1ATS commended for providing critical link

 

AIR LOADING

By CPL Simone Liebelt

A SMALL air load team that worked around the clock to help deliver aid into tsunami-devastated Sumatra has been commended for making the best of a difficult situation.

Warrant Officer Paul Lemarshall, who led the team from No. 1 Air Terminal Squadron through the twoweek initial deployment, praised his team for what he described as one of the most demanding and challenging tasks of his career.

“In the 21 years I’ve been in the Air Force and the 13 years I’ve been doing air movements work, this is the hardest deployment I’ve been on,” WOFF Lemarshall said.

“We worked extremely long hours under very harsh and changeable climatic conditions with limited resources, and the guys did an outstanding job.”

Arriving in Medan only two days after the tsunami, the loadmaster from No. 36 Squadron took on the role of air load coordinator.

Remaining in Medan with a team of five – including three support personnel from No. 386 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron – he deployed two 1ATS members to Banda Aceh and three to Halim, Jakarta.

“The operation wasn’t envisaged to be so big, which is why we didn’t deploy an air terminal team straight away,” WOFF Lemarshall said.

“At first we had nothing to work with because we had no equipment, so we had to do it all by hand or scrounge for any available forklift or baggage trolleys.

“We were building up and receiving loads from a gamut of coalition aircraft, as well as assisting with aeromedical evacuations and patient transport.

Between Medan and Halim, we would build up humanitarian aid and load them onto the aircraft to forward to Banda Aceh, where the other 1ATS team would unload them.

“The 1ATS guys were a critical link in the operation, because if we didn’t unload the aid, it wouldn’t have got unloaded and [the Indonesian] people wouldn’t have got the help they needed.

“I’ve been to Somalia, Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq, but this was very different because of the suffering and in-your-face nature of the deployment.

“The humanitarian side was very evident from where we were because Medan was the receiving station for all the unloading aid. So we were helping the refugees, and could see the results then and there, which was a really nice feeling.”

While most of the initial deployment has returned home, 1ATS personnel still remain in the region as part of Operation Sumatra Assist..

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