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Description
Mr.Ethell talks about the briefings and preparations before deploying to Cyprus and he describes how Cyprus was dubbed the "Corporals War".
Donald Stewart Ethell
Donald Stewart Ethell est né en juillet 1937 et a grandi à Victoria (Colombie-Britannique). Son père était un ancien combattant de la Première Guerre mondiale et de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sa mère était infirmière. Sa soeur et lui ont étudié dans un pensionnat en raison des emplois qu’occupaient ses parents et ils retournaient à la maison seulement à Noël et pendant les vacances d’été. La mère de M. Ethell est décédée lorsque ce dernier n’avait que 10 ans. <br><br> Lorsqu’il s’est enrôlé, M. Ethell a joint les Queen's Own Rifles à Calgary. Après plusieurs années de service comme soldat d’infanterie, on l’a recommandé pour qu’il reçoive la formation d’officier. M. Ethell réussit le programme et s’éleva au rand de colonel. Plus tard, il a commandé des troupes canadiennes et des troupes des Nations Unies au cours de divers missions partout dans le monde. Au milieu des années 1990, Col. Ethell a pris sa retraite après plus de trente-cinq ans de services distingués.
Transcription
So we were, we were briefed on the situation as much as it was felt that the officers needed to tell the corporals and the privates and whatever, but having said that, the battalions in Cyprus, this was called the Corporals War, because at that time sections were commanded by corporals, until Mr. Hellier came along and changed the integration/unification of forces and decided that corporal would be the basic rank that means everybody came down a peg and the same with the officer corps. But at the, Cyprus it was called the Corporal's War because most of the observation posts, the OP's were section sized, which meant the corporal was there. So you had the three section corporals out there in their OP's, platoon sergeant and the platoon commander would be at platoon headquarters, and would run out with rations or whatever and so forth. So they had to use a lot of common sense and exercise a lot of leadership when it's hot there's sand flies around, the re-supply run hasn't come up, you're running out of water or there's some hostile action from the Greek Cypriots or the Turk Cypriots.