into that here…

Although 2 Troop considered itself to be "all that mattered"; the true backbone of the unit was 3 DS Tp. The people who worked for me kept the Squadron ticking over. Without them no-one would have eaten, no-one would have received any pay, no-one would have had electricity in their accommodation or workplace and, probably most importantly, no-one would have received any mail from home. When this is added to the vital operational work that was carried out by the boaties, it is easy to see that the people who worked in the background kept the Squadron alive.

It was a privilege to have been fortunate enough to be tasked to lead this varied group of soldiers. I felt a sense of great accomplishment in what the troop had achieved when I saw the last of my soldiers safely on to an aircraft for the flight back to Australia.

RETURN TO 176 INDEX