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News Features
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Tuesday, 25 April 2006
He says his mother threw up her hands in horror at the news, but he wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. Initially, he says, he didn’t understand the so-called “confrontation” he was serving in. He was just keen to get out and see the world. “You never thought you’d be in danger, which you were all the time. You just went up and did your job,” he says. As a radar operator on HMNZS Santon, a ton-class mine sweeping vessel, Seaman Cole and his tight-knit crew patrolled the Singapore and Malacca Straits intercepting Indonesian raiders attempting to slip into Malaysian territory. The Santon and fellow Kiwi minesweeper the Hickleton conducted more than 200 patrols in the first year of the conflict, dealing with 20 covert Indonesian incursions. Mr Cole says his tour of duty mixed the excitement of an overseas experience with the boredom and bad food that characterises much of military life in war and peacetime. “A lot of it was just boring patrols, like most wars are – boring bits with occasional dust ups.” Mostly the Santon stopped suspect vessels and took the crew into custody. He says fortunately the Indonesian navy never attempted to cross the territorial line and the conflict ended abruptly with an internal Indonesian coup in 1966. These days he says people know so little about the “confrontation”. Occasionally he’s asked about his medals. “It was a small war that was readily forgotten, which is a shame,” says Mr Cole. It was the camaraderie he remembers most and Mr Cole reckons in his 23-year naval career he never enjoyed a posting as much as his time on HMNZS Santon. This year he’ll reunite with some of his old crewmates at a reunion in July – the 40th anniversary of the last combat engagement involving a New Zealand naval vessel. | |||||||||
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