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Description
Mr.Ethell talks about serving as a multi-national force.
Donald Stewart Ethell
Donald Stewart Ethell est né en juillet 1937 et a grandi à Victoria (Colombie-Britannique). Son père était un ancien combattant de la Première Guerre mondiale et de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sa mère était infirmière. Sa soeur et lui ont étudié dans un pensionnat en raison des emplois qu’occupaient ses parents et ils retournaient à la maison seulement à Noël et pendant les vacances d’été. La mère de M. Ethell est décédée lorsque ce dernier n’avait que 10 ans. <br><br> Lorsqu’il s’est enrôlé, M. Ethell a joint les Queen's Own Rifles à Calgary. Après plusieurs années de service comme soldat d’infanterie, on l’a recommandé pour qu’il reçoive la formation d’officier. M. Ethell réussit le programme et s’éleva au rand de colonel. Plus tard, il a commandé des troupes canadiennes et des troupes des Nations Unies au cours de divers missions partout dans le monde. Au milieu des années 1990, Col. Ethell a pris sa retraite après plus de trente-cinq ans de services distingués.
Transcription
The Austrians are well trained, they have a lot of reservists and repeaters in the force, both there and in Cyprus, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that but some people have made the UN a career. But they are good, they rotate their battalion every six months and the Finns are super. We had, it was interesting because we had, they had three rifle companies on "the line" as it's called, sorry two, the southern one was commanded by a huge man who was the ex-heavy weight boxing champion of the Finnish Army as a major. He also spoke seven languages and within three months he was speaking Arabic, he just had the gift. But he ran a very hard company, I mean he gabions and bunkers built and in fact as a Senior Liaison Officer, I had to explain to the Israeli's what he was doing on the other side of the line. Similarly I had to explain to the Israeli's when we were building bunkers, "Do you know something that we don't know? " Conversely the northern company commander was a little bit more laid back and so forth, so it was a difference of methods of operations, you know the old saying " keep the troops busy". So we were blessed with two good battalions over there.