57 elements of A Battery to assist with local security and establish a presence. According to 103rd Battery Commander Major Graeme Finney, the push required to fill spots was enormous and required a daily effort to check availability and sell the need for gun numbers. Commanding Officer of 5/7 RAR LT COL Simon Gould had a great personal interest in artillery and wanted to involve the battery as much as possible. The offer from Major Finney was too good to turn down as it released pressure from the LT COL Gould to fill numbers. Instead of assigning roles for the sake of it, he could enjoy the flexibility of using the 103rd Battery’s numbers so he could freely assign his best members to where they needed to be. The effort required to fill the vacancies was in no small way massive. The lead up training focussed heavily on peacekeeping operations, information about Timor and the political situation as it became clearer a deployment was in fact happening. FO teams were selected to be re-rolled as a Civil Military Liaison (CML) and a large amount of learning had to be done in a short time to prepare members to fill their new out of corps roles. Flexibility is a large emphasis on the battery of today, who have served the community in every crisis of the 2010s and early 2020s, but in the late 90s it was highly unusual. On October 7th 1999, select groups of the 103rd Battery deployed to East Timor by air with the wider regiment under the 5th/7th Battalion Group as part of INTERFET (International Force East Timor). The Battery provided members to fill spots as vehicle drivers, filling agreed upon vacancies within 5/7’s various Companies as well as Regimental Police whose straightforward role saw them primarily performing security operations around headquarters and the CML was integrated within their companies. The arrival of the battery and 5/7 allowed the other battalions to move out to the western borders of Timor and facilitate the arrival of other international forces.
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