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Brits play key role in US-led Pacific peace mission

Four British servicemen joined a US-led peace mission around the Pacific Rim helping communities devastated by storms.

One senior Royal Navy officer and three medics – one each from the Army, Navy and Air Force – took part in the Pacific Partnership deployment, an annual mission of goodwill which sees US Navy vessels visit countries and islands across the great ocean delivering aid and assistance and fostering friendships.

The deployment has been run for the past 13 years, a response to the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 which killed more than 230,000 lives in 14 nations around the Indo-Pacific region.

The UK has been increasingly involved over the past decade. Last year Captain Peter Olive acted as deputy commander of the mission. This year, that honour fell to Captain Paddy Allen, Captain of Surface Ships in the Devonport flotilla.

The Pacific Partnership mission assists nations’ preparation for – and ability to recover from – disaster in its first hours.

Captain Paddy Allen, Captain of Surface Ships in the Devonport flotilla

The Americans assigned two ‘expeditionary fast transport ships’ – military version of large fast ferries – to the 2019 deployment: USNS Fall River and USNS Brunswick, with Captain Allen leading the team on the latter.

Also on the Brunswick were Royal Navy Lieutenant Andrew ‘Les’ Dennis deployed as a medical planner, Captain Tom Magee of the Royal Army Medical Corps as a disaster relief planner all bound for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Vietnam.

And RAF Flight Lieutenant John Carillion-Curry joined the Fall River as an aeromedical advisor and medical planner, destination the Philippines, Malaysia, Timor Leste and Thailand.

The ships typically spend two to three weeks in each location, with personnel getting stuck into health and medical projects, offering advice and assistance on what to do in the event of a major storm, earthquake, volcano or tsunami.

“Put aside geo-politics and recent history clearly describes – in graphic detail – that the greatest threat in the Indo-Pacific region at present is a natural disaster,” Captain Allen explained.

“Unlike war there tends to be little notice and communities can be decimated, or razed, in a matter of hours.

“When a disaster strikes, there is always a delay before international assistance kicks in. The Pacific Partnership mission assists nations’ preparation for – and ability to recover from – disaster in its first hours.”

And so it proved, as the Brunswick was dispatched to Micronesia in the wake of Super Typhoon Wutip, which had battered the outer islands in the chain especially with winds of up to 160mph.

Brunswick stopped at some of the worst-affected outer islands, each one inhabited by around 200 people.

Lt Dennis led medical teams to the islands to offer both treatment and to help resupply the island’s small medical dispensaries which are the only point of call for the island’s population and which had been devastated by the super typhoon ripping through.

Fortunately, there had been no fatalities on any of the islands.

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