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‘I
am sure that all Australians appreciate and are very proud
of the ADF's efforts to date’
– CDF Gen Peter Cosgrove
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‘I
wish those members of the Army who have been injured a speedy
recovery’
– CA Lt-Gen Peter Leahy
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Army's
coverage
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Buildings
and cars on fire at the Sari club after the terrorist attack
on the town of Kuta on Bali, Indonesia, on Saturday October
12. Photo by Darma/AFP
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| A
RAAF C-130 arrives in Melbourne from Bali carrying victims
of the terrorist attack. Carrying a patient is LAC/W Hayley
Edwards, front right Flg-Off Kim Davey, 6 RAAF Hospital, rear
left is Sqn-Ldr Steve Cook, 3 RAAF Hospital, and an unknown
paramedic. Photo by Sgt Troy Rodgers, 1JPAU(P) |
Hell
on Earth
‘It
was an absolute war zone, it was just out of control’
One man’s story of how he and other
soldiers in Bali leapt into the devastation
By
Cpl Jonathan Garland
AN AUSTRALIAN soldier standing less than 50m from the bomb that
exploded outside the Sari nightclub in Bali escaped unhurt.
Capt
Rodney Cocks, a UNMO in East Timor, was enjoying his last night
of leave before flying out of Indonesia the next morning.
He
had just left his companions, a New Zealand, a Portuguese and a
British national, also uniformed personnel serving in East Timor,
inside nearby Paddy’s to walk to the Internet café a
short distance away.
“I
got about 30m down the street and then I heard one blast and I thought,
‘What was that?’,” he said.
“Then
the power cut... all the power went out. I didn’t think bomb,
I didn’t think anything at that stage.
“And
then, probably, I’d say two seconds later... not even two seconds
later, there was just the huge flash, and I was just covered in
glass, put on the ground, and it just started ... it was like hell
on earth.”
As
he picked himself up and shook off the shards of glass that covered
him, he saw flames from the blast and the devastated buildings climbing
50m into the air.
He
recognised the second explosion as a bomb but was staggered at the
amount of damage caused in the blast.
“I’ve
done demolitions courses with the Army and it was bigger than anything
I’ve ever blown up in my time, and I’ve done a bit.
“I
was very lucky. I think I got a few cuts on my feet but nothing
major. I was wearing shorts, T-shirt and thongs at the time. I consider
myself one of the luckiest people alive, I really do.”
Prompted
by his military training, his first reaction was to find the friends
he had left in the bar and evacuate them and as many others as possible.
“By
the time I picked myself up there were already people moving out
away from the scene.
“I
picked one girl up there - she had burns all over her body, so I
grabbed her.
“I
later heard she’d been assessed as having burns to 95 per cent
of her body and that she hadn’t survived her injuries.
“We
regrouped, got our people, helped the people we could, which, you
know, was just bloody impossible, there were just so many people
injured.”
“My
main concern at this time was the girl I had in my arms, who was
the one who had all the burns.”
The
group took some of the injured back to their hotel and organised
the hotel truck to take them to hospital, before going back to the
scene of the explosion.
“I
grabbed my phone, my head torch, my passport and my Army ID. The
other guys did as well.
“From
there... we started treating other people. At that stage I came
across an Australian Army sergeant from 1RAR, he was on leave from
Butterworth.
“He
was pretty badly injured and we got him off to hospital and later
evacced back to Townsville.”
Capt
Cocks made contact with his family, telling them there had been
an incident and that he was uninjured, before calling his headquarters.
They
woke the force commander, who gave orders that Capt Cocks was to
remain in Bali to render assistance where possible and to account
for UN personnel.
“I
was told to cancel my flight out the next morning and that I was
the man on the ground.
“I
had ambassadors calling my phone, all the UN crew, the Portuguese
commanders, and I was just dealing things out from there.”
Capt
Cocks said there were about 12 hospitals treating blast victims
and he visited all of them several times searching for personnel.
“Initially
no-one really knew how many people were here, so I had to go to
all the hospitals trying to find out did we have any people there,
how many injured we had - ADF, PKF, UN police, the whole lot.
“That
was just an absolute nightmare. There’s just bodies everywhere,
blood everywhere, just death and destruction everywhere and just
so many Australians ...”
He
was taken to the morgue at Denpasar General Hospital, where he searched
the dead to locate missing soldiers.
“The
bodies were just... the floor was littered with burnt corpses. It
was just awful... some of these bodies you couldn’t tell, you
know, whether they were male or female, young, old, Indonesian,
Australian...”
He
returned to the scene of the blast the next morning, trying to locate
missing personnel, and was shocked at the devastation he saw.
“It
was an absolute war zone, it was just out of control. I was outside
the Sari club, where the blast was ... I reckon this hole would
have been about probably a metre and a half deep and three metres
wide.
“You
need a lot of bang to get through and make that sort of hole. That
second bomb was huge.
“By
that stage they’d already started pulling the bodies out and...
there were nearly as many bodies as I saw that night in the morgue...
probably even more, sitting on the footpath outside the Sari club.”
Capt
Cocks then went back to the hospital searching for the missing personnel
among those being evacuated to Australia by Hercules.
Capt
Cocks said he couldn’t believe how lucky he had been to escape
injury in the explosion.
“The
other thing that’ll stick with me is
the tragedy of the people I saw that... I could well have been in
their place.
“The
dead and the injured at the hospital... they were just guys like
me. They’re young Australians having a good time out.
“My
card didn’t get drawn, which my family and I are so thankful
for, but a lot did.”
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