Abundance of Supply in the Midst of Poverty

Interviewer: And knowing the level of poverty in Somalia at this time amongst the locals and seeing the equipment and the supplies and the amount of supplies that you had that you were responsible for, was there ever any tension between you and the locals in them wanting some of your things? There was no doubt that these were people in desperate want of everything and we certainly in their minds, although we thought it was austere, in their minds it was opulence unimagined. We had water, we had food, we had electricity, we had tents, we had shelter. When we first arrived in our actual operational location, there was a village not far away, Beledweyne. Around the camp itself there was virtually nothing there. By a month later, there was probably 500, a village, a temporary village of about 500 just made up of dome shaped shelters largely made from, you know, the framing made from twigs and sticks and so on from vegetation around the desert and then you would sort of see cardboard boxes sort of patching it up and that was all the stuff the garbage that had blown around and got outside of the gate and they would use, salvage it so you can appreciate the poverty that one man’s garbage literally is another man’s treasure and they were using that stuff. But we didn’t feel any animosity in that sense. One of the things that was really striking to us though and I’ve got pictures of it, of the local garbage truck from the town that was hired by us to take our garbage away. After it would leave our camp it would be swamped by dozens upon dozens of the local community trying to take the trash out of the truck because that became part of their building materials or stuff they could pawn off that we thought was garbage would have value to them. And, of course, there was infiltration as well. The big prize there was diesel fuel, because you could imagine fuel was in a very short supply so there was issues for sure with locals breaking or attempting to break into the camps to get fuel. They were after other things as well. There was always a fear they were after weapons but by in large, most of us believe that really they were after the fuel. The weapons were, I think, a lot easier to come by for them than it was for fuel.

Mr. Bradley shares his view on the abundance of supplies for the soldiers versus witnessing the locals using their trash to survive.

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.