Giving life a chance

Touching: Pte Phil Fawcett with the boy he helped deliver.

By Cpl Cameron Jamieson

FROM the safety of a salvaged humidicrib, the eyes of a baby boy look into those of medic Pte Phil Fawcett.

Twenty hours earlier Pte Fawcett had assisted a doctor to draw the baby’s blue body from his mother’s womb in a caesarean at the Anzac Field Hospital in Banda Aceh. The baby’s umbilical cord had wrapped twice around his neck. In the resuscitation bay, another doctor worked briskly to start the baby breathing. Ten minutes after delivery the baby’s pulse was a steady 160 beats a minute.

One more life had been saved in a city of so much death.

From the streets of Banda Aceh in Sumatra to the Malaysian airbase at Butterworth, our soldiers can be found playing their part in Operation Sumatra Assist.

Serving as part of Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) 629, Army personnel make up about half of the task force’s numbers. The rest are Navy, Air Force, NZ and British personnel.

At Banda Aceh Airport, Iroquois and their crews from A Sqn, 5 Avn Rgt shuttle aid, emergency personnel and displaced persons across Aceh’s west coast.

Engineers are spread across the city of Banda Aceh. Field engineers are clearing the drainage systems so the land can be drained of stagnant water to prevent the spread of disease and allow survivors to access the remains of their homes.

Topographical survey members are busy researching and making maps that refl ect the new landscape of Banda Aceh.

And there are the clerks, movers, terminal operators, mechanics, communicators, tradesmen and Qstore personnel doing their part to keep everything moving along.

In Medan in Northern Sumatra there are more soldiers at CJTF 629 HQ, working 12-hour shifts to keep personnel, equipment and supplies fl owing to wherever they are needed. Medan is also home to the plans cell, where the jigsaw of future operations, force rotation and force withdrawal is discussed and pieced together.