UN insignia back in Cyprus with owner
It was a standard United Nations cap badge — olive branches encircling the world, the wishful-thinking symbol of planetary peace.
But to Garry Best, a Newfoundland peacekeeping veteran who came to possess the long-lost UN insignia, the small remnant from a fallen Canadian’s blue beret was especially rich with meaning.
And so, during a return trip last week to Cyprus as part of a Veterans Affairs entourage marking the 50th anniversary of Canada’s peacekeeping deployment to the Mediterranean island, Best buried the badge at the gravesite of its original owner: Cpl. Otto Redmond, a fellow Newfoundlander killed in a jeep rollover in 1967 while trying to keep hostile Greek and Turkish Cypriots from killing each other.
The poignant gesture completed the badge’s mysterious, 47-year journey from Cyprus to Canada and back to Redmond’s side at a Commonwealth military cemetery in Dhekelia, a small patch of British territory on the disputed island.
The beret, the badge and a bloodied UN flag had been discovered by a passerby at the scene of Redmond’s death on March 10, 1967, on a mountain road along the north coast of Cyprus.