Home After Bosnia Deployment

Heroes Remember

Home After Bosnia Deployment

Transcript

When I first got back from Bosnia it was very hard. You had seen so much over there, like I said it was a real culture shock. I came back it was hard to mow the lawn, hard to walk on grass. You’re walking around things, you’re nervous going in crowds, hard to go to a restaurant, hard to go to a mall. Here we are living in Edmonton and I couldn’t go to West Ed and all these places like that because I didn’t like the big crowds, didn’t like the loud noises. I had an incident happen to me over on the street where a kid gave me a gun but it was kind of pointed to my head over in Bosnia and I flipped out a little bit, you know, I’m dead. So when I came back my son was about the same age as this kid so I didn’t really want to hang or do anything with my son so it was hard on him but I’m punishing him for what that kid almost did to me kind of thing. It took me a year or so to grapple with it and realize why I was feeling that way and what happened. Once I dealt with that it was okay to move on but, it was hard on them too because you got anger issues when you get back. You’re moody, you’re grumpy, there are just a whole lot of things. It takes a while to move on from especially when you felt like the whole time over there no matter what time of day you feel like your life is on the line all the time. It could happen anytime so you always have that on your mind set and then to come home and told, “Okay relax, you’re okay, you’re back in Canada, everything is normal now!” It’s not that easy just to shut off your brain to that heightened awareness state of everywhere you go, you know, driving a vehicle, how many times in your side rear mirror, side view mirror, rear view mirror as fast as you can to watch every vehicle cut in front of you and you get road rage because someone you think it too close to you and stuff like that because you would be that way overseas. You wouldn’t want anyone to get too close to you because you don’t know if they are trying to ram you or what they are trying to do because you always had people front and back within a distance. So now you’re driving down the street and someone is tailgating you and you’re getting mad and things like that so it took a while to calm down from that type of atmosphere. Now our tours from Afghanistan these guys get to go to I think its Cyprus to decompress. We flew right out of the country back to Canada and that was called decompression when we landed. Because I came home early I had no interviews, no nothing like that. It was just a matter, you’re off for two weeks, here’s your flight date to fly to Borden.

Description

Mr. Williams speaks about his return home and how adjusting to civilian life had its challenges.

Andy Williams

Mr. Williams was born June 24, 1964 in Trenton, Ontario. His father being in the Air Force, Mr. Williams had the strong desire to join, however, when his time came, the decision for service would be army and began his training career as an army medic. In 1985 he joined as a reservist and spent 25 years with the Regular Force. In 1997, Mr. Williams was deployed to Bosnia with the Lord Strathcona’s Horse Royal Canadians holding rank of master corporal. Another opportunity for a posting was exercised in 1998 when he deployed to Kosovo, this time with the 1 Service Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. Mr. William’s army career as a medic took him to many In-Canada posting serving with the Canadian military and upon retirement resides in Berwick, Nova Scotia with his wife and family.

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