Madam, - The visit of President Kaczynski of Poland is particularly welcome to those with Middle East UN peacekeeping service in the aftermath of the 1973 October War. Logistics for the Sinai Peninsula and Syria were divided between Canada and Poland. This apparently awkward arrangement worked well because, in the best United Nations spirit, both countries made it work.
Canada had much UN experience, but this was a first for a Warsaw Pact country. (There were Russian UN observers for the Golan heights and the Sinai Desert from 1974. American UN observers had been in the Middle East from 1948.) The Poles provided engineering services, including mine clearance.
Estimates of the number of mines (anti-tank and anti-personnel) in the Sinai varied. This writer was given a figure of 11 to 13 million in 1975 - perhaps in an effort to scare us. Mines can be laid rapidly by specially equipped vehicles. Spring sandstorms often stripped the ground, exposing acres of mines glittering in the dry, preserving air on ground previously thought to be an ordinary desert surface.
In that environment, it was reassuring to see the methodical, patient work of the young Polish troops in the mine-clearing teams. Some of us may owe our lives to them. Some of our wives used to pray for them. Because of their work we hardly thought about mines in the roads or cleared areas.
Perhaps we could ask the president of Poland to convey our thanks to those men - probably in their fifties now - who served the United Nations so well. - Yours, etc,
Col (Retd) E.D. DOYLE, Tower Road, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.