Unifil Lebanon 1982


Beirut	Post 7-4	2 Brothers In Lebanon	Beirut

Maydal Zoun In The Front Post 7.4	Post 7.1 B	Post 7-5	Ted And Gerard On Post 7.4

Ever Ride A Camel?	Armoured Cars In Beirut	35 Cars	Time For Coffee

Tell the people at home

     "Another four days and a breakfast", and then it will be over.
     Dutchbat will be good old times and our Peacekeeping mission will be
     completed.
     700 men will give up their blue berets,
     or they will hang them on a hat-rack at home
     to look at them with pride and silent love.

     But first we have to go through the not so sultry night at Crailo,
     where we will be honored, and then we can go home!
     Home, the subject of so many thoughts and dreams
     that it might be a disappointment.
     But I hope not.
     And then we must tell them, because at home they will want to know,
     what it was like and what we have been doing.

     Of course the times of the big explosions and bangs
     were long over when we arrived here.
     Thank God!!
     Yet we wil tell them at home that by being here
     we stopped a world war or at least prevented it for a while
     by watching and reporting and by
     applying the very effective weapons of political
     pressure and political opinion,
     which are much more effective than guns and cannons.
     While many were talking about peace in our fatherland,
     we were doing something in Lebanon for that peace.
     That is why I firmly believe that Dutchbat was "necessary".

     And we will tell them at home about the Lebanese "suffering".
     Those at home who were feeling they were weakening and degenerating
     to the point where they became a weak and soft generation
     that can only break and drink and consume and discuss,
     those who have had the chance to contradict this.
     I have admired you often,
     not because of what you did,
     but more because of the motivation you did it with.
     The atmosphere of "of course, no problem" and "this too is Lebanon",
     are cries that will never be forgotten.
     In Dutchbat there were very few average people.

     And don't forget to tell them about the "prefab atmosphere",
     where everybody, with their good and bad qualities,
     passionately contributed to the rich variety of creation.
     Sometimes things happened in a violent and direct and primitive way:
     nothing stayed untold.
     There you took over some ones watch
     and patrols were changed,
     there was cursing and disliking the situation,
     there the tension and fatigue was laughed away
     until everybody was so old that there was no more stress.
     Never again in your life will you experience
     this coming together of heartiness and roughness.
     During every reunion we will revive the memory of that,
     because you will never forget.

     Tell them at home about the moving, happy and sad experiences
     that we went through together here,
     tell them about that mother who every week faithfully sent a kilo of
     real coffee to he post, long after her son had already returned home
     from Lebanon.
     Tell them about 7-13B, how that goat - to the satisfaction of everyone-
     ate the food off the sergeant's plate.
     But tell them also how we witnessed that tragedy that happened to Jan
     Hoiting,
     after the things that happened to Schut and Seebregts and De Wolf ,
     on that same post, when there were "only 15 days and a breakfast to
     go"....
     Tell them at home about Fatima, the Muslim woman of 7-5, about how
     she prepared her bread on her fire,
     the same bread we Christians were breaking during the celebration of
    the Mass and the Supper:
     if things like that would happen more often, then peace would soon be
     coming....

     We are going to leave Lebanon like this: with a smile and a tear.
     Goodbye Lebanon: I have hated you intensely and I have enjoyed you
     enormously.

     "But I will thinking many times:
     'I should be doing.....'
     I will miss it soon: the prefab atmosphere and the Lima-Papa life,
     the buddies, the patrols, the soldier's food,
     but most of all I will never forget
     that we have been here for a reason. "

Source "Tell them at home":
"Dubbelvier" Thursday October 20th, 1993
written by chaplain P. H. Raaymakers

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Last updated: 1 januari, 2000

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