The Gulf War

Heroes Remember - Gulf War

The Gulf War

Transcript

I'll always remember the Chief of Staff Wilf Cutterful, Colonel US Army, called me at 2:30 in the morning and says, "Don, the first SCUDS have just landed in Tele Aviv." In fact, there was 40 odd SCUDS came over, and not that many regardless of what you saw on television, hit Tele Aviv, a lot of them went right over and then we accelerated our level of our participation and so forth. In fact, our camp was in direct line from most of the launch sites in western Iraq, the SCUDS, in line with Dimona, which is the, although they won't admit it, the Israeli nuclear facility and ourselves. The only reason I mentioned that is I got a call from national defence intelligence centre 01:30 one morning; said "Colonel, did you hear it?" I said, "Hear what?" and he says, "Well there was a SCUD landed about half a mile from your camp". First of all I said, "a half a miles a long way away, for a SCUD, secondly it's a piece of crap anyhow, it's not gonna hurt anybody", because it's usually breaking up as it comes back through the atmosphere. I hadn't heard it, we never found anything.

Description

Mr.Ethell talks about being in the Middle East at the start of the Persian Gulf War.

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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