Daily Routine

It was reasonably routine I guess. We were, in 1966 we were about the third unit to rotate through the 3rd Canadian Unit so the operation had been going on for a year and a half and routines were fairly well settled. There were outposts to be manned. There was the green line to guard. We had to ensure that neither of the warring parties tried to move forward from there, from where they were when a ceasefire was declared or to improve their positions and that sort of thing. There was an important convoy that used to go from Nicosia up to the northern seaport of Kyrenia that was led by the Canadian reconnaissance squadron, the scout cars, and provided them security because they had to go through a Turkish enclave to do that. It was fairly routine. There were occasional incidents where one of the belligerent forces would try to do something that was contrary to the rules that had been laid down and we would have to ask them to desist and if they refused then we had to be prepared to force them to conform. But having said that the UN Force in almost all of these circumstances is very weak in terms of combat capability. It relies on a reference to New York and international opinion to enforce its will. It cannot take on one of the combatants in these situations because they would not survive.