My name is Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Hills, I am a transport officer in the Australian Regular Army. I joined, pretty much straight from school in April 1990. I went directly to RMC and have served continuously since that time.
Certainly, my first operational experience was with Headquarters INTERFET, working on the INTERFET Headquarters with Major General Cosgrove at the time… a wonderful experience. My second deployment was more recent, and I’ve just recently returned from Iraq working with the Vice-Chief of the Iraqi Defence Force for six months.
My primary role in Iraq was working as a military advisor to the Iraqi Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff who was a four-star Iraqi fighter pilot. My typical day involved meeting him early in the morning and going to the multinational force battle update assessment, which gave a round up of the days activities. He then drive to his office at the Iraqi Ministry of Defence and I shortly after followed him there and primarily spent the majority of my days at his side providing advice on coalition operations and interactions with the Iraqi Defence Force. A typical day could have included convoy driving through the streets of Baghdad, as the only coalition member in a group of possibly a hundred Iraqis, with security staff and so forth, or indeed flying on Iraqi aircraft and using other Iraqi means to get around Iraq itself. It was a fascinating job, I regularly work 18-hour days but it was extremely fulfilling, especially being embedded with the Iraqis to the degree that I was.
I think the most satisfying part of this for me is the fact that, working with an Iraqi four-star general, in their Ministry of Defence, I was able to interact with some very senior Iraqi people on a regular basis, and certainly within the office of the Vice-Chief, I was able to help him make some wholesale changes to the way business was done which have had follow-on effects for the future. So I can actually see some outcome to my efforts and my direction.
I’d say the biggest cost personally was being separated from my wife and children for six months. That was particularly hard, but I was able to rationalize that against how well the Iraqis considered me, and how well they treated me, and certainly the thanks that my wife has personally received through mail and through some gifts that they asked me to provide her allowed her to see that my contribution to help Iraq was very much appreciated by them.