Reluctance in Returning Home

Heroes Remember

Reluctance in Returning Home

Transcript

You want to come home and see your family. You felt you have done your time, it’s time to leave but then you started projects you don’t want to leave them behind for someone because the one platoon house we had up and running, the clinic up there like I said we had taken the old x-ray machine out, we got it rewired, cleaned up around the buildings, we knew everyone was safe. We were just setting up the other one and we were halfway through trying to explain everything there because they had a lot of donated medicine from Germany and places like that. We had interpreters come in and tell us what some of these drugs actually were and set them up in a pharmacy and getting people to come out and get seen so you don’t know if the next people coming behind you are going to have the same mandate, are they going to roll downtown and say hi to people and be nice because we were learning the local language of hello and a few words like that and interpreters were getting us out more and stuff like that. So we had a chance to meet more of the locals and try to interact and help them and make them feel, yah we are there to help them. So you again you don’t know the people coming behind you if their mandate is to just sit in the camp and not do anything because all your work and your good P.R. out in the public all for nothing. That’s the bad thing about coming home. But you want to come home after all that time away and finally when your plane takes off you can finally feel, “I can step on the grass again.”

Description

Although anxious to get back to Canada, Mr. Williams expresses the feelings he had for leaving a country where a positive change was evident.

Andy Williams

Mr. Williams was born June 24, 1964 in Trenton, Ontario. His father being in the Air Force, Mr. Williams had the strong desire to join, however, when his time came, the decision for service would be army and began his training career as an army medic. In 1985 he joined as a reservist and spent 25 years with the Regular Force. In 1997, Mr. Williams was deployed to Bosnia with the Lord Strathcona’s Horse Royal Canadians holding rank of master corporal. Another opportunity for a posting was exercised in 1998 when he deployed to Kosovo, this time with the 1 Service Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. Mr. William’s army career as a medic took him to many In-Canada posting serving with the Canadian military and upon retirement resides in Berwick, Nova Scotia with his wife and family.

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