Moving into the Unknown

Heroes Remember

Moving into the Unknown

Transcript

A little bit of shock when you first showed up. When we first showed up at the main camp, everyone shows up to then be sent out to your little camps, a guy got a Dear John letter and killed himself that day and he was one of the guys going home that night. So it was a little bit of shock and made it realize what was going on when you’d show up and no one wanting to talk and everyone is quiet and you finally find out what’s going on. Someone from their tour just killed themselves and everyone started to choke it up and say okay now, it’s realism. It's different when someone takes their own life as opposed to they are out on a landmine and blew themselves up and the adrenalin is a little bit different and you know you’re sad still and stuff like that but it’s a different feeling all together as opposed to the enemy hitting us to someone taking his own life. Sure you feel bad and everything but it’s a different feeling. We had a lot of self-injuries, like, you know, twisted ankles and foolish things like that that happen when you’re walking on the ground and everything over there - illness, like I said I had kidney stones and things like that. Those happen no matter where you are. But we were actually pretty lucky even with a couple of rolled over vehicles and stuff like that for our camp the guys got away pretty lucky without any major injuries. But I know from Field Ambulance, from people coming back from tours before me you hear about all the explosions and people getting in their ambulances or even in the armoured vehicles and the LSVW’s we used to have, or the Iltisse (jeep) we used to have and people were dying in those because we had those at the main camp, the Iltisse blown up all in pieces sitting beside our front camp, the main gate, just to remind people how bad it can be. Even local UN vehicles there all shot up all riddled with holes sitting at the main gate just to remind you this could happen again.

Description

Deployed to Kosovo, Mr. Williams speaks about the difficulty in picking up where other medics have left off in an unknown and devastated environment.

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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