Managing Personnel in Cyprus

Then went out and joined a regiment, Lord Strathcona’s Horse in Calgary, where I became a Squadron Armoured Corps Commander and as a Squadron Commander I took my squadron to Cyprus. We did a tour in Cyprus. In those days Cyprus was relatively quiet. There were still some hot spots and flash points. It was an interesting tour. It was a tour that challenged your leadership because most of your people by this time had done one or two tours in Cyprus and you know, it was relatively boring and you had a problem of keeping their morale. You had a problem of watching how much alcohol was used, the whole ten yards. I approached it very simply again as a band of brothers. We were all responsible for each other. You went downtown with somebody, you signed out with that individual, you came back with that individual. If you didn’t come back with that individual either my Sergeant Major or I had a few short, sharp words with you and maybe you ended up doing some extra duties. In my tour there I went over with my squadron and I came back with the same number of people I went over with, which in those days was relatively unusual because we had a lot of people they had morale problems. We didn’t. We had a lot of fun too.