Pegasus Post: August 14, 2018

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Tuesday August 14 2018 7
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Captain takes charge at Brighton Lions
Fire rages, homes at risk
After more than 50 years
serving on and off in the
New Zealand Army,
Alastair Rankin has taken
charge at the Lions Club
of New Brighton. Georgia
O’Connor-Harding reports
NEW ROLE: Lions Club of
New Brighton president
Alastair Rankin outside an old
army base next to the former
Addington Jail where he was
stationed from 1973-1975 and
1985-1998. PHOTO: MARTIN
HUNTER
ALASTAIR RANKIN isn’t
afraid of a lot. From deactivating
land mines in Cambodia to
helping monitor borders in the
Middle East, not much fazes the
semi-retired army captain and
Lions president.
Mr Rankin, 68, was elected
to the role last month. He was
a part of the 2/4 Battalion until
February.
So taking on a leadership role
is nothing new for Mr Rankin,
who has also been president of
other Lions clubs. It will be his
second time at the head of the
New Brighton Lions, of which
he was president in the late
1990s.
He has had a long association
with New Brighton, first joining
the Lions club in 1984 before
relocating to Wellington in 2000.
He rejoined the New Brighton
Lions about four years ago.
While living in Wellington, he
became Lions Club of Newlands
president, before he moved to the
Lions Club of Whitby in Porirua.
He said it was not long before
he was elected president in
Whitby.
He has also been zone
chairman for a range of Lions
clubs, including Christchurch
Seaview, Ferrymead, Lyttelton
and Pegasus.
His goal for the New Brighton
club is to raise membership.
“There is no criteria . . . all
you have got to do is want to
do something useful for your
community,” he said.
During his time in the army,
Mr Rankin worked for a year
at the Cambodian Mine Action
Center in 2004, training and retraining
de-miners. He was also
heavily involved in operations in
the minefields.
Land mines are a big problem
in Cambodia and are a legacy
of three decades of warfare,
starting with the Cambodian
Civil War in the late 1960s.
The remaining land mines are
discovered using a metal detector
and burned. Mr Rankin said
while he trusted the de-miners
to have cleared the area, when he
first began working in the job,
there was “a bit of trepidation”.
He said hundreds of land
mines were uncovered every day.
“I was standing a few feet away
from a guy who stood on one
and it blew his foot off,” he said.
But he said driving in
Cambodia was more dangerous
than working on the minefields.
Many of the main roads had
only just been tarsealed when
he was in the county and there
wasn’t a lot in the way of road
rules, he said.
“We never drove at night out
in the country side. It just wasn’t
worth it, cows would just walk
out onto the road,” he said.
Mr Rankin spent about five of
his military years overseas.
He was posted to Singapore
from 1976-1978, working in the
communications centre for New
Zealand Force South East Asia.
“I liked south Asia. The two
countries are very different.
Singapore was very quick to go
ahead and Cambodia was only
just going ahead and that was
because of the war,” he said.
He worked with the New
Zealand training advisory team
for the Multinational Force
and Observers in the Middle
East, which was monitoring the
border between Israel and Egypt
in Sinai.
His job was to help train
the United States, Fijian and
Colombian troops on the border.
“The other nations have
SERVICE: Alastair Rankin
in the Sinai Desert, near the
Suez Canal, in March 1987.
different ways of thinking and
different ways of doing things.
Doesn’t mean it is wrong. It is
just different and you can learn
from it,” he said.
Mr Rankin said he learnt the
most from working with the
101st Air Assault Division, a
division of the US Army trained
for air assault operations.
“They were brilliant . . . they
were particularly good at aircraft
recognition. When you are on
the border and the jet flies over
you, it flies over very quickly
and you have only got a split
second to say what kind it is,” he
said.
He comes from a military
family and joined the army when
he was 16- years- old, seeking
adventure, “excitement” and to
get away from Blenheim where
he grew up. Mr Rankin said
joining the army “wasn’t a shock
to the system” as compulsory
military training was practised
for males up until 1972.
He retired three times – the
first was after 21 years of service
and he wanted to provide
“stability” for his children.
Now that he has semi-retired,
he is involved in part-time
project work writing reports on
issues in the army such as driver
fatigue.
Having spent time overseas,
Mr Rankin said he now has
a “fairly relaxed attitude” to
life.
“It is a lovely place in New
Zealand . . . it is lovely to be able
to go into the bush, sit down
and know there are no snakes or
scorpions,” he said.
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