Quality UN Forces

Heroes Remember

Quality UN Forces

Transcript

The Austrians are well trained, they have a lot of reservists and repeaters in the force, both there and in Cyprus, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that but some people have made the UN a career. But they are good, they rotate their battalion every six months and the Finns are super. We had, it was interesting because we had, they had three rifle companies on "the line" as it's called, sorry two, the southern one was commanded by a huge man who was the ex-heavy weight boxing champion of the Finnish Army as a major. He also spoke seven languages and within three months he was speaking Arabic, he just had the gift. But he ran a very hard company, I mean he gabions and bunkers built and in fact as a Senior Liaison Officer, I had to explain to the Israeli's what he was doing on the other side of the line. Similarly I had to explain to the Israeli's when we were building bunkers, "Do you know something that we don't know?" Conversely the northern company commander was a little bit more laid back and so forth, so it was a difference of methods of operations, you know the old saying "keep the troops busy". So we were blessed with two good battalions over there.

Description

Mr.Ethell talks about serving as a multi-national force.

Donald Stewart Ethell

Donald Stewart Ethell was born in July 1937 and was raised in Victoria, BC. His father was a Veteran of both the First and Second World Wars. His mother was a nurse. He and his sister attended boarding school because of his parents' jobs and he was only home at Christmas and during the summer. His mother passed away when Mr. Ethell was 10 years old.

When he enlisted, Mr. Ethell joined the Queen's Own Rifles in Calgary. After several years of serving as an infantryman he was recommended for the officer training. Mr. Ethell graduated from the program and rose to the rank of Colonel. He went on to command Canadian, and United Nations, forces in various missions all over the world. In the mid 1990s, Col. Ethell retired with over thirty-five years of distinguished service.

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