G’day, my name is Bill and I’m a sniper with MTF-3.
As I write this, it has just been a few days since I lost my good mate and No. 2 to an IED. This short article is about my experience, my first patrol after the IED strike that claimed my mate. And it’s about my own coping mechanisms since. I’m jotting this down just to let you all know what it’s like to go through something like this. Hopefully it will never happen again, but for anyone who may have to experience something like this, they may be able to draw a few tips from what happened to me and the mistakes I made coping with that fi rst patrol back out..

Words Lance Corporal Bill Millerick
Pics supplied by Lance Corporal Bill Millerick, and ADF

In Helmand province, the men and women of Charlie Company 1-171 Air Ambulance (DUSTOFF) are among the bravest people I have come across in all the years I've been coming to Afghanistan.
The National Guard unit is a reserve force from Minnesota. They are the newest unit of the National Guard currently on operations in Afghanistan. The men and women were picked from other units and thrown together to form what is now described as the best medivac unit in the entire area of operations in Afghanistan.

Words & Pics Gary Ramage

Words & Pics Gary Ramage

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh visited Australia from 19 to 29 October 2011 with the Australian Defence Force involved in many aspects of the tour. On the pomp and ceremony side, the Royal visit commenced with a Ceremonial Welcome at the RAAF’s 34 Squadron, Fairbairn, on Wednesday 19 October, with Australia’s Federation Guard providing a Royal Guard and 21-gun salute.

Pics ADF

Dust of Uruzgan, the latest album from talented singer/songwriter Fred Smith, offers a fresh, unrestrained perspective on the
work being done in Afghanistan.
An Australian diplomat, Fred was posted to Uruzgan province, southern Afghanistan in July 2009. Dust of Uruzgan tells heartfelt tales of his 18 months living and working with Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force Two on the Multinational Base in Tarin Kot and at Forward Operating Base Mirwais in the Chora Valley.

Review Amy Cooper

More than 150 personnel from the Australian Defence Force, New Zealand Defence Force and Papua New Guinea Defence Force conducted Operation Render Safe beginning mid October in an effort to remove just some of a plethora of unexploded WWII ordnance lying around Papua New Guinea. The mission ran from 18 October to 4 November around Rabaul and involved the identification, assessment and rendering safe of dangerous unexploded ordnance (UXO).

Words Brian Hartigan
Pics ADF

Want a hot Chrissie present for the boy in your life?
A dozen of Queensland’s female firefighters, who usually put their bodies on the line during fire and rescue operations, glammed-up
for a calendar photo shoot earlier this year in the name of charity. The 12 female firefighters from the Queensland Fire and Rescue
Service (QFRS) teamed up for the 2012 Female Firefighters Calendar to raise funds for the Queensland Cancer Council for breast-cancer research.

Pics Brad Delaney

RIP - Corporal Doug Grant - Lance Corporal Leon Smith

In recent months, the New Zealand Defence Force has suffered the loss of two of its finest warriors – Corporal Doug Grant - Lance Corporal Leon Smith, two members of their Special Air Service – NZSAS. Both were killed in action in Afghanistan and have been added to the NZSAS Roll of Honour as only the third and fourth members of that elite unit to be recorded as Killed in Action – the first being in Malaya in 1956 and the second in Vietnam in 1970.

OVERVIEW OF TWO FATAL OPERATIONS:

Official overviews of the operations that killed two New Zealand SAS members in Afghanistan...
#1 - Afghanistan Crisis Response Unit and NZSAS involvement in attack on British Council Building, Kabul - 19 August 2011.
#2 - Afghanistan Crisis Response Unit Search and Arrest Operation, Wardak Province, Afghanistan - 28 September 2011.

Pics NZDF

RIP - Sergeant Michael Dunn - Craftsman Beau Pridue

At approximately 9.30am on 25 July this year, Sergeant Michael Dunn, a long-serving and highly respected member of the Royal Australian Air Force, was seriously injured in an explosion at Rockhampton Airport while participating in Exercise Talisman Sabre. He died almost a month later, on 20 September.

RIP - Private Matthew Lambert

Private Matthew Lambert, serving with Mentoring Task Force Three and a proud member of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR) based in Townsville, was killed in action in the early hours of 22 August 2011. Private Lambert was conducting a
mentored patrol with elements of the Afghan National Army and other coalition forces in the Khas Uruzgan region of Afghanistan, 85km north-east of Tarin Kot when an IED detonated at approximately 0230 hours local time.

RIP - Captain Bryce Duffy - Corporal Ashley Birt - Lance Corporal Luke Gavin

Plus our regular columns;

• The Big Picture - 707 tankers still flying
  
• Heads up - latest snippets from Australia, New Zealand and around the World
• Military Fitness by Don Stevenson
• Just Soldiers by WO1 Darryl Kelly
• Cadet Corner
• Book Reviews
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