Distribution To effect Cosgrove's operational concept of flooding East Timor with as many combat troops as possible, Mark Evans deployed his brigade with a minimum of vehicles and logistical support. Unlike exercises conducted in northern Australia in the 1980s and 1990s, the logistical support would follow the combat troops, and not be pre-positioned to receive them. Since the operational situation was uncertain, demand for items like ammunition and medical supplies could not be forecast. The plan therefore was to build up stockpiles in Darwin from DNSDC in Sydney, and then forward them on demand to 10 FSB by air to Comoro airport via the ICAW or by sea to the port of Dili by HMAS
Jervis Bay and
Tobruk. 10 FSB would then distribute them to 3 BASB or directly to the troops. To send supplies directly to Dili would have resulted in their arrival without troops to receive them, facilities to store them, or transport to distribute them, as had occurred to Australian forces in the
Vietnam War in 1966. Cousins set priorities on the advice of Colonel
Ash Power, Cosgrove's operations officer. Contingency stocks were held offshore on HMAS
Success. ADF cargo was tracked using three computer systems, the Standard Defence Supply System (SDSS),
Lotus Notes Interim Demand System (LNIDS), and the Cargo Visibility System (CVS). These had been employed by the ADF
Peace Monitoring Group in
Bougainville in 1994, and had been improved as a result of that experience. The problem of disjointed logistics systems had been recognised for years. CVS was not used in Operation Warden, as it could not handle large volumes of urgent requirements. SDSS was the Department of Defence's preferred system, but units in the field preferred the simpler LNIDS, even for inventory items, which it was not intended to handle. McManus's FLSG had responsibility for the purchase, receipt, storage and forwarding of supplies from Darwin. He did not have sufficient operators trained in the use of SDSS and LNIDS to track their movements and order items such as spare parts, nor did he have sufficient personnel to prepare pallets or load aircraft, and there were only four trained staff who were available to deal with what soon became a flood of mail. He established an ad hoc unit called the Top End Distribution Squadron (TEDS), and leased some former military warehouses in the Darwin suburb of
Berrimah from their new owners, where stocks could be held until called forward. A terminal operations unit was created at RAAF Base Darwin to handle air dispatch. He coordinated air delivery with No. 395 Expeditionary Combat Support Wing and
No. 321 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron RAAF at RAAF Base Darwin, and sea delivery with the naval base. Eventually some 120 personnel were assigned to the FLSG, drawn from 9th and 10th Force Support Battalions and the
7th Combat Service Support Battalion. Kinloch was appointed commander, Land Component Support Group, and would be responsible for the support of the advance elements in Dili until the 10th Force Support Battalion arrived.
Sustainment The first priority was water. Until engineer units with boring equipment arrived, there was no potable water in Dili. Every soldier had to carry a day's supply, which meant on their backs. Another day's supply went with the troops on their aircraft and ships as packaged water. Two water tankers, each holding , arrived on 21 September on landing craft. These were used to refill
jerry cans sent by sea and air. HMAS
Tobruk carried three trucks loaded with bottled water and jerry cans. Contingency stocks were held offshore on HMAS
Success. Similarly, Cousins had each soldier carry a day's combat rations. He anticipated that everyone would be eating combat rations for at least two, and possibly three weeks. Additional rations were carried on HMAS
Tobruk and
Jervis Bay, but the first substantial resupply did not occur until
Tobruk returned on 26 September. A contingency stock of 10,000 combat rations was held on HMAS
Success. Non-Australian contingents had been instructed to bring 42 days' supplies with them, but most arrived requiring assistance with their immediate needs, including catering, transport and unloading their equipment and supplies. The first contingent of Filipino troops arrived without rations or water. Fuel presented a problem because the ADF had no ship-to-shore refuelling capability. Naval units were the sole source of the diesel and aviation fuel for units in East Timor for the first three months of Operation Stabilise, during which INTERFET consumed of fuel per day. Initially, packaged fuel was flown from HMAS
Success to the heliport by RAN
Westland Sea King helicopters in collapsible fuel drums as underslung loads. Once Army
tanker trucks arrived in mid-October, they were driven onto landing craft from the
hard stand east of the wharf, taken out to HMAS
Success, and then refuelled while alongside. This process took about five hours. Drivers of the fuel and water tankers were invited to come aboard HMAS
Success, where they could take a shower, enjoy a hot meal, and have their clothes laundered while they waited for the tanker to be refilled. HMNZS
Endeavour ran a shuttle service to East Timor from Singapore or Darwin, typically replenishing HMAS
Success with of aviation fuel and of diesel fuel on each run.
Endeavour returned home on 20 October, followed by
Success, which was relieved by , which arrived with a Sea King from
443 Maritime Helicopter Squadron. The results showed that the memory of previous campaigns had faded since the Vietnam War ended in 1975 at every level of command. Officers failed to supervise the chemoprophylaxis regimen, and while most soldiers dutifully took their tablets, some did not. Both
Plasmodium falciparum and
Plasmodium vivax are endemic in East Timor, and the prevalence of malaria among the civilian population was much greater than usual in September 2000, due to many people fleeing from the violence into the jungle where there was greater exposure to mosquitoes. There were 64 cases of malaria among ADF personnel in East Timor. Since there was no evidence of resistance against doxycycline, the cause was either failure to take the tablets or their deterioration under tropical conditions. About two-thirds of cases were
falciparum, the remainder being
vivax. The
falciparum cases were treated with a combination of
quinine, mefloquine and doxycycline, while the
vivax cases were treated with a combination of
chloroquine and primaquine. Another 212 cases were reported from ADF personnel after they returned to Australia. All were
falciparum cases except for two who developed
vivax within two weeks of return. Primaquine resistance has been documented in Papua New Guinea but not in East Timor, but the terminal regimen was not as effective as hoped. In any case, it was the only drug capable of eliminating the malaria parasites from the liver, so cases were administered another course of chloroquine and primaquine. It was noted that compliance with the treatment was excellent among those who had already suffered an attack of malaria. Some 44 cases had a relapse, eleven had a second relapse, and two had a third. INTERFET's medical resources were stretched by the East Timorese civilian population, many of them children, who had broken bones or infected wounds from edged weapons. Some had fractures that had been improperly set. The available medical supplies were insufficient to cope with the demand, and the soldiers scrounged for medical supplies from abandoned clinics, the Dili General Hospital, and TNI stores. In mid-October, the INTERFET Field Surgical Team (FST) opened the INTERFET Hospital in the Museum building with 55 beds and a range of medical and surgical services. Personnel for the unit were drawn from the Army's 1st Field Hospital in Brisbane, and the 6th RAAF Hospital in
Laverton, Victoria. The personnel had experience from Operation Shaddock, the deployment to Papua New Guinea to assist victims of the
1998 tsunami. While 80 per cent of admissions were of INTERFET personnel, the hospital also treated East Timorese and other civilians. The INTERFET Hospital maintained the only fully equipped
intensive care unit in Dili. Less urgent cases were referred to the French Military Hospital and the Dili General Hospital, which was run by the Red Cross.
Civil affairs Over 72,000 civilians had returned to Dili by early October, mainly from the surrounding area, but increasingly from further afield. The Dili stadium became the focal point for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Techniques honed in
Operation Solace, the Australian intervention in Somalia in 1992–1993, were employed to avoid disturbances at food distribution points. Lieutenant Colonel Joe Ison, USA, an experienced civil affairs officer from B Company,
96th Civil Affairs Battalion, which was normally based at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, established a Civil Military Operations Centre (CMOC) in Dili on 25 September. His ten-person team was augmented with Australians from INTERFET HQ. He coordinated relief efforts with the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
UNICEF,
World Food Programme,
Red Cross,
Oxfam and other agencies. In early November his team were replaced by a detachment from the
322nd Civil Affairs Brigade from Hawaii. When the 3rd Brigade moved to the border areas adjoining West Timor, agencies struggled to supply aid to the people there. One relief organisation representative told a CMOC meeting that it would take two months for his only truck to move of supplies to Suai on East Timor's south coast, assuming that monsoonal rains did not wash the roads away. Two CH-53s moved his supplies in one afternoon.
Postal Some members of the 10th Force Support Battalion had prior active service in
Rwanda and Bougainville, but the volume of mail received in East Timor came as a surprise. Delivered to Australian Field Post Office (AFPO) 5 in Dili by forklift on large metal RAAF
L pallets, the volume of mail increased from a day on October to per day in early November. As Christmas approached, families and friends of ADF personnel took advantage of the Australian government's offer of free mail delivery, and from mid-November the volume of mail increased to per day.
Jervis Bay was employed to fetch the incoming mail from Darwin three times a week. Outgoing mail was dispatched to Australia seven days a week. As a result, the postal unit found themselves working from 14 to 16 hours a day.
Coalition logistics At its peak, INTERFET had 11,693 personnel from 23 countries. Of these 5,697 were from Australia, making it the largest deployment of Australian forces overseas since the Vietnam War. But, as Major Bronwyn Worswick, the legal officer at FLSG, noted, "our logistics system is set up to supply us. It's not set up to supply and sell basically to other countries". When operations commenced, formal arrangements regarding logistical support were in place only with the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Contingents therefore arrived without a clear idea of what they would be called upon to pay for, creating the potential for fractures in the coalition over supplies and their cost recovery. While there was a requirement for INTERFET to account for all stores issued for later cost recovery, FLSG adopted a policy that rigid accounting was not required from New Zealand, as they were such close allies. The two nations shared a similar operational culture, in that immediate operational needs were considered paramount, and worrying about the details could be left for later. This culture was not shared by ASEAN nations, who wanted their logistical support provided on a commercial basis. Some contingents attempted to run a cash-based economy, paying for minor items at the point of acquisition. The South Korean force went so far as to seek financial compensation for the late delivery of rations. Australian fuel pumps did not have meters on them, so it was difficult to measure how much fuel was provided to contingents. Nor were there procedures in place for capturing the labour and materials required in servicing vehicles; these had to be developed in-theatre. In the
Guidelines for Force Contributing Nations, contingents were asked to arrive in Australia self-sufficient for forty-two days. This proved to be little more than a vain hope. Some contingents, taking advantage of the speed at which the Australians had assembled the coalition, arrived with little or no logistical support, which they expected Australia to provide in its role as the lead nation. Crucial financial assistance came from Japan, which donated over
USD$100 million. Due to the limitations of the Australian computer systems, it was not until September 2000 that the ADF's costs in supporting INTERFET could be tallied, which hampered Australian claims for reimbursement from the UN INTERFET Trust Fund. ==End of mission==