My mother in law Betty Dawson died last week aged 86. She was a lovely and remarkable lady but I suspect that few people who met this quiet and gentle old lady would have guessed what adventures she had experienced as a pensioner.
In 1991 Betty and her husband Arthur were deeply moved by the plight of the Kurdish refugees. They decided to do something to help the Kurds and after collecting aid from people in their home town of Mansfield they set off to take the aid to the Kurds themselves.
This article which was written by the journalist John Edwards and published in the Daily Mail on Thursday 25th April 1991 tells the story of that remarkable journey.
The smallest and bravest mission of them all
(by John Edwards – Daily Mail – 25th April 1991)
They sat at home in Mansfield and watched stunned at
television pictures of the camps in the mountains, and some nights the Dawsons
nearly cried. Betty and Arthur sitting there in their home, seeing death
and awfulness and a great pain coming off the screen in the faces of the
children. And what began as a crazy idea ended yesterday 7,500 feet up in
Eastern Turkey with the two of them strapped in a Chinook helicopter, twisting
through the mountain passes with the sides of towering canyons just out there
where you could touch them.
“We couldn’t just sit at home and do nothing” Betty Dawson
said with her grey hair bundled into a spotted blue headscarf and even a lady’s
umbrella shoved into the shopping bag she had trapped between her feet. “All we
did was get the word out that anybody with something to give to the refugees
could come to the house and we’d try to get it out there” she said. There was
so much, they had to put the Cavalier out in the street when the garage filled
up.
When they couldn’t store any more, they went over to the Budget van rental depot and the lady gave them a good deal on two seven and a
half ton Transits when they told her they were going to Turkey. Colin Wallis,
who was 43 years in the Nottingham coalmines and John Shooter, a friend for
years, loaded the second van. And 12 days ago, without people waving flags,
they set off like the world’s smallest relief mission and drove all the way to
Turkey. They slept in the vans most nights.
“It just proved the Christian spirit” Arthur Dawson said
when he told you about what people had delivered to his home. He was 61. Maybe,
if it had been a good day at home yesterday, he and Betty would have driven up
to Darley Dale in Derbyshire and had a meal at The Highwaymen. They often did.
But it worked out differently. So just after dawn, in the noise and slap of
Diyarbikar’s huge relief helicopter base, they stood in misty sunlight and
watched everything they had brought from Mansfield go in the back of an RAF Chinook
from 18 Squadron. They stood and watched and felt the glow which their faith as
born again Christians makes tiredness go away in ways not understood.
Betty had on an anorak and cord trousers because the RAF
said the wind came rushing into the helicopter and one minute it was a roast
and the next it was like winter. Everything they brought was in the back. The
clothes were in Woolworth and Tesco bags and cardboard boxes of shoes marked “ladies
on the top, Gentleman's on the bottom”. “Baby clothes was written on another and
then “woollens” and “baby food” on a few more. The Chinook filled up with
everything people in Mansfield had brought over to the Dawson’s house and
stacked in the garage
You talk about born again Christians and sometimes it is
accompanied by laughter and jokes. On the Diyarbikar airfield very early
yesterday, you just watched four old people and Colin Wallis with his silver
crucifix dangling out of his shirt, and they were surrounded by faith. “You can’t
watch starving people in desperate need and feel its too far away to be
personal, “ Arthur Dawson said. And then they told you how they had driven to
Romania six times and often to Poland when the stories there moved them.
Now, though, the pilot headed them into adventure and
excitement, and they sat and listened and looked at each other and Betty tucked
her hair tighter under the scarf. “I don’t know how you feel about this” the
captain let them know, “but first of all we’re making a delivery in Iraq.” Betty
wondered if she had got the message straight. But then the Chinook put down in
Zakho and there were Royal Marines everywhere in trucks and the city was right
there on the edge of the landing site. The four of them looked around Iraq and
were speechless.
The Chinook climbed out of Iraq and went north to the
canyons. Burnt out Iraqi tanks were in litters on the ground. This had once
been on their television back home. Now it was right under the Chinook and Betty
looked up and shook her head, hardly believing what she saw. John Shooter didn’t
remember if the refugee camp at Cukurca was the one he had been looking at
every night at home. They all look the same he said, “Just acres of depression
on a hillside”. It described Cukurca perfectly.
And now the Chinook corkscrewed into the plateau and Betty
watched the tents blow and the thousands of people running when she stretched
to look through the open door. She was shocked. The people came like extras in
a huge movie, tumbling and falling, and boxes all the way from Mansfield went
over the ramp and ended in the turmoil. “Ladies on the top, Gentleman’s on the
bottom” went floating into hungry hands.
The Dawsons couldn’t speak. They watched the faces just
outside the open door, all with an expression of pleading which these refugees
have made their own. So many people came running, the Chinook couldn’t land.
The last time the pilot had put down here, it was like an invasion of curds
coming through the door.
Three low air drops were made into the camp and Mansfield
was spread over half the hillside. “I’m glad they didn’t put it all in one
place” Arthur said. “At least its given a lot of people a chance to get
something.”
Last night in Cukurca, there were warm clothes on the backs
of freezing Kurds and some baby food on tin plates and shoes on feet, though
nobody knew about a town in Nottinghamshire, and Betty said that wasn’t
important.
“Why did you come all the way yourself” she was asked in a
shout over the roar of the blades. “Because we can tell the people who gave
everything to us that we saw it reach the people it was meant for,” she said. “Aren’t
you frightened?” The question made her smile. “We’re Christians and we believe
in Jesus and we’re prepared for anything,” she said. A badge on the lapel of
her anorak said it in big letters: There is Hope. Betty touched it and made the
point seem louder than the helicopter.
A US Navy F14 Tomcat screamed through the high valley,
keeping cover over the drop. Arthur threw his head back, “I’ll tell you
something,” he said, “This is a lot more exciting than mowing the lawn.” The
Chinook climbed away from Cukurca and Arthur reached out and held Betty’s hand.
One of the crew shook his head. It meant he was in awe.
“Do you think they will believe we’ve been to Iraq?” Betty
asked. “I think they will believe you all the way” he said. “I don’t know how I
feel really” she said, watching Cukurca going away behind the mountains, “Just
pleased we could do something I suppose.” Then she put her head back and closed
her eyes, and it looked as if she was praying.
