Reality of War

Heroes Remember

Reality of War

Transcript

My proudest moment to be was when I wear that Canadian flag on my shoulder and I was a peacekeeper. That was my proudest moment of my life because it means something. We were there to preserve peace, not to make peace, it was already done, they decided they would behave although sometimes they don’t but that’s the living. In Israel, every night you don’t go out in the middle of the night because they were moving their tanks and they move their tanks in the dark so when they are driving they don’t care what’s in the front. So you don’t go out at night. In No Man’s Land in Golan Heights there was a rock was written, on the rock was written in the Yom Kippur war, “Violence is the last resource of the imbecile.” Someone wrote that in wartime and that always marked me. At that time in the seventies, the Israeli people were happy people. I went back in 2009 and they’re not happy anymore because of all the stuff that happened and and it’s not the same. The only thing they told us in Israel was to be careful about what we are doing just in case of a terrorism act but a terrorism act wasn’t that much. It wasn’t that many people doing it. They had a special target to obtain but that wasn’t the same as today. When I go to schools and I talk to kids I say you don’t ask a Veteran how many people he killed because for you it’s a game, you grew up with a game for killing people you got points. Me, I grew up with a dinky toy with a tank in the middle and played in the sand but any Veteran if they ever kill someone it’s between them and the good Lord. No one wants to do it but you have to, sometimes you have to do what you have to do to stay alive. You have all those kids today, they are more informed where they are going to than we were. When I arrived in Cyprus the first thing I went into supply there was two coffins there in case of. Unfortunately we had to use one so it’s a wakeup call when you walk in and you see the coffin, that means you’re in serious. Without that what helped us was the brotherhood we had between us. It was like a close family. For every bad thing we saw we always kept the good one in mind in building our wall against it.

Description

Mr. Drapeau recalls his time in service as some of his proudest moments. He shares the fact that war is not always what you expect; it can be good and bad!

Daniel Drapeau

Mr. Daniel Drapeau was born September 11, 1957 in Charny, Quebec. After attending high school in Quebec, Mr. Drapeau made the decision to join the Canadian Forces. He held rank of private and became a tank driver with the Armoured Corp. After obtaining his training in Val Cartier, in 1974 Mr. Drapeau accepted deployments to Cyprus and the Middle East. After a year of service, Mr. Drapeau was medically discharged from the Canadian Forces. With the assistance of a service dog, Kenya, Mr. Drapeau maintains a good quality of life finding time to volunteer his service. Mr. Drapeau now resides in Ottawa with his family.

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