Damien Timms - A mine incident

Running time
1 min 24 sec
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs

Transcript

So we didn't do any mine clearing but I just remember I was playing soccer with some of the kids and the kids actually just were running to get this ball and I just noticed no one else was around me. And all the kids were like because I didn't speak Kinyarwandan. The kids, they actually started to learn Australian. In fact, probably the worst Australian. They were learning Australian Army English. It's got a few profanities in it. But they stopped and they all just basically were saying to me like “Boom”, that I was standing in a mine field.

And I just remember I walked back the way I came and I just kept cracking on with it. They said there'd been mines in that area. The other one that we had encountered was some British engineers. They were clearing down near a bridge and they cleared it all. They got rid of some mines. And they went down the next day and one of them got blown up. Someone had put a mine there. They were watching them and they basically deliberately blew up one of the UK soldiers. He was missing his legs and that sort of thing.

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