By Barb Brouwer
Special to the Observer
Al Stevens has a very matter-of-fact view of his 40 years of military service.
In 1956, the then 16-year-old high school student joined the Army’s Soldier Apprentice Program in London, Ont.
The now defunct program offered courses in signals, ordinance, service corps, engineers, artillery and mechanics, Stevens said.
“All those names have changed now, but that’s what it was then,” he said, noting he entered Signal School, which is located in Kingston, Ont. “I ended up back and forth a couple of times, it’s sort of the fall-back position, and my last major job was as a teacher and disciplinarian at the school.”
Over the span of 40 years, Stevens saw many parts of the world with the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, the communications and electronics branch of the Canadian Armed Forces that, prior to 1968, was a combat support group.
“Members of the Signal Corps could get posted in and out of different units. One time I was the signals rep with the Patricia’s and the next time it was the artillery,” he said. “Every unit had a requirement for communications, same as they had for cooks and filing clerks.”
In 1960, at the age of 20, Stevens was posted to the Congo where the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals provided communications for the entire United Nations Peacekeeping mission in the Congo.
“I found it exciting, but it’s a pretty shitty place,” he observed, noting that it was before cell phones and cameras recorded everything. “It was just as bad, people destroyed each other just as much but it didn’t make the news much back then.”
Canada worked with units from several countries, including India, Ghana and more, to keep their units in touch with the UN’s Congo headquarters.
In terms of the challenges of heat and humidity, Stevens simply said whiners were regarded as wimps.
“Nobody was special, we all just did what we were supposed to do,” he said, noting peacekeepers were not meant to engage in action. “We weren’t supposed to shoot, but when someone shoots at you, you shoot back.”
In 1966, Stevens was posted to Sinai and the Gaza Strip but the mission came to an abrupt end when the Israelis and Egyptians went to war in 1967.
Another short-term peacekeeping mission was to the Golan Heights on the border of Israel and Syria in 1972.
“We just supplied secured communications, neither to the Syrians nor Israelis, just all the UN stuff,” he said, pointing out the UN troops were there as observers. “It was a smaller detachment and we were in a zone that, by mutual agreement, nobody would occupy. But then they had the next war and the Israelis still have it haven’t given the Golan back.”
Stevens called his 1978 posting to a peacekeeping mission in Cyprus almost a holiday.
Although it wasn’t home, the weather was warm and sunny and beach outings were possible.
“The Turks would still take the odd shot at us, the normal bull was still kind of going on and we still patrolled the green line, the gap between the Greeks and the Turks,” he said. “You could see either side and we’d go down the middle and let them know we were there.”
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Looking back, Stevens says he doesn’t think the peacekeeping missions accomplished very much.
“Nobody liked us as both sides thought you were on the other guy’s side and I think we just kind of postponed things,” he says.
Stevens said one big accomplishment in the Congo was delivering a baby in the back of the jeep. The mother named her child after Stevens and he sometimes wonders what became of him.
I just don’t know.”
Stevens also did a regular four-year post in Germany and exchange tours in the U.S. and England and a couple of courses in Australia before retiring in 1996 with the rank of chief warrant officer.
Stevens is circumspect and rather blunt about his service.
“There were a lot of other people doing the same thing and, what the hell, we got paid for it,” he said. “I don’t think I did anything special.”
Stevens’ early years were not easy.
“I was a little bastard and grew up in an orphanage or foster homes, and I wasn’t the best recipient (of the care),” he said, noting he and many others ended up in reform school because there was no system to care for teenagers.
Stevens said he had dreamed of becoming a veterinarian and thought that at some point, he would earn enough in the Army to pay for the education.
“I never got around to it, so instead of a veterinarian I became a vet,” he said, noting he missed a lot of family life because he was away too long and too often.
“I don’t regret it, it’s what I was supposed to do and I’d do a good part of it again. It’s what I know and what I did.”
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