Hello, my name's Private DeAngelo, I'm currently an infantry soldier in the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment. I'm currently in support company, the SW Heavy Weapons Platoon which is direct fire support weapons. Been in this battalion for two years now, in those two years I've spent two years pretty much overseas, first year into East Timor, last year, helping out with the elections and things like that and security, and recently just returned from Afghanistan this year, where we spent six months over there with the Reconstruction Task Force 4, which entailed a lot of work with the civilians, a lot of reconstructural programs.
Well the most satisfying job in Afghanistan was definitely helping out with the locals and particularly the jobs with the hospitals, we spent a lot of time securing those sites but the engineers spent a lot of time repairing hospitals, giving them proper facilities for children, things like that. That was definitely... a big reward was seeing those civilians come out and actually say thank you, they start to appreciate that we're there to help, and that was definitely the biggest reward, being over there and seeing the difference that we're making.
I'm pretty happy where I am now, I've got another two years for my contract to expire so I've got a few years left. So I'm just looking forward to spending some more time overseas, doing some more, y'know, reconstruction task force jobs, that type of thing. A lot of... hopefully more trips to places like Afghanistan, Iraq with, y'know, operational tempo is really high at the moment. But other than that, pretty happy where I am now and looking forward to a few more years in the Defence Force.
Well, the emphasis has tried to be focussing on the good points that we've been doing, instead of the casualties, the negative points. We had news crews out and things like that trying to raise the awareness of what we're actually doing, I think so far that's a good point that we're trying to get across to the public, still a lot of people don't know what we're doing and I get a lot of questions of what we've done over there, what is it like, things like that. But generally it's starting to be a lot more aware, people understand that there is dangers, but we are trying to do the right thing, we are helping the people improve their lives over there.