Going Above and Beyond Their Call of Duty

At one point we built an orphanage near the town of Buzim, its north of Bihac where our base was. In that community there was an old lady that had taken all the children that had, not had their own, families were gone or they were abandoned or they were orphans. She was taking them in and looking after them. And the locals told us about this lady because they were concerned. She was living in a one-room house. There was no power, the roof was leaking. The cow was in the room with the kids. They were all sleeping on the concrete floor and, you know, not all of them had shoes. All these basics you have in Canada that you can’t imagine being without - no running water, nothing. Those of us in our platoon, we managed to discuss it. We talked about it, we raised money through the padre’s fund and through different fund raising campaigns. We have movie nights at the mess trying to raise money for the kids to get some stuff for their place. And instead of just going in and putting a roof on the house, we actually hired a local contractor to come in and do the work. We supervised, we helped and we rebuilt the roof and the story grew as we went. We were doing one thing, the other section was like well since you guys are doing the roof we’re going to get beds for the kids. So they managed to find bunk beds at one of the bases that weren’t being used. They acquired them and the mattresses. We were able to put in a wall in the house to give the mom some privacy and then we built a shed, a barn for the cow so that the cow didn’t have to live in the house with them anymore and it was those things that really helped get through the mission.