The past couple of years have been something of a blur for Australian Army combat rescue operator (CRO) Sapper Nathan Roberts.

The 19-year-old joined Defence straight from school in 2023 and in two short years he’s gone from a classroom in Adelaide to deploying overseas.

In September and October, he was sent to Papua New Guinea as part of Task Unit Brahman supporting two major exercises.

The first was Exercise Helicon Luk, a high-altitude flight training activity for 5th Aviation Regiment CH-47F Chinook pilots and aircrew. The second was Exercise Wantok Warrior, at which the same helicopters provided airlift capability to combined Australian Defence Force and Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) infantry-focused training.

Not only was it his first overseas deployment, it was his first trip outside Australia.

Coming shortly after being posted to the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment in Townsville, he readily admitted to feeling a little bit of culture shock.

“It’s certainly an interesting first country to visit,” Sapper Roberts said. “But it’s been a really good experience coming over.”

As a CRO Sapper Roberts’ role in PNG was primarily as a first responder, tasked with conducting rescue and recovery efforts in the event of an incident with one of the aircraft.   

'Our speciality now is confined space rescue, vertical rescue - so abseiling and rappelling off the side of cliffs and that sort of thing - but we still maintain a road crash skill set, so vehicle rollovers and other incidents' 

Preparing for a worst-case scenario meant hours practising winch procedures with a PNGDF helicopter to enable an aeromedical evacuation capability alongside seasoned medical personnel.

“The job used to be basically as an Army fiery - an emergency responder - but they’ve started transforming it into a combat rescue role,” Sapper Roberts said.

“Our speciality now is confined space rescue, vertical rescue - so abseiling and rappelling off the side of cliffs and that sort of thing - but we still maintain a road crash skill set, so vehicle rollovers and other incidents.”

After applying to be an Army emergency responder, Sapper Roberts attended back-to-back courses before being posted.

His training started with a drivers course in Puckapunyal, followed by a military engineering course in Sydney and then a Royal Australian Air Force basic firefighting course at Amberley in Brisbane.

“I really enjoyed the combat rescue course that we just did recently, where we really learnt all the roping stuff, Sapper Roberts said.

“It’s a good stepping stone if I want to go into paramedicine later on.”
  
Sapper Roberts said that in the event of an aviation incident the CRO was the first out the door to ensure the site is safe and accessible for medical personnel to begin treating injured.

“The kit we use for a crash response is called an LRK [light rescue kit] and that has hydraulics, a smaller version of the jaws of life that are hand operated; we also carry a reciprocating saw as well, which we use to gain access into the airframe,” he said.

“We also carry roping gear. If we need to affect rescue off the side of a cliff, we have a litter we can rope down with.”

Up till now moulage, the art of creating realistic injuries for training purposes, is the closest Sapper Roberts has come to confronting an actual medical emergency, but he’s confident that when the time comes the hours of training will not have been wasted.