—telling my mother before I left that if I didn't come home, to please accept it: “I'm going overseas and doing my duty and proud to do it.”
I cared about the people I was serving next to on my left and my right, and I really did not know what was going to happen. It was the largest deployment of military might in the world after the Second World War. We all thought that it was going to last a long time, and I know that Canada was extremely worried about the potential casualties that could be incurred during that period, but it fooled us all.
Through great leadership and a bit of luck, it turned out to be a lot less than we all thought, but I was scared, you know. I didn't know what was going to happen. I was attacked with ballistic missiles, something that no other military service person since has had to endure.