Peacekeeping in Cyprus

We were always warriors, you have to be prepared. I think that’s why I’m opposed to this term “peacekeeping” because I think the Canadian public think you go off to some wonderful place with a pen in your pocket and that’s it. Uh, no, “peacemaking” I might accept but we had the Turkish forces one side and we had the Greek forces on the other and they had a natural hatred for each other. The atrocities that had been committed in Cyprus before the cease fire went into effect was burned into the memory of those people. It would still be there and I don’t think there’s any solution to that. The dividing line was what we called the Green Line between these two factions. And we had to patrol the Green Line and we had outposts to watch them and we would send out patrols and they’d go count the tanks. Say the Turkish tanks and make sure there was 12 yesterday, there’s still 12 today, you know, or if they snuck one off during the night or something. But when you’re walking down the Green Line, you realize that on one side there’s a young Greek soldier, 16 years old with a tommy gun and on the other side there’s a 16 year old Turkish soldier, he’s got a tommy gun too, and they’re sort of glaring across at each other and you’re in the middle. And you had to hope, you know, that these fellows would control themselves and not open fire when you were there. We had a few, there were a few fire fights, not when I was there but other times. Some of the guys were killed. When the Greeks would start to rumble, the Turks would send their air force over from Turkey, mainland Turkey which is only 20 miles across the strait. They’d come over there and roar along very low, you know, and suddenly everything would go quiet, yeah. No, and we had troops there from all over the world; Finlanders, Norwegians, Swedes I guess, Canadians, British, yeah.. I think we were reasonably well regarded. The people in Nicosia knew that as long as we were there, they were safe.