Description
In war, friends are sometimes torn apart. Mr. Gallant had the chance to help such a person during his tour in Cyprus.
Fred Gallant
Born into an Acadian family in Mont-Carmel, Prince Edward Island, Mr. Gallant joined the Army and rose to the rank of Captain. He served two tours in Cyprus as part of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) during the 1970s and 1980s as Battery Captain. His methods helped many soldiers and his interventions most likely saved the lives of his own, and many Greeks and Turks. Years later, now a Major, he became a UN Military Observer as part of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), maintaining the peace between Israel, Lebanon and Syria. He worked in all three middle eastern countries and has some eye opening stories to tell.
Transcript
Friends had been ripped apart by the troubles in ‘75. One story that I can tell you is about... We had a young man that was probably in his early thirties that had been hired as a bartender of our little complex that we lived in there. We had about 130 or 140 people living in this complex and he was looking after the officers and he was the bartender. Started talking to him, he had been the co-owner of a rental, car rental agency in Carina and when the invasion came in he was pushed south because he was Greek and his partner was Turk. And he was really concerned about what was going to happen to his investments and everything else and his friend. So he wrote letters and signed papers and so on to give to his partner the authority to carry on and I carried those letters across the border for him and delivered them to his partner in Carina. Now I don’t know if this was legal or not or we should have gone maybe through the Red Cross, but it was the most expedient way to get things done and I think it was a very humane thing to do. So I did it and I’ll never apologize for doing something like that. And he was most appreciative and said thank you and to me the incident was over, but as we’ll see a little later on it came back because in 1980-81 when I went back I planned when I went that my wife and children would come over for two weeks to see what I had done for, you know, sort of 12 months of my life. I decided I was going to rent a car for a period of time to drive them around the island. When I arrived in ‘80-‘81 I was talking to one of the procurers for the UN and I happened to mention, we were at dinner that my wife and kids were coming and I was going to rent a car and he said, “You going to rent it from Welfare? ” and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Don’t, he says, “you probably can get a better deal downtown if you rent it from one of the agencies here.” And I said, “Who’s that? ” and he says, “Well, Mike has got Carina Car Hire running in Nicosia.” He says, “You probably know Mike.” I said, “Was he the bartender at our place in ‘75? ” He said, “Yeah, that’s him!” Well I said, “Say hi to him.” I said, “Yes, I we’ll think about that.” This was on the recce that I had taken to Cyprus prior to our going. So when I got there and got the car, I drove it for 11 days and when I went to return it, I went to pay for it the girl behind the counter said, “Oh, the bill’s been taken care of!” and I said, “What do you mean? ” She said, “The bill’s been paid!” and so I went back, told my CO that it had been paid and he said, “You’ve got to pay that,” he says, “you can’t take, you know, sort of a favour like that.” So I went back and talked to Mike and Mike said, “The bill’s been paid. You’re not going to be able, your money’s no good here.” And that was his way of pay back for what I had done for him six years before or five years before.