Building a road out of Afghanistan

Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan: Four young boys, aged perhaps 8, sit by the side of the new road being built by the Australian government through the Mirabad Valley outside Oruzgan province's capital.

An Australian soldier, part of a team that has gone out to inspect the road, asks the kids in Pashto, "Any Taliban around here?"

No, the boys reply with grins all round. "We are the soldiers around here, so there are no Taliban," one of them cries.

The long road out ... the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) on a new road in the Oruzgan province, in Afghanistan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

This part of the valley, about 10 kilometres to the east of Tarin Kowt, has become relative friendly territory for the Australians. Until 2009, patrols were regularly attacked around here. The fighting ended after Australian special forces drove the Taliban out in a major campaign, allowing the reconstruction effort to begin.

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It is a model in many ways, a good news story. The $10 million road project is going to plan and the locals are mostly happy. Yet the trip outside the wire of the Tarin Kowt multinational base also shows how tough the job remains as Australia prepares to exit by the end of the year and the province prepares to face its own challenges.

The Australians are not building the road themselves but rather paying local contractors, so the work creates local jobs. Captain Daniel Kennedy-Stiff, a member of the Provincial Reconstruction Team – which includes Defence, AusAid and the Department of Foreign Affairs – says the contractors are learning a lot but still need to be scrutinised.

"This is one of the better contractors we have, but they will still try and cut corners if you are not keeping an eye on them," said Captain Kennedy-Stiff.

Hence the inspection, backed up by a convoy of four Bushmaster armoured vehicles and several dozen soldiers. Security remains tight. At each of four stops along a 14 kilometre stretch of the new road the soldiers charged with protecting the team form a perimeter facing outward. They stay in each spot only a few minutes.

Aside from a few elders who complain parts of the road are not wide enough for two trucks to pass, locals sing the new road's praises. An elderly man named Ablul, unusual for the fact he is growing wheat rather than the ubiquitous pink-flowered opium poppies, lavishes thanks on the Australian government.

Australian soldiers from the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), during an operation to inspect a new road in the Oruzgan province, in Afghanistan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

"In the past, we had problems with the insurgents putting IEDs under the road. It was very dangerous. I myself have a vehicle. It took a lot of time to get anywhere."

Acting head of the PRT, David Windsor, said opening up the road meant farmers growing food crops could get their products to market and would boost people's faith in government, making them less likely to turn to the Taliban.

"You open up that road and it's easier for people to speak to their local representatives, raise their concerns, and start accessing services like health and education, as well as the sheer fact of removing the hassle of a long, bumpy travel time."

Afghan children wave to Australian soldiers along the way through Oruzgan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Will the benefit last? AusAid have notably opted to keep a 27 kilometre stretch as a gravel road for ease of upkeep – there is no guarantee the Afghan local government will be able to properly maintain bitumen in the years to come.

One of the soldiers on the operation, Corporal Jeremy Martinez, speaks frankly about the risks ahead

.

"The thing we are worried about is that the Taliban will come in and overthrow the government and undo all the good work we've done. That's what we hear speaking to local Afghans," he said. "They know we are leaving."

Source - http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/building-a-road-out-of-afghanistan-20130429-2invr.html#

ANZAC Day will not be forgotten

My earliest memories of ANZAC Day are of watching the march on TV and looking out for one banner in particular. It’s a small one, purple background with a few place names up the sides and the insignia for the Eighth Division Signals. That was Pop’s group. He didn’t march in the Sydney march to my memory, I think he did once before I was born, but he did march in Wagga. But we’d always look for it and anyone who wasn’t in the room at the time was called in with the cry “There it is”.

I didn’t really know what it meant of course. It was just something Pop had been a part of in the war, which seemed like ancient history to me as a kid, it had nothing to do with the present. Over the years I learnt more though. I learnt about what Pop endured during the war, being present at the Fall of Singapore and spending years as a POW on the Hellfire Pass. The suffering he and his mates went through is beyond belief and certainly not a shiny topic.

But I didn’t just learn about the bad. Some of the stories I heard were funny too. And many were downright heroic. He didn’t really like to talk about it, Nanna didn’t even hear much from him, but she did from his mates years later when they started going to reunions as Grey Nomads. Those reunions were a chance for men and women who’d suffered to really live it up together and enjoy their hard-earned senior years.

It won’t be long before there’s no-one to carry that little purple banner and the deeds of the Eighth Div Sigs will be mostly forgotten. But their legacy will continue. How? Through me for one. Pop survived. He went to the Hellfire Pass with his mates and came home with a few of them. He came home because of them and they came home because of him. I will remember what stories I have and I will remember that banner with pride.

To me my Pop was always a giant. The more I learnt the more I realised that was true. There’s not much shiny about war, but there is in the people who survive and built a life and a world the better for their experiences. And in the friendships that help get us through.

Pop endured a terrible darkness and it haunted him all his life, but it made him a beacon, a tower of light. I still look up at that giant and feel honoured to be his grandson.

Lest we forget.

Written by Robert Jenkins - @wanderingfriar

Checking up on a mate after 72 years

Over scones, sausage rolls and a couple of cold ones, two Diggers who enlisted together in 1941 finally catch up.

by Tim Barlass

Seventy-two years is a long time to spend wondering how your mate is. For some it is more than a lifetime and then it is too late.

But not so for Harry ''Hal'' Wolters and Cecil ''Buff'' Creswick.

The former schoolmates from Penrith High travelled together to the Sydney Showground to enlist on March 3, 1941, during World War II.

A fear of Japanese invasion was mounting and the bombing of Darwin was 11 months away.

Told to go and get written consent because they were under 21, they went to the Captain Cook Hotel, spent two shillings and sixpence on a beer and forged each other's parents' signatures. On April 1, they travelled again to Sydney and became separated.

After so many years, they each came to assume that the other had not made it home from war.
But on the Easter weekend Mr Wolters, now 90, took action to find out what had happened to Mr Creswick, also 90. He placed a small advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald's RSVP column.

But why now?

Mr Wolters has suffered a series of serious illnesses. The list would make a sizeable contribution to a medical dictionary.

''The Department of Veterans' Affairs has been, excuse me, bloody wonderful,'' he said. ''I just wanted to know if he [Mr Creswick] was still going.''

Mr Wolters had thought about his old friend often over the intervening years. ''We parted in 1941 and we haven't been in contact since,'' he said, adding: ''My wife Dorothy said: 'What are you worried about? You've only got five minutes to live?'''

Last week he was working, as he often does, in his shed when the phone rang.

''The voice said, 'It's Buff Creswick here.' I said, 'Holy, bloody hell.' I was just about dumbstruck.''
On Friday, Mr Creswick left Blacktown and boarded a plane to travel to his old schoolmate's property in Kempsey, north of Port Macquarie. The two nonagenarians embraced, complimented each other on being alive and then, briefly, Mr Wolters was overwhelmed.
Then began the formidable task of catching up.

Mrs Wolters had baked scones and sausage rolls and there were a few cold beers in the fridge.

As they chatted on the verandah, it emerged that they had almost got involved in the same branch of the war effort. Mr Creswick in the 2nd Infantry Battalion was sent to Syria and Beirut but was among the troops brought back to defend Australia. He was then sent to the Kokoda Trail fighting the Japanese in conditions he described as ''horrific''. ''We started out with a strength of 697 fighting men and finished up left with 87. I was one of the lucky ones,'' he said.
But what finally took him away from the fighting was that he became severely ill with malaria.
He was regarded as a useful experiment subject to help in the fight against the disease at the Medical Research Unit based in Cairns.

Mr Wolters ended up at the same place, although probably at a different time. He was also enlisted as a guinea pig but one they wanted to deliberately infect with the disease.
They are planning the next reunion. There's more to discuss.

Source -http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/checking-up-on-a-mate-after-72-years-20130406-2hdn3.html