Families’ tragedies showed why task is so vital
CAMILLA trained in landmine clearance with the Halo Trust, on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border. She put her skills to use in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Afghanistan.
But her first task was to gather information and listen to people’s stories in Cambodia, to learn why the path she was embarking on was
so vital. She said: “I heard so many terrible stories in those 18 months.
“I remember visiting one site where a woman and her husband had been out with their two young children, collecting wood to build their house.
“They’d been piling timber into their buffalo cart and the mother was worried it would be too heavy for the animal if they all sat on it.
“So she followed on foot. Minutes from home, the cart ran over an antitank mine – killing her husband, son and daughter in front of her eyes.
“The team that went to clear the site found the limbs of her husband and children in the trees around.
“Another time a man told me of the evening he went to collect wood in a forested area along the border.
“On his way home he stepped on an anti-personnel mine, which caused a traumatic amputation of his lower left leg. It’s called a traumatic amputation for a reason – landmine injuries are not neat. They’re horrendous, raggededged wounds, filled with shards of bone and dirt fired straight up into the burnt, blackened skin.
“Landmines are intended to maim rather than kill. It can be a father farming his land, a mother carrying her baby, a child walking to school.
“As long as landmines remain, this is the danger ordinary people face.”