This week has given me a lot to think about in terms of service.
I got started down that track last Friday, May 27, when retired military man Brian Sadler sent me an email with his reaction to the announcement that the alleged butcher of Srebrenica, Ratko Mladic, had been arrested. As you will read on page 7 of this paper, Brian spent eight anguish-filled months in the war-torn former Yugoslavia, and during that time he saw atrocities we lucky Canadians can't begin to fathom.
What does it take to represent your country in such a fashion? In Brian's case, it was partly skill and partly wanting to make a difference in a country where he said a drive through the town of Srebrenica could mean seeing "some little old lady who wasn't able to shuffle across the street fast enough to outrun the bullets, and half of her head is gone."
Not surprisingly, Brian is anxious to see Mladic brought to justice. His hope is that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague does its part in convicting the man accused of being behind the deaths of over 8,000 Muslim boys and men.
During the time Brian served for the United Nations in the beleaguered country, he also managed to perform humanitarian acts on a small scale. In a cherished photo album, he showed me several pictures of kids doing what kids do best - goofing off for the camera. On every head is a brightly knit cap courtesy of some deft needles in Gibsons, half a world away. Brian's mother and her Anglican Church goers made the hats. He laughed that it wasn't a strange sight for the Gibsons' post office to see Brian's father mailing huge boxes to the base in Trenton, Ont. Once there, the army would forward the treasured gifts the rest of the way.
Also, while the Gibsons' man served overseas, he managed to secure passage for two profoundly deaf girls from the war-torn country - a not-so-easy task in a patriarchal country where any outside help for a man's children was taken as a slight on his role as a father. The girls (from two different families) ended up being outfitted with two specially-made hearing aids in Edmonton and came to Gibsons to stay with Brian's family for 39 days.
One of the most uplifting sights of that time, Brian said, was watching the girls as they were driving home from the clinic where the hearing aids were fitted. Their heads kept whipping around in response to sounds they'd never heard before.
Another photo in the album shows the girls clowning for a CTV reporter in Edmonton, an act of normalcy for two children being raised in a hellhole.
For this retired soldier, it was inconceivable to not go where his talents were needed. It rankles him that people don't recognize that UN peacekeepers have to be soldiers. In order to break war, he said, you have to be able to make war. The peacekeepers' guns aren't for show.
While it's never easy to determine what makes one man or woman give so much to other human beings, in the end, maybe it's just enough that they do. My heart goes out to all these people making a difference in our world; I just hope the price isn't too high for their own long-term health. Canada owes these selfless people a lot. They make all of us look good in a scary world.
