Interview with Wayne Johnston

I'm Cpt. Wayne Johnston, originally from Toronto. I originally joined in 1973 – the Royal Regiment of Canada – as an infantryman. Rose through the ranks to Master Warrant Officer of the Company Sergeant Major. I commissioned in 1995 as a logistics officer. I've always been in the Reserves. In '74, I qualified as a parachutist. I've been to Germany, I've been to Norway.

I suppose for me the highlight of my military career, amongst the many great things, was going to Bosnia, from March 2004 to the end of September 2004. I went to Bosnia as the Liaison Officer from the northwest – that was a brigade consisting of Canadians, British and Dutch, primarily – to the south, and that was the Salamander Brigade, which consisted of Germans, French, Italians, Spanish, Moroccans, and Albanians. I was the only Canadian amongst about twenty-five hundred of them in a place called Mostar, which suffered a great deal of damage during the fighting in the Balkans. My job as Liaison Officer was to pass on information to my own brigade and information from my own brigade to the south, and to work intently close with the brigade from the south. One of my major jobs, actually, was turning German, French, Spanish and Italian into NATO English. So I was the Brigade Commander / Adjutant… ad hoc Adjutant at any rate.

The one thing I suppose I got out of the Balkans was that while things have gotten a lot better there, it is my opinion they're still a long way from getting into what I call Western Europe in the way I suppose they'd like to, in that still we collect during what we call 'harvests' an incredible amount of small arms. Small arms, ammunition, hand grenades. At one point, I witnessed twelve mortar tubes and several thousands of ammunition tucked away in a barn. And so yeah, there's still a lot of work to do there. Having said that, they've come a long way.

Insofar as my artifact from the First World War, that was given to me by a delightful gentleman by the name of Squadron Leader Bob Nevin. It's a piece of aviation fabric that was given to him by Billy Bishop's fitter from the First World War. It was given to him, I believe, in the '40s or the early '50s. He passed it on to me, as I'm a bit of a historian, and I do like Canadian history. I believe it's Billy Bishop's fifty-sixth victory.