Food and Water Source

Heroes Remember

Food and Water Source

Transcript

For the locals, it's, I mean, it's whatever they're growing around there so a lot of chickens, a lot of beef, a lot of seafood. The Mekong River runs right through the bulk of the country and then you can get out to the shore and it's all beautiful white coral beaches out through there. There used to be a big Club Med that was there one time. I mean so it was kind of, it was interesting to go. A lot of fresh fruit, like the jackfruits and, you know, like the normal stuff, coconuts and mangos. We had the only water purification unit in the country, it was the ROWPU, they call it now. We had actually a prototype so it was called an ADROWPU before which meant air droppable, reverse osmosis water purification unit but the problem was air droppable, no, not a good thing.... They found out after they slid it out, they used them in the Gulf War, they slid it out of the back of the aircraft and it went “whack, thump,” and cracked a lot of the lines so they figured out, okay we're not going to drop them by aircraft anymore. So what these were, were ship board systems that they used to use for desalinating the water for the men, onboard ship, or ladies, yep, so they were able to modify, put it in a sea container, put it in a self-contained, with a generator and all that kind of stuff. So ours was one of two prototypes so there were a lot of miles on by that point already. They didn't want to let me take leave from the camp because that water purification unit was critical. If it went down we'd be without water. And parts to get, had to come from Canada because it was a prototype so we really babied that machine and the only way that I could ever leave the camp is if we had at least three to four days of back up water in place before they would let me go anywhere just in case something happened. And it gave us a lot of heartache once we first got there because it was in pretty rough shape by that point. A lot of the propellers on the pumps were beat up and the problem with a shipboard machine is that it vibrates a lo tand luckily I had that navy training in the past so the first rotation was having a lot of problems like knocking down all the time and had to go through al the maintenance routine and try to get it back up again. And then I had taken industrial motor controls at St. Clair College and had worked on programmable logic control technology which we did not have training in the military on at that point. So luckily I was just in the right place at the right time and we were able to keep the pumps working the way they were supposed to and I was able to fault find a really difficulty fault on it so good for us we had water. I mean we were pumping it out of the river, it was coming out of the pools around us wherever we could get it as a water source but it was coming out 99.99% pure.

Description

Mr. Beresford provides in detail the system used for water purification for the soldiers and the variety of foods available.

Tony Beresford

Mr. Tony Beresford was born in Windsor, Ontario June 11, 1961. He grew up in a military family where his father served in the Navy and his mother in the Air Force. Military life was a very positive decision for Mr. Beresford who first joined the Navy reserves in Windsor and after serving there for three years, joined the regular force. Mr. Beresford later joined the Canadian Forces where he decided to obtain a trade in electronics technician and ended up advancing as a fire controls technician, a very unique trade to the military. In 1992 Mr. Beresford went overseas on his first tour to Cambodia as part of 92 Transport Company. In addition to in-Canada service, Mr. Beresford was sent on tour to Bosnia in 1999. Military being a big part of his life, Mr. Beresford met and married his wife who also served with the Canadian Forces. After 30 years service, Mr. Beresford retired and resides in Ontario with his family.

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