The Jeunesse, Congo’s Youth Army

Heroes Remember

The Jeunesse, Congo’s Youth Army

Transcript

The Jeunesse, which were the youth wing of the communist would come through and start shooting arrows and such, and the next thing you know you’d have a lot of people dead or wounded. You know... so it wasn’t a sort of a regular war action where we were, but you know there was always the threat and always the possibility that you could end up in something like that. But we had pretty well shut down most of that stuff when I got there, you know, in ’64 because we were getting ready to shut it down, but even at that point as we drove our trucks to the airport to leave the side of the road the Jeunesse and their armies were standing there. In other words we had not won a battle, you know. We had, we were still with weapons as we left, you know, so that if we were attacked we could at least fight back. Interviewer: Was it difficult leaving and still seeing the Jeunesse armed? At that time I don’t, I didn’t probably even think of it that way. It’s, I was just happy to get out of there, you know. It’s a beautiful country that could be a very nice place to live but when I think back of Canada I think, my God, I’m one lucky guy you know, to have a place like Canada to live.

Description

Mr. Dubinski describes random acts of violence at the hands of the Jeunesse, Congo’s Youth Army. He feels that although his mission helped calm civil unrest, the hiatus was temporary.

William Dubinski

William Dubinski was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on August 17, 1930. As a youth, he and several friends became train hoppers, travelling from job to job by rail, often staying in “hobo jungles”. One of his stops was in Calgary and it was there that he enlisted in the Canadian Signal Corps. Mr. Dubinski became a teletype operator and later became a communications instructor with the rank of Master Warrant Officer. He served overseas in Germany and as a peacekeeper in the Congo. His Canadian service included being the computer centre senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) during the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) crisis and Telecom manager for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, PQ.

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