The Afghan Children

Heroes Remember

The Afghan Children

Transcript

Their food, everything is different than ours. In fact, some of the food here in Canada we eat it even the same as what they eat there. You eat curry, we eat curry. They eat spices the same as we eat the different spices. You know, they put their pants on the same way we do. It's just that they have a different lifestyle and culture. And I think they deserve, the children deserve the right to make their choices and not be pushed down to think that the rest of the society in the world is trying to make them something that they're not. Children loved you. I mean, like I say, the hardest thing is you are not allowed to give the children candy, give them rations or any food whatsoever because a bigger child would always take it from the little children and so it was just no. As much as you want to, you can't. So you have to get tough quick and even if you don't have children or you may have nieces and nephews and some of the soldiers, or smaller children of brothers and sisters at home you can't, there's no, you just can't do it because all you're going to do is create a big headache because the little ones are the ones that are going to get beat up by the bigger ones and in turn, it just escalates so you don't want to do anything. But the kids are great kids. I mean, they are no different than the kids here, they're curious. They haven't seen the big green guy standing there before, they ask questions. Some of them can speak perfect English, some of them are better English than us believe it or not. Some of them can speak French. They speak, of course, their own language. But they are just kids.

Description

Mr. Hennessey expresses the love the Afghan children had for the soldiers and the imposed limitations the soldiers faced in dealing with the children.

Allan Hennessey

Corporal Hennessey was born December 21, 1963 in Newcastle, New Brunswick. At age 17, he decided to join the Canadian Forces and chose the army as his branch of service. He initially joined up with The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment. Cpl. Hennessey received much of his basic training through the reserves and later became part of the regular force. As part of infantry, Cpl. Hennessey took on the occupation of vehicle technician and rifleman. During his service, Cpl. Hennessey was part of Roto O in Afghanistan and did a tour in Kandahar in 2006-07. Cpl. Hennessey is part of the RSS (Reserve Support Staff).

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