Brad Dunn - The Wool Shed bar

Transcript

We ran a bar. It was a strange deployment, but the soldiers were allowed two beers per man, perhaps per day. Generally during the week there was no drinking, but because the troop leader and I didn't like the idea of the guys going outside the wire to go out and drink, we decided we'll open our own bar and that we'll invite the UN in. Very early on we got the cook to make our pizzas, we invited the local UN staff to come up to the Wool Shed, we called it, which they did, they came.

That just developed over time. It got quite large. Every Friday and Saturday night we'd have pizzas and the Wool Shed would be open for the local UN workers to come up and have a drink with us. I set up a relationship with the local shop to deliver beer and soft drink and water to us. I picked him because he could deliver, so I didn't have to go and pick it up, he delivered it to me. Well, years later, see, I returned to Cambodia as a DAA in the embassy in 2004 and served there in the embassy.

I took my wife up to Sisophon, to show her the town. We were wandering around and we went in a little shop and it was him, him and his wife. He told us, because I could speak Khmer then, he told us how much that contract had affected his family. He'd been able to educate his kids and his life had improved. The local market was just a stall back in '92, '93, but when I went back in 2004, he had a brick shop. It was wonderful.