PRINCESS PATRICIAS CANADIAN LIGHT INFANTRY

Earlier today a news story caught my eye. Within the story was a mention of a Canadian Army unit, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI). That bought back memories of a time long ago when I was a young soldier stationed in Townsville with the First Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment (1 RAR).

I was into my nineteenth year and was into my third year in 1 RAR and I had just been transferred to Support Company after spending almost two years in Charlie Company. 1 RAR had almost completed the re-building process after the departure of National Serviceman in the early seventies.

With Charlie Company I had completed the second rotation as the Rifle Company Butterworth and not long after that trip Charlie Company was sent to Singapore to take part in a large exercise. On our return a bunch of Charlie Company soldiers attended Support Company courses and were transferred to that Company at the completion of the course.

The timing was perfect as Support Company had been selected to take part in an exchange visit to Canada. Support Company 1 RAR would be hosted with the PPCLI in Calgary, Alberta, whilst a Company of PPCLI would be hosted by 1 RAR.

The Canadians were considered the worlds best practitioners of United Nations peacekeeping missions and the aim of our visit was to learn from the Canadians and then bring these skills back to Australia.

At the time the Australian Government were pushing to have Australian troops included in UN peacekeeping missions. The Governments aim, I believe was to have 1 RAR show the United Nations that Australian troops were capable and worthy in being considered for future UN missions.

Our first few weeks in Calgary werer taken up in learning how to be effective peacekeepers. All of our Canadian instructors had a wealth of UN peacekeeping experience, primarily in Cyprus where they were the UN mainstays. The culmination of this training was to be a three day exercise which was to replicate a 'real' peacekeeping operation that the Canadians had conducted in Cyprus.

All the training and briefings were complete and the Company Group was visited by high ranking Army officers who stressed the importance of the exercise to both the Australian Army and the Australian Government. We were told in no uncertain terms that the spotlight would be on us and we were expected to succeed.

No worries we all thought, easy.

The Canadians were experts at the UN caper so they had mock villages in place as well as a sizable contingent of civilian belligerents and innocent bystanders. It was going to be as real as it could be in a training scenario. We were given our final orders and rules of engagement and sent forth to quell the civilian unrest.

I won't go into long detail now about how peace should be maintained on UN operations but one of the main pre-requisites is not to cause more trouble by your presence or shoot too many people..........unfortunately we did both.

Support Company 1 RAR was a mixture of youth and experience with almost all of the junior and senior Non Commissioned Officers and a smattering of the officers all having served in Vietnam. Some had more than one tour and several had also served in the Borneo conflict. The Battalion's ethos was training for war, not peacekeeping. I suppose you could say that we had a gung-ho mentality and if it moved shoot it.

The exercise started okay, we moved along rowdy groups, searched vehicles and were generally nice to everyone we met, but we just couldn't maintain the civility. The first incident occurred when a group of rock throwers were fired upon by Support Company troops. The umpire declared three civilians were killed and several wounded. The 1 RAR section commander thought this was a good result.

Wrong!

Within the exercise scenario the protests escalated and Australian troops were fired upon. Up until that time all of our training had been if you were fired upon, fire back and then win the battle. So that's generally what we did, we fired back and caused havoc. Our commanders tried to get the troops to adhere to the rules of engagement but it was too late, both sides were fired up and it was open warfare.

The peacekeepers had transformed into peacetakers. Shots rang out, rocks were thrown and barricades were stormed. Our response was section fire, including a belt's of M60. We were very impressed with ourselves when an umpire informed us that we had killed over 20 'civilians.' That was until the Company Commander got hold of our Section Commander and kicked him in the backside for not following the rules of engagement. "But sir," he said, "the buggers were throwing rocks at us, what do you expect us to do, roll over?"

The exercise was called off after several such incidents. From memory we hadn't got to the halfway point, but the powers that be decided that there was no point going on as the peacekeeping exercise had degenerated into farce, especially when troops and 'civilians' at one vehicle checkpoint got involved in a brawl.

Of course at the Junior Non-Commissioned Officer and digger level we were all pretty pleased with ourselves. We had shown our mettle and that we wouldn't take a backward step. And since the exercise was over a day and a half early we could probably all get on the piss.

Unfortunately for us that wasn't the view held by the Support Company hierarchy or the Australian Army senior observers or as we were told the politicians in Canberra. We were told in no uncertain terms the we were in fact all very naughty boys.

The result of this 'Peacekeeping' fiasco was that a report went back to the UN about Australian soldiers inability to conduct peacekeeping operations. Australian soldiers were too aggressive and warlike and would not be suited to serve with UN mandated peacekeeping missions.

So if anyone reading this served in the Australian Army from say, 1975 to the nineties ever wondered why you never got a UN guernsey..... well you now know that you can blame it all on the trigger -happy soldiers of Support Company 1 RAR!

akmacca08@live.com.au