Arrival in Cambodia

Heroes Remember

Arrival in Cambodia

Transcript

My first overseas tour would be the one in Cambodia in ‘92. It was a United Nations mission and it was designed to support the free and fair elections under the Dayton Accord, but the problem was that for United Nations all the parties have to agree so, at least for 30 seconds, and unfortunately one of the parties that was there reneged on it after the fact so we were already in theatre and they were still having some problems up to the north west, up around the Thailand border with the Khmer Rouge so it got kind of tense in some times there but where we were around in Phnom Penh was still pretty stable, just a lot, there was still ethnic stuff going on. We got off the plane it was like getting hit by a fire hose because of the torrential downpour during the rainy season there and it was funny, you could set your watch by it. It would start raining at four o'clock, stop at six and it was like getting nailed by a, like I said, a fire hose, it was so intense the rain that was there. So that was our first hit. Then when the rain stopped, the big thing there was the smell from the city was brutal back then. The city was designed for originally close to half a million people. Really, the infrastructure was in place for two hundred fifty thousand and by the time we left there was over a million people in that city. So everybody was coming back and this was after the Khmer Rouge had pretty well ripped out every, anything you could salvage out of that city was gone. So it was just the shells of the buildings that were pretty well left and everybody was trying to rewire them and sewage was flowing into the streets and it was pretty wicked.

Description

Mr. Beresford speaks about the UN’s purpose for going to Cambodia and the environment the soldiers faced.

Tony Beresford

Mr. Tony Beresford was born in Windsor, Ontario June 11, 1961. He grew up in a military family where his father served in the Navy and his mother in the Air Force. Military life was a very positive decision for Mr. Beresford who first joined the Navy reserves in Windsor and after serving there for three years, joined the regular force. Mr. Beresford later joined the Canadian Forces where he decided to obtain a trade in electronics technician and ended up advancing as a fire controls technician, a very unique trade to the military. In 1992 Mr. Beresford went overseas on his first tour to Cambodia as part of 92 Transport Company. In addition to in-Canada service, Mr. Beresford was sent on tour to Bosnia in 1999. Military being a big part of his life, Mr. Beresford met and married his wife who also served with the Canadian Forces. After 30 years service, Mr. Beresford retired and resides in Ontario with his family.

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