Talking Myself out of the Situation

Heroes Remember

Talking Myself out of the Situation

Transcript

I mentioned earlier that I was always part of a multi-national staff and this meant that if I needed things like my inoculations brought up to date I had to go back to a Canadian camp where the Canadian medics would use me as a pin cushion and in Bosnia that meant that my first tour I would have to re-cross the front lines three times to get back to a Canadian camp. Now on each side of the front line is a checkpoint to make sure that you are not smuggling any weaponry or doing anything else which was not permitted by the status of forces agreement. So the guards at these locations weren’t really under tight control, they were pretty much free agents to do whatever they thought proper. They could hold you up for hours. They could take you prisoner. They could let you go with no problem whatsoever. And it was pretty much a Russian roulette to see what would happen at any particular time. In this one occasion I had transited to the Canadian camp without a problem but on my way back I was stopped at one of the checkpoints by a machine gun toting lady who told me it was too dangerous for me to continue and the reason it was too dangerous was because if I had tried she was going to shoot me. So I parked the car where she told me to and I spent the next two days talking to her about a Canadian pistol explaining how we cleaned it, how it worked, talking about their weaponry, talking about the country, how beautiful it had been, how terrible the civil war was, what the political situation was like, what the solutions were and at the end of two days they were so bored with me they couldn’t wait to get rid of me. It’s one of those occasions again where I found that being able to talk your way out of a situation was very, very useful.

Description

While requesting access through the front lines, Major Mac Culloch finds himself talking his way out of what could have resulted in a bad situation!

Wayne Mac Culloch

Wayne Mac Culloch was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1953 and grew up in Quebec. He began his studies at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, at the age of 18 and would serve as a military engineer in the Canadian Armed Forces for more than 40 years. During his long and varied career, Mr. Mac Culloch served across Canada and took part in three overseas deployments to the Balkans and one to Haiti before being medically discharged with the rank of major. Still having a passion to serve, he went on to work as a civilian employee with the Department of National Defence. Since 2004, Mr. Mac Culloch has volunteered his time and talents to help deliver the “Peace Module” during the Historica Encounters with Canada program in Ottawa. Week after week, he has engaged with youth from coast to coast and educated them about the sacrifices and achievements of Canadians who have served in uniform over the years.

Meta Data