Memories and Reflections on the Balkans

Heroes Remember

Memories and Reflections on the Balkans

Transcript

In the case of the Balkans, it stabilized to the extent but early on believe it or not we still had Ustashian Chethnik groups that were in the area and this is during the Second World War. There's a little town, Sibernik I think it was, along, near the Dalmatian Coast where the Croats went in and took out 28 villages, but there was also all sorts of swastikas there. And the same further north of Tuzla where the Chetnik was, I can't remember his name now but he was assassinated in Belgrade last year, which was no loss. He led the Chetniks, you know this was going back, hatreds goes back many, many years. As Lou Mackenzie responded one day when somebody said to him when he was isolated at the airport with his troops and there was nobody else there but CNN and the other media and they couldn't get out either, so Lou got a lot of air time. He said he was sick of, he was running out of one liners, but one great line was, "Who fired the first shot?" and his response was, "Some asshole about 200 years ago", and that's true. It hasn't stopped since.

Description

Colonel Ethell speaks of how they found Nazi sympathizers during the Balkan crisis 50 years after the Second World War

Donald Stewart Ethell

Donald Stewart Ethell was born in July 1937 and was raised in Victoria, BC. His father was a Veteran of both the First and Second World Wars. His mother was a nurse. He and his sister attended boarding school because of his parents' jobs and he was only home at Christmas and during the summer. His mother passed away when Mr. Ethell was 10 years old.

When he enlisted, Mr. Ethell joined the Queen's Own Rifles in Calgary. After several years of serving as an infantryman he was recommended for the officer training. Mr. Ethell graduated from the program and rose to the rank of Colonel. He went on to command Canadian, and United Nations, forces in various missions all over the world. In the mid 1990s, Col. Ethell retired with over thirty-five years of distinguished service.

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