Press Conference on the death of two Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Min­is­ter for Defence and Chief of the Defence Force — Two Aus­tralian sol­diers killed in Afghanistan 30 May 2011
AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON: Ladies and Gen­tle­men, good morn­ing. The Aus­tralian Defence Force had a very bad day in Afghanistan yes­ter­day and it is with immense sor­row that I’m here this morn­ing to announce the death of two Aus­tralian sol­diers in Afghanistan in two sep­a­rate inci­dents overnight.

In the first inci­dent, which occurred ear­ly yes­ter­day evening, a mem­ber of the Men­tor­ing Task Force, while under­tak­ing guard duty at patrol base MASHAL in the Chorah Val­ley was shot by an Afghan Nation­al Army sol­dier who was also man­ning the secu­ri­ty guard tower. 

Despite receiv­ing sub­stan­tial med­ical treat­ment at the base and being air­lift­ed very quick­ly to a near­by ISAF med­ical facil­i­ty at Tarin Kot in well under an hour, the Aus­tralian sol­dier died from his wounds. 

The Afghan Nation­al Army sol­dier who fired his weapon fled the scene of the inci­dent. Anoth­er Afghan Nation­al Army sol­dier who had dis­cov­ered what had hap­pened, but was not in the area dur­ing the inci­dent fired upon the offend­ing ANA sol­dier as he was flee­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly a secu­ri­ty oper­a­tion was launched in an effort to impede the sus­pect­ed gunman’s escape. How­ev­er, the per­pe­tra­tor was not appre­hend­ed, but he was iden­ti­fied. Like the death of all our sol­diers in Afghanistan, the death of this sol­dier is both sad and trag­ic. Of course, the par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances of this inci­dent are also dis­turb­ing giv­en that the per­pe­tra­tor in ques­tion was thought to be our part­ner and was the recip­i­ent of our men­tor­ing and training. 

Though we have the broad detail of what occurred, I’m sure you will under­stand that I can’t speak today about the moti­va­tion of this Afghan Nation­al Army sol­dier, nor any asso­ci­a­tions he may have or the amount of plan­ning that did or did­n’t go into the attack. 

The entire event is under inves­ti­ga­tion and we’re obvi­ous­ly going to take a very close look at how this occurred, why this occurred, and what, if any­thing, could have been done to pre­vent it. Today, to the fam­i­ly of the Aus­tralian sol­dier who have been noti­fied about this soldier’s death overnight, on behalf of all the men and women of the Aus­tralian Defence Force, I offer my con­do­lences for their loss. While I can’t ease their grief at this very sad time, I want them to know the Aus­tralian Defence Force will be there to pro­vide com­fort and sup­port as their loved one is laid to rest. 

I’m not in a posi­tion to share his name with you this morn­ing but I can share a lit­tle bit about his expe­ri­ence and what kind of sol­dier he was. 

This young man was 25 years old and at the rank of Lance Cor­po­ral. He had served in the Army for sev­en years. He had pre­vi­ous oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in East Tim­or and start­ed his rota­tion in Afghanistan in Novem­ber last year. I’m told he was a loy­al, reli­able, and very trust­ed mem­ber of his unit. 

He was pro­mot­ed last year to his cur­rent rank and dis­played great lead­er­ship poten­tial. Though he was qui­et and reserved, he enjoyed a joke with his mates and was always the first among them to vol­un­teer when work was required to be done. 

He will be very sad­ly missed by his many Army mates. This will also be a tough time for the Men­tor­ing Task Force. Not only have they lost a mate, but they have also had to deal with this per­pe­tra­tor. They will be expe­ri­enc­ing a myr­i­ad of emo­tions, grief and anger, fore­most among them. 

But I know that they will also want to reaf­firm their com­mit­ment to the Afghan part­ners with whom they do enjoy a pro­duc­tive, trust­ing and close rela­tion­ship. They will not want this one ter­ri­ble inci­dent to dam­age the out­stand­ing progress made by many rota­tions of men­tors and their Afghan partners. 

We remain com­mit­ted to our men­tor­ing role and I can’t stress high­ly enough the impor­tance of the Men­tor­ing Task Force to achiev­ing our mis­sion in Afghanistan. 

The rela­tion­ship between the Afghan Nation­al Army sol­diers of the 4th Brigade is one of the longest run­ning in Afghanistan and there is a gen­uine bond between the forces. The 4th Brigade Com­man­der, Brigadier Gen­er­al Mohammed Zafir Khan has expressed his shock and out­rage at the attack and he and his sol­diers are active­ly seek­ing to appre­hend the suspect. 

That said, I under­stand this inci­dent is obvi­ous­ly going to quite right­ly raise some very seri­ous ques­tions about the secu­ri­ty mea­sures we have in place and I can assure you we’ll be look­ing very close­ly at the out­comes of the inves­ti­ga­tions and any nec­es­sary changes that may be required to enhance the pro­tec­tion of our people. 

In the sec­ond and sep­a­rate inci­dent, which occurred a few hours after the shoot­ing, just after 9pm last night, Aus­tralian East­ern Stan­dard Time, an Aus­tralian Offi­cer was killed when an Aus­tralian Chi­nook heli­copter, which was under­tak­ing a re-sup­ply mis­sion, crashed 90 kilo­me­tres east of Tarin Kot, in Zab­ul Province. 

An Amer­i­can Chi­nook was in close prox­im­i­ty and the crew on board wit­nessed the crash. They land­ed and pro­vid­ed imme­di­ate medi­vac assis­tance for the most seri­ous­ly wound­ed sol­dier to the Role II facil­i­ty in Qalat, 70 kilo­me­tres to the south of the crash site. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, despite this imme­di­ate med­ical assis­tance, the Offi­cer could not be saved. 

The oth­er five Aus­tralians on board the crashed heli­copter were sub­se­quent­ly evac­u­at­ed to the Role III med­ical facil­i­ty at Kan­da­har and I’m pleased to say are in a sat­is­fac­to­ry condition. 

The Chi­nook heli­copter could not be recov­ered and was destroyed in place. 

The fam­i­ly of this sol­dier were noti­fied of his death this morn­ing. I’m not able to release his name at this stage, how­ev­er, I can share that he was 27 years old and a Lieu­tenant in the Army. He was a qual­i­fied pilot who had pro­vid­ed ster­ling ser­vice in Afghanistan since he deployed a short time ago. 

He had pre­vi­ous­ly served in East Tim­or and had been part of Oper­a­tion FLOOD ASSIST in Queens­land, com­ing to the assis­tance of his fel­low Aus­tralians who found them­selves in need in January. 

Though this inci­dent has not long hap­pened, already his com­rades are say­ing what a keen, moti­vat­ed and dri­ven young offi­cer he was, com­mit­ted to serv­ing our nation and excelling as a pilot. 

To this Officer’s large and close-knit fam­i­ly, I offer my deep­est sym­pa­thy and assure them we will pro­vide we will pro­vide what­ev­er assis­tance we can. I hope they are able to draw some com­fort from the knowl­edge they are in the thoughts and prayers of so many Aus­tralians today that are grate­ful for their loved one’s ser­vice to our nation and the sac­ri­fice he has made on our behalf. 

Minister. 

STEPHEN SMITH: Thanks Angus. 

Well, this trag­ic news will be a dev­as­tat­ing blow to two Aus­tralian fam­i­lies, but also a dev­as­tat­ing blow to our nation and this sad news will rever­ber­ate through­out Aus­tralia in the course of today. It will rever­ber­ate in that dev­as­tat­ing and trag­ic way, because it fol­lows so soon and so quick­ly after the death of Sergeant Wood and his ramp cer­e­mo­ny yesterday. 

It will rever­ber­ate because this is the first time in almost a year where we have had to regret­tably advise Aus­tralia that we’ve had more than one casu­al­ty on the same day. 

The Chief of the Defence Force has out­lined in gen­er­al terms the two sep­a­rate instances. We are unable at this stage to iden­ti­fy the two men con­cerned as a result of requests by fam­i­lies for fur­ther time to inform loved ones and I know that peo­ple will respect that privacy. 

Can I, at the out­set, express on behalf of the Gov­ern­ment, on behalf of the Par­lia­ment our con­do­lences to those two families. 

Because of the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances of the first instance, where the death of an Aus­tralian sol­dier has been caused by the actions of an ANA mem­ber, that will also bring with it spe­cial issues and spe­cial cir­cum­stances which will need to be care­ful­ly exam­ined as the Chief of the Defence Force has outlined. 

But, giv­en these two fatal­i­ties fol­low so close­ly on from Sergeant Wood’s death, giv­en the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances of the first instance, this will be a sig­nif­i­cant and dev­as­tat­ing blow to Aus­tralia, to Aus­tralians and, of course, to our Defence Force personnel. 

This brings to 26 the num­ber of fatal­i­ties in Afghanistan since our oper­a­tion in Afghanistan com­menced almost a decade ago. With the injuries, we also see our casu­al­ty list go to over 170. 

On a day like today, it’s impor­tant to reflect upon why we are in Afghanistan and the basis on which we are there. 

I’ve seen in recent days a sug­ges­tion that the main or the only rea­son we are there is to sup­port our alliance part­ner, the Unit­ed States. We are in Afghanistan for more than that rea­son. We con­tin­ue to very strong­ly believe that it is in Australia’s nation­al inter­est to do our bit to help stare down inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism and yes, we work very close­ly with our alliance part­ner, the Unit­ed States in that effort. But our mis­sion in Afghanistan con­tin­ues to be, as it has since day one, autho­rised by Unit­ed Nations man­date, which has been renewed suc­ces­sive­ly over a decade. 

So, in the face of these dev­as­tat­ing announce­ments today, trag­ic news that will rever­ber­ate through­out the Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty, we remain very strong­ly of the view that our resolve in Afghanistan must con­tin­ue. We con­tin­ue to do our work to tran­si­tion secu­ri­ty respon­si­bil­i­ty in Uruz­gan Province and Afghanistan gen­er­al­ly to the Afghan nation­al secu­ri­ty forces. 

Angus and I are hap­py to respond to your questions. 

JOURNALIST: Mr Smith, could you qual­i­fy the nature of the inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist threat that we’re star­ing down in Afghanistan, please? 

STEPHEN SMITH: In Afghanistan we know that the Afghanistan-Pak­istan bor­der area has for a long peri­od of time been a breed­ing ground for inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism and very many of the attacks by inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ists, not just on Aus­tralian cit­i­zens, whether that’s in south-east Asia or the Unit­ed States or Europe, can be traced back to this area. 

And whilst some may argue that the death of bin Laden sig­nif­i­cant­ly — sig­nif­i­cant­ly denudes al-Qae­da in Afghanistan or Pak­istan, al-Qae­da is not the only ter­ror­ist group in the Afghanistan-Pak­istan bor­der area and all of our analy­sis, all of our view is that we con­tin­ue to need to play a role to pro­tect our nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests, to pro­tect our region­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests, to pro­tect the inter­na­tion­al community’s secu­ri­ty inter­ests by play­ing our part as one of 48 nations involved in the Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force in Afghanistan autho­rised, as we are, by a Unit­ed Nations mandate. 

JOURNALIST: The shoot­ing — I know you said it’s ear­ly days but do you have any under­stand­ing at the moment whether or not it was an actu­al attack or whether it was just the result of some sort of argu­ment in the guard­house or some­thing like that, a per­son­al dis­pute between these two men? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: We sim­ply don’t know. That’s why it’s so impor­tant to do the inves­ti­ga­tion. What hap­pened, there were three peo­ple who were man­ning the guard­house: one Aus­tralian, two Afghans, and one of the Afghans depart­ed to attend to a per­son­al mat­ter and it was dur­ing his depar­ture that the inci­dent occurred. Shots rang out and the Afghan who was attend­ing to his per­son­al mat­ter came back and found our mem­ber obvi­ous­ly bad­ly wound­ed and obvi­ous­ly applied first aid and raised the alarm and also fired at the abscond­ing Afghan Nation­al Army member. 

So that’s essen­tial­ly what hap­pened. We need to inves­ti­gate it close­ly and that’s all I’m able to say at this time. 

JOURNALIST: Was our sol­dier shot more than once? You men­tioned wounds. Anoth­er ques­tion, the heli­copter, is there any sug­ges­tion that ene­my action might have brought it down? And, sor­ry, one oth­er. The — often the inquiries take some time, are there any imme­di­ate steps being tak­en to pro­tect sol­diers in those for­ward oper­at­ing bases from sim­i­lar incidents? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: Well, to the first ques­tion, he sus­tained three wounds so that’s — that’s the only — the only thing we’ve got at the moment which might sug­gest three shots but, you know, until we do the inves­ti­ga­tion I would­n’t — I would­n’t con­firm that. 

In terms of the Chi­nook, the Chi­nook was oper­at­ing in day­light in com­pa­ny with anoth­er heli­copter and at this stage we sim­ply do not know what hap­pened. We’re very eager to know if there was any ene­my action involved or whether there was some oth­er prob­lem with the heli­copter but at this point I stress we do not know and, hope­ful­ly, as time goes on, in the short term, we’ll have some indi­ca­tion where we can give you a lit­tle bit more infor­ma­tion on that, not­ing that we need to inves­ti­gate it in the nor­mal way. We’ll get an acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tion team involved in this. If ene­my was involved, it will prob­a­bly be inves­ti­gat­ed in the first instance by an ISAF team that is in-country. 

In terms of if it was some sort of mechan­i­cal prob­lem, or oth­er prob­lem, we’ll send our own team. 

Either way we will be involved in both investigations. 

STEPHEN SMITH: Angus and I thought it very impor­tant, whilst we are the bear­ers of ter­ri­ble news, to bring this news as quick­ly as we could. We could have wait­ed until more was known or until such time as fam­i­ly cir­cum­stances were able to be detailed. We haven’t done that. In the face of such ter­ri­ble news we thought it was impor­tant to bring that to the Aus­tralian peo­ple as quick­ly as we were able to, which is now. That’s the first point. 

Sec­ond­ly, we should very care­ful­ly under­stand that the rea­son there are often offi­cial inquiries into the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the death of an Aus­tralian sol­dier are — are more than one and they are very important. 

First­ly it gives the fam­i­ly the cer­tain­ty of the best effort to analyse what occurred and that is very impor­tant to the fam­i­ly and that’s been the expe­ri­ence in recent times. Sec­ond­ly, it enables us to very care­ful­ly assess whether there are any addi­tion­al force pro­tec­tion mea­sures that we should take or whether there’s a need to change pro­ce­dures or change tech­niques or change approach­es. So I’m not going to be one who will apol­o­gise for the time it takes to do that exhaus­tive and offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion, in this case in respect of two ter­ri­ble incidences. 

But as the Chief has said, if and when we are in a posi­tion to pro­vide any fur­ther pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion which might bet­ter explain the cir­cum­stances of these inci­dences, then we will but the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tions will take place in the usu­al way, putting us in the best posi­tion to learn any lessons from them but also to give the fam­i­lies of the Aus­tralian sol­diers con­cerned the best analy­sis we can as to the cause of the death of their loved ones. 

JOURNALIST: I was­n’t sug­gest­ing that the inquiry should be rushed, I was just won­der­ing whether there was any steps that need­ed to be put in place- 

STEPHEN SMITH: No, I was­n’t reflect­ing in any way on your ques­tion, Bren­dan, nor on you, which I would­n’t do. 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: There have been — can I just respond to the third part of Brendan’s ques­tion. Essen­tial­ly all sol­diers that are recruit­ed into the ANA are bio­met­ri­cal­ly enrolled and they are all vet­ted by NATO Train­ing Mis­sion Afghanistan. 

We obvi­ous­ly work very close­ly with them, we observe them, and we’re always on the look­out for any­body who behaves in a strange way. So, I guess they are the sorts of pro­tec­tions that we have in place and obvi­ous­ly we will have anoth­er look at those sorts of things as we — as we con­duct this investigation. 

JOURNALIST: Can you com­plete­ly rule out it was an acci­dent? Is there any chance that maybe it was­n’t deliberate? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: We need to — again, we need to have a look at this but the fact that mul­ti­ple shots were fired sug­gests that, you know, it was — it was more — more than that. 

JOURNALIST: Do you know if any shots were fired from the Aus­tralian victim’s weapon? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: Not as far as I know but, again, all this will be sub­ject to investigation. 

JOURNALIST: MASHAL is a small base, are there ten­sions now between the Aus­tralian troops and the ANA

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: No, not as far as I know. It was the Afghan Nation­al Army that mount­ed the secu­ri­ty patrol imme­di­ate­ly after the inci­dent and obvi­ous­ly it was an Afghan sol­dier that fired at the indi­vid­ual as he abscond­ed so I think all of that is going to assist in main­tain­ing the rela­tion­ship at the patrol base. 

JOURNALIST: You men­tioned that you could­n’t iden­ti­fy the sol­dier but can you give us some indi­ca­tion of where they might be from in Aus­tralia and their fam­i­lies [indis­tinct].

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: Look, I think at this stage, as the Min­is­ter said, this is very ear­ly on in the process. All I will say is that one indi­vid­ual, the sol­dier that was shot, was based in Queens­land. The mem­ber who was aboard the Chi­nook basi­cal­ly I believe was a Vic­to­ri­an but I’ll leave it at that. 

JOURNALIST: Do we know any oth­er details of the ser­vice record of this ANA sol­dier, how long he’d been qual­i­fied for, what his rank was at all? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: Yes, there is — we know, in fact this morn­ing I saw a nar­ra­tive on the indi­vid­ual. We have his name, we have his ser­vice num­ber and we have a record of his ser­vice. So this was not an imposter. This was some­body who’d been in the ANA for a while and I would char­ac­terise him as — as a rogue sol­dier — which is what oth­er coali­tion mem­bers have described peo­ple who take these sorts of actions as. 

JOURNALIST: There have been a few oth­er inci­dents of rogue sol­diers, not attack­ing Aus­tralians but par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­cans. What have they done to ease con­cerns about this and will you be tak­ing any guid­ance from what the Amer­i­cans have done previously? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: Well, the first pro­tec­tion is the way peo­ple are enrolled into the ANA. I think Gen­er­al Caldwell’s bio­met­ric enrol­ment, the vet­ting is an impor­tant part of that. We’ll clear­ly have a look at how the Amer­i­cans have respond­ed to sim­i­lar inci­dents that they’ve expe­ri­enced but let me stress, we’ve been in Afghanistan now for — on this par­tic­u­lar mis­sion for six years. We’ve worked with thou­sands and thou­sands of Afghans through those six years, right from the out­set, and this is the first inci­dent that we’ve had of this nature. 

JOURNALIST: Did the record say where he was from, else­where in Afghanistan or was he local? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: I must say, I did­n’t focus on those sorts of detail and I’m not — I can’t respond to that at the moment. 

JOURNALIST: The man who died in the Chi­nook, was he fly­ing the Chi­nook at the time? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: No, he was not. 

JOURNALIST: Was he the co-pilot or- 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: He was a pas­sen­ger. He was an avi­a­tor but he was not a mem­ber of the Chi­nook crew. 

JOURNALIST: Where was the Chi­nook going to and from? 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL HOUSTON: It was on a resup­ply mis­sion into the province of Zab­ul. I imag­ine the mis­sion orig­i­nat­ed out of Kandahar. 

Thank you very much. 

Per­son­al details of Aus­tralian Sol­dier killed in Afghanistan Lieu­tenant Mar­cus Sean Case 

It is with deep regret the Aus­tralian Defence Force announces the death of Lieu­tenant Mar­cus Sean Case dur­ing oper­a­tions in Afghanistan on 30 May 2011. 

Lieu­tenant Case was deployed to Afghanistan as a Heron Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cle Oper­a­tor. This was his first deploy­ment to Afghanistan. 

Twen­ty-sev­en year old Lieu­tenant Case was from Syd­ney-based 6th Avi­a­tion Regiment. 

Lieu­tenant Case leaves behind his par­ents and five sib­lings. He was the youngest of six chil­dren. His fam­i­ly is receiv­ing sup­port from Defence. 

Lieu­tenant Case was born in Mel­bourne, Vic­to­ria in 1984. He enlist­ed in the Active Army Reserves on 25 June 2002 and was post­ed to 5th/6th Roy­al Vic­to­ri­an Regiment. 

In 2003, he com­menced the Com­man­do selec­tion and train­ing process with the 1st Com­man­do Reg­i­ment (1Cdo Regt). He was post­ed to 1Cdo Regt, which includ­ed an oper­a­tional tour to East Tim­or in 2007. 

On 19 March 2008, Lieu­tenant Case trans­ferred to the Aus­tralian Reg­u­lar Army, under­tak­ing pilot train­ing at the Army Avi­a­tion Train­ing Cen­tre, Oakey. On 10 Decem­ber 2009, he was post­ed to the 6th Avi­a­tion Reg­i­ment, Sydney. 

Lieu­tenant Case’s first deploy­ment was in July 2005, when he deployed as an infantry­man to Malaysia with Rifle Com­pa­ny But­ter­worth. In Jan­u­ary 2011, he was part of the Avi­a­tion Bat­tle Group deployed to Queens­land to pro­vide assis­tance as part of the Aus­tralian Defence Force flood relief Operation.

Lieu­tenant Case was keen and moti­vat­ed, and was excelling as a pilot. Lieu­tenant Case lived life to the fullest, tak­ing every oppor­tu­ni­ty that was giv­en to him and mak­ing the most of it. He was always the go-to-man who was able to get the job done. 

Lieu­tenant Case has been award­ed the Aus­tralian Ser­vice Medal with Clasp Tim­or-Leste and the Aus­tralian Defence Medal. Lieu­tenant Case will be pre­sent­ed with the Aus­tralian Active Ser­vice Medal with ICAT Clasp, the Afghanistan Cam­paign Medal and the NATO ISAF Medal. 

Dur­ing Lieu­tenant Case’s ser­vice in the Aus­tralian Army, he deployed on the fol­low­ing Operations: 

OPERATION ASTUTE (East Tim­or) (Jun 2007– Sep 2007)
OPERATION Queens­land FLOOD ASSIST (Queens­land) – Jan 2011
OPERATION SLIPPER (Afghanistan) — May 2011

Per­son­al details of Aus­tralian Sol­dier killed in Afghanistan Lance Cor­po­ral Andrew Gor­don Jones

It is with deep regret the Aus­tralian Defence Force announces the death of Lance Cor­po­ral Andrew Gor­don Jones dur­ing oper­a­tions in Afghanistan on 30 May 2011. 

Twen­ty five year old Lance Cor­po­ral Jones was from the 9th Force Sup­port Bat­tal­ion in Amber­ley. Lance Cor­po­ral Jones was serv­ing with the Force Sup­port Unit. This was his first deploy­ment to Afghanistan. 

Lance Cor­po­ral Jones leaves behind his lov­ing par­ents, two younger sib­lings and girl­friend, who are receiv­ing sup­port from Defence.

Lance Cor­po­ral Jones was born in Mel­bourne, Vic­to­ria in 1986. He joined the Army in 2004. After recruit train­ing, he com­plet­ed his ini­tial employ­ment train­ing as a cook and was post­ed to the Cater­ing Pla­toon of the 1st Bat­tal­ion, The Roy­al Aus­tralian Reg­i­ment. He was post­ed to the 9th Force Sup­port Bat­tal­ion in 2008. 

Lance Cor­po­ral Jones’ first oper­a­tional deploy­ment was to East Tim­or in 2008. His sec­ond, to Afghanistan, com­menced in Novem­ber 2010. 

Lance Cor­po­ral Jones was a loy­al, reli­able and trust­wor­thy sol­dier who was ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing his coun­try. He was a team play­er who loved his job. He had a qui­et per­son­al­i­ty but enjoyed a joke with his mates. 

He was a skilled cook who was the first to vol­un­teer to go on the road or on exer­cise. In 2010, he was pro­mot­ed to Lance Cor­po­ral upon com­plet­ing his Junior Leader Course. He dis­played def­i­nite lead­er­ship potential.

His inter­ests includ­ed chess, read­ing, com­put­ers, draw­ing and soccer.

Lance Cor­po­ral Jones was award­ed the Aus­tralian Ser­vice Medal with clasp Timor–Leste, and Aus­tralian Defence Medal. Lance Cor­po­ral Jones will be pre­sent­ed with the Aus­tralian Active Ser­vice Medal with ICAT Clasp, the Afghanistan Cam­paign Medal and the NATO ISAF Medal. 

Dur­ing Lance Cor­po­ral Jones ser­vice in the Aus­tralian Army, he deployed on the fol­low­ing Oper­a­tions:
OPERATION ASTUTE (East Tim­or) – Jul 2000 – Oct 2000.
OPERATION SLIPPER (Afghanistan) – Nov 2010 – May 2011.

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

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