Defence Forces Review 2008

‘Bullets, Bacteria and Boredom’
and dental clinics from the medical centre in HQ three days a week and we also held twiceweekly
clinics in some of the surrounding villages. Here, we encountered people of all ages
with all kinds of ailments. Most were mild but some were challenging. We always did the
best we could with the resources available. We would send patients to hospitals further afield
if we couldn’t treat them. Their fees were often paid by the Battalion’s Humanitarian Fund.
During the summer of 1981, a young pregnant woman from the village of Harris arrived at the
medical centre well after darkness. She needed immediate specialist care so off we went into
the night, with tracer fire from the “Iron Triangle” illuminating the way, we arrived in Tyre.
There, she delivered a lovely baby girl.
On our return to HQ, we were again shadowed by tracer fire. But, as the tracer disappeared
that evening, so too did my memory of the event. That was until the evening of my final
departure from Lebanon. My company sergeant called me saying there were civilian patients
to be seen. I was surprised as we had stopped our civilian clinics a few days previously. In any
case, I decided to see them. It was a sick baby, his mother and grandmother. After examining
the infant and diagnosing a minor ailment, I heard – in Tibnin English – “Hakim, you don’t
remember me”. She explained that she was the woman whom I had brought to Tyre all those
years ago. She introduced her now grown-up daughter, the proud mother of the baby boy.
In reality, they had come to thank me. I had forgotten: she had not. I walked with them to
the camp entrance where she handed me a gift – a prayer mat. It was a token of thanks that I
wouldn’t forget.
Stories didn’t always have such happy endings. I remember the approach to Christmas that
first year. I spent the evening of the 23rd with C Company, singing songs and making music
into the night. As I was going to bed, word arrived of a serious crash. Two men had been
badly injured. We rushed into the night and when we arrived, the more seriously injured of
the two was in a bad state. His pupils were unequal and not reacting. We transported him by
helicopter to Naquora but he died in transit. He was my first UN fatality. Little did we know
it at the time but the pilot and doctor (both Norwegians) who assisted me on that trip would
also soon die, while engaged in another medical mission of mercy at Qana, in February of the
following year.
The following day’s Midnight Mass was special. We were invited to hear it in the local
Lebanese Maronite Church. I was asked to read from the Prophet Isaiah – a reading about
God the Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, which was both hopeful and appropriate. After the
mass, the Irish contingent sang ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Adeste Fideles’ and were invited to a local
house for Christmas celebrations. There, we drank lemon tea, ate cakes and sang more carols.
It was a true celebration of Christmas; an occasion where the entire community in this mixed
village of Muslims and Christians came together and extended their welcome to us.
After Christmas, there was a lull in the fighting. Welcome as it was, it was to reveal another
hazard of life in the Lebanon. At any stage during a tour, the infamous ‘black dog’ could bite
and it could bite anyone – irrespective of rank. I discovered that this psychological marauder
was especially prevalent during the middle period of a tour.
This was a time when people got lonely. This loneliness could become overwhelming,
destroying a person’s ability to communicate and enthusiasm for work. Everyone has a role
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