Reflections on Peacekeeping

I think that what we’re doing... You have to send them over with the equipment they need, that’s so important. If it’s going to be conflict at the time you’re over there and you’re still considered a peacekeeper or peacemaker, whatever they want to call them now, you have to have the equipment. That’s important, and you have to have the backing. If you don’t have that, you know, you’re just dead meat, you know and they will do what they want with you. But I think I like best the way MacKenzie handled it at the airport there when he told them, you know, “You have one shell lob in here,” he says, “and we’ll march right through you,” you know, “and take you out,” and I think that’s the way you got to handle it. You can’t, you can’t pussyfoot to them. You’ve got to let them know that you’re there to do a job and it’s gonna be done and if they don’t like it that’s tough. But you also have to have kids like the sergeant that was killed in the PPCLI there who had a system set up in Europe there and Bosnia and that, where he used to do things for kids and stuff like that. He was known as a real king. You know I mean, this is the type of things that we do as individuals. We work with the people, we help them in the best way we can. Sometimes we don’t have much. Sometimes we get even our own stuff that we help with. We solicit stuff at home and we manage to get it over there so that we can give it to them.