Sights of White Soldiers

Heroes Remember

Sights of White Soldiers

Transcript

Because we were white western men we couldn’t speak to the women and that wasn’t terribly difficult because the women knew enough to stay away from us. Kids are curious everywhere in the world so they’d come around and if guys had tattoos they’d come over, the kids would, and you know, scratch at your tattoo or whatever. Some of them, you know, if they saw white people in some of the remote villages and so on, would have been, we probably would have been there first, you know, in that part of the world. Certainly the first since British India, and some of these kids that were born, you know, that were little kids when we were there, the way they looked at us. They’d come over and smell us to see what we smelled like because we were so different to them. Well, they were that much different to us as well. So you had to learn the basic stuff and even how you talk to people, where you went, where you didn’t go. Those things were important.

Description

Mr. Deveau speaks about how different the soldier’s presence was to the Pakistan people and the respect they had to give to their culture.

Jerry Deveau

Mr. Jerry Deveau was born in Middleton, Nova Scotia on November 20, 1950. Looking for excitement, Mr. Deveau believed he was up for a reasonable challenge in life and decided to join the Canadian Forces. Mr. Deveau joined the Army and after going through a personnel selection unit held occupation of Combat Engineer. In 1990, Mr. Deveau participated in his first operational tour to Pakistan and in 1994 accepted another tour to Rwanda as Chief Warrant Officer. At the end of his military career, Mr. Deveau held rank of Major. Mr. Deveau became employed as a Peer Support Coordinator with the OSISS (Occupational Stress Injury Social Support) program, a federal government network that provides support for military personnel returning to civilian life. Mr. Deveau resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick with his family.

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