Not Much of an Achievement

Heroes Remember

Not Much of an Achievement

Transcript

I fully enjoyed being the leader of that platoon in Cyprus. I believe that I learned a lot and I did a good job. I think that the platoon did an excellent job at the local level. It did probably protect those people in Temblos from ... from incursions by the other side. It probably helped where our people built little pieces of school or tried to give some chocolate bars to the kids or they tried to foster clean water in the village well. So those are things that we did, but that’s not the accomplishment that I would have thought that the United Nations force in Cyprus was suppose to be achieving. And so you know it’s still there today ... although Canadians aren’t deployed on it as far as I know. But when you have forty years of a peacekeeping force in place and no permanent peace declared ... doesn’t seem to me that we had much of an achievement.

Description

Mr. Paterson talks about being in command of a platoon in Cyprus and he talks about the job the platoon did. He talks about how the platoon improved the area even though he did not think that is what the UN wanted to accomplish.

Tom Paterson

Mr. Paterson was born in Vancouver BC in 1943. At the age of six his family moved to Toronto, Ontario where he graduated from high school. After graduating from high school he went to the University of Ottawa to obtain his degree. Mr. Paterson joined the service in 1964 where he became a major and did peace keeping in Cyprus.

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