The Somalia Children

Heroes Remember

The Somalia Children

Transcript

I saw things that no Canadian was ever trained to see. I mean, you’re seeing 10, 11 year old kids. Their stomach—you could touch the belly button and you’d be touching their backbone. And there was some not pretty things that, yes, we were trained to be in the army and yes, we’d seen the war movies and everything else, but it’s a lot different than a video game when you’re seeing it in real life. And they weren’t all pretty things, they weren’t all good things. Some of the things I still have nightmares about today. I think what bothered me the most about Somalia was the children. You want to do something for the children. The shame of it is if you try to throw a chocolate bar out of the truck there’d be 2000 children trying to get that one chocolate bar. Some get stepped on, some get hurt, and it was hard to see with that so it ended up, we had the order that don’t give out anything because it was just causing more problems than it is trying to help. But those are part of the hard things that you accept with the job that you picked.

Description

Mr. Rutherford describes the sight of the starving Somalia children.

Mark Rutherford

Mr. Rutherford was born in St. Laurent, Quebec, on March 1, 1962. After making the decision to join the Canadian Forces, Mr. Rutherford became a member of the Royal Canadian Infantry Regiment. He received training in London, Ontario, and participated in theatres of service in Somalia and Cyprus. After retiring from his military career, Mr. Rutherford trained to become an addiction counsellor and became employed with the Department of National Defence in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He used his knowledge and military experience to assist fellow soldiers in coping with the emotional effects resulting from their deployments.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 1:15
Person Interviewed:: Mark Rutherford
War, Conflict or Mission:: Canadian Armed Forces
Location/Theatre:: Somalia
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: Royal Canadian Infantry Regiment

Language selection

The Somalia Children

Heroes Remember