Part of the Airborne Regiment

In Somalia I had gone to the Airborne Regiment as I had mentioned before as part of the Royal Canadian Regiment and had been my entire career. The Airborne Regiment, which of course doesn’t exist anymore, was represented by all of the infantry regiments - the Vandoos, PPCLI and the Royal Canadian Regiment. Nobody stayed there for their entire career but you went there for periods of time so I went there, by that point, as a fairly senior soldier and as most people would tell you it was a pretty dry spell between Cyprus and the time that Somalia and then ultimately the former Yugoslavia ramped up. There weren’t a lot of operational tours. In fact, I was thinking not long ago that looking at a picture of various warrant officers and sergeants in my battalion sort of back in the day when I was a younger soldier regardless of how senior they were, they tended to have two medals - the Canadian Forces decoration which is twelve years of service for the Cyprus medal because there wasn’t a lot of opportunities other than sporadic ones. So anyway, I ended up in the Airborne Regiment and as fortune, or misfortune would have it, depending on how you look at it, the Airborne was selected to deploy to Somalia and if you recall that particular bit of Canadian history we were there to assist with the aid that was being sent to Somalia as a result of the famine. There was a lot of, I want to say gang activity just to sort of relate it in the vernacular of today but there was a lot of problems with the aid shipments being pilfered and they needed protection and Canada went in along with other nations primarily the United States, of course, and to provide protection for a lot of the NGO organizations, non-governmental organizations, so we deployed there for that, to provide that support. I deployed as part of the advanced party because I was the quartermaster for 3 Commando. In short, the quartermaster is the guy or gal that looks after all of the stores as we say, “beans, bullets and rations.” So anyway, I deployed, advanced there so you can imagine leaving Canada, jumping in a Hercules transport aircraft, flying from Trenton, Ontario to Gander - from Gander to Shannon, Ireland - Shannon, Ireland to Crete - from Crete to Djibouti and then sort of off-loading in Djibouti and then charging up our weapons because safety regulations wouldn’t allow us to fly with ammunition in our weapons. It had to be transported separately but once we were in Djibouti it was considered theatre of operations so we loaded up and that automatically sort of escalated the sense of “this is the real deal" and then flying into Belladova(sp) in Somalia and then getting off the aircraft remembering that I left on the 22nd of December, cold in Canada and got off the aircraft in Somalia and it was probably 95, 100 degrees so it was quite a culture shock. So desert environment, didn’t see a lot of the local population there initially, not a lot of interaction with them but certainly an environmental culture shock and, you know, a military culture shock because we had never done anything like that before.

As quartermaster, Mr. Bradley details the responsibility of the regiment in providing support to the soldiers.

Daniel Bradley

Mr. Daniel Bradley was born June 24, 1958 in Ottawa, Ontario. At 18 years of age, walking by a recruiting centre, Mr. Bradley made an impulsive decision to join the military having a desire for the infantry. Mr. Bradley became a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment holding rank as an infanteer and obtained training at CFB Cornwallis in Trenton, Ontario. After training, Mr. Bradley spent a bit of time In Canada service but in 1978 experienced his first operational deployment to Cyrpus. In 1992 Mr. Bradley was given another opportunity to deploy to Somalia and joined a contingency from the RCR and became part of the Airborne Regiment where he held rank of Chief Warrant Officer. As his military career continued Mr. Bradley was part of an operational to Croatia in 1994, Bosnia in 1997 and more recently 2002/03 travelled to Afghanistan on two different operations, one being Roto O as Company Sergeant Major. Mr. Bradley retired in 2011 with 35 years of military sevice.