The dukes of hazard

Long way to the top: WO2 Leon Pennington and Spr Guy Westgate have to hike and climb, on occasion, to a UXO site. Photo by Cpl Damian Shovell

By Cpl Damian Shovell

TWO UXO experts have taken an operational focus to break though an old corps rivalry to join together and dispose of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in East Timor.

Since deploying to Op Spire on December 10, WO2 Leon Pennington, an RAAOC ammunition technician, and WO2 Don Quick, an RAE EOD technician, have teamed together to destroy more than 45 of the hundreds of estimated UXOs still left in East Timor from Indonesian and WW2 Japanese occupations.

WO2 Pennington said they had destroyed an average of two UXOs a week, ranging from small arms and belt-fed ammunition, to 75mm artillery ammunition and to the largest found so far, a 130mm rocket.

“It’s a combination of items that had been fired and not functioned and other items that had been ‘acquired’ by the locals,” he said.

He said UXOs have been found predominantly in the Aileu province and have also been regularly found in the Viqueque, Same, and Dili provinces.

“We’ve gone from the Oecussi enclave to Los Palos at the other end of the island,” he said.

“Once there is exposure of UXO destruction in an area, people report UXOs they’ve known about for a while, but haven’t been able to do anything about.”

Their good work in a range of locations has built a strong rapport with local populations, UN police and East Timorese police, who have developed into the team’s own reporting network that delivers information on upcoming jobs before HQ MC raises their task order.

“Because we’ve done so many [UXOs in East Timor], we’ve built up a network and they send us photos and call us before the jobs,” he said.

The UN has said that there are only grenade, short bomb and long bomb UXOs in East Timor.

WO2 Pennington said their network sends photos for exact identification so the team knows what they’re up against before departure, as incorrect identification of items, such as machine parts, has led to wasted trips.

He said UXO bombsites had varied from easily accessible roadsides, to requiring helicopter insertion and a day hike to mountain villages where UN police and East Timorese representatives provided a guide and an interpreter to notify locals of what was occurring.

He said working with WO2 Quick had been beneficial for both trades in breaking down the old inter-corps rivalry and in sharing expert knowledge.

“I think both EOD Techs and Ammo Techs have a lot to learn from each other,” WO2 Quick said.

He said this was the first time he had worked with an RAAOC ammunition technician and put the old corps rivalry down to ego and a perceived mission-creep by both trades.

“What will benefit from us working together, and especially at our level, is we’ll be able to go back to our units and say we worked together and found no procedural differences and it’s been really good,” he said.

Both described each job as being unique, but said the greatest fulfilment of the operation was knowing what they had provided the East Timorese people.

“At the end of the day we take something away from the community that could cause harm,” they said.