AFTER 30 years of navy service and a stint in war-torn Iraq, David Rose is beginning a more relaxed chapter of his life in Warrnambool.
The former clearance diving officer has just left the military for a civilian family lifestyle, but the transition shouldn’t be too challenging for the cheerful veteran.
Once a 17-year-old CBC Warrnambool student with dreams of ocean adventure, he was awarded a $400 scholarship and left for Jervis Bay in 1981 to begin his naval career.
In 1991, after years of clearance diving exercises, the 27-year-old Mr Rose was sent to clear Kuwait’s harbours and ports in preparation for humanitarian relief after the Gulf War.
The mine clearance operations lasted four months, with little communication available to family and friends back home.
Mr Rose, and 23 other officers from Australian Clearance Diving Team Three, were deployed to Kuwait just two days after the ground war had ended.
He recalls arriving to an eerie scene at 2am, immediately taking in the waste and destruction of war.
“You go into a country two days after its been bombed and it’s just a mess,” he said.
“Here you’ve got wonderful infrastructure, telephone poles are standing straight ... but there you drive up a freeway and there’s bomb craters everywhere.”
Iraqis had blown up the Persian Gulf oil tankers and wellheads across the landscape, filling the sky with thick clouds of smoke.
The pitch black darkness of night remained throughout the coming days as smoke from oil fires stretched to the horizon.
Oil spills made diving for mines a blind challenge in the harbour, as Mr Rose and his team were tasked with searching the waters for any surprises left behind by the Iraqis.
“You dive in these ports two days after the ground war had finished so you don’t know what’s in the water — razor wire, discarded explosives, detonators.
“You can only see an arm’s length in front.
“I remember on my first dive, as you’re descending you think ‘What are we going to come across here?’
“It makes you think about life and mortality.
“My church was praying for me a lot.
“The motivation to put yourself through that comes from a sense of duty, service to your country, and wanting to make a contribution to maintaining the life we have in Australia.”
As well as searching for explosives in the harbour, his team was responsible for safe-arming large contact mines washed up on the beach.
Mr Rose drew the short straw and was nominated to render safe the first LUGM145 buoyant contact sea mine.
“I had to go down, set the tripod and rig it up.
“There was a keep ring to tap into, so I basically had a chisel and hammer.
“My heart wasn’t racing but the thought goes through your mind on that first tap — we say ‘One flash and you’re ash’.
“I’d done so many training exercises along those lines, to actually do it on the beach was a real sense of satisfaction.
“We didn’t have a manual.
“We sat down as a group, went through the steps of what we’d do, worked out the procedure... and then how to safe-arm the device.
“After that we found a lot of large contact mines washed up on the beach.
“We’d have to get across the sand to the mine, watching out for (explosives) nicknamed ‘toe-poppers’, which they buried under the sand.
“The problem with any ordinance you find where the enemy has been is you don’t know what they’ve done to it.
“They were all wired up differently so you’re facing the unknown.”
For his brave efforts in rendering safe the contact mine, Mr Rose received a Medal for Conspicuous Service from the Governor-General of Australia.
While Mr Rose had years of training to prepare for the intense diving operations, his wife Helen admits she was perhaps underqualified for the experience of waiting at home for his safe return.
“You don’t get trained to prepare for it as a wife.
“I didn’t watch the news because it was too distressing.
“I had faith in God but I wondered how some people would cope without that, because I knew I would be OK.
“I went and bought him clothes for when he got back, trying to stay positive.
“It has changed a lot since the first Gulf War, in terms of communications.
“It was $13 a minute to speak on the phone, but now people can be serving at the Gulf and be on Skype, speaking to their family all the time.”
Kuwait’s high-risk operations and war environment were enough for Mr Rose and upon returning his service focused more on logistics, safety and risk management.
“Coming back, I was more into exercise planning and sharing the knowledge I’d learnt from being over there.
“Later on in my career I got involved in explosive ordinance logistics, safety and risk management.
“I’m on holidays now but not quite retired yet. I’ll continue to do some work in safety and risk management.”
j.pech@standard.fa irfax.com.au
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