First Assignment Abroad

My first assignment abroad was I went to Egypt, Somalia, Egypt on UN peacekeeping duty. That was interesting, it was a six month assignment, you know and in Somalia this was, it had been a British airfield there in previous years and here on that particular field we had Canadians, Poles and Australians. The Australians were on a helicopter squadron. The Poles, they were in a separate camp by themselves, and Poland at the time was a Communist country. So they kept very much to themselves. If they went out, they went out, they were always in uniform and they went out in groups and they didn’t associate with anybody. We as Canadians, of course, we were freer to move around and we also socialized with the Australians from time to time. They at the time had an all ranks mess which was something very unusual for us, you know. We had an officers mess and the airmen they had their messes, you know. So Australians were an interesting group to work with. Nobody disciplined them. The only people who could discipline Australians were Australians themselves. And they worked hard, but boy they were a wild bunch and they played hard. They drank a lot, you know, but they were good people and we worked with them very well.