Geisha Kow­lessar

The Book of Proverbs is his spir­i­tu­al sus­te­nance. Hu­mil­i­ty and dis­ci­pline are his watch­words. He rose from a hum­ble com­mu­ni­ty in Guapo, south Trinidad, to be­come one of the most pow­er­ful men in the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF). Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ed­mund Ernest Dil­lon has a dec­o­rat­ed and ful­ly ac­com­plished mil­i­tary ca­reer span­ning some 36 years.

The for­mer Chief of De­fence Staff of­fi­cial­ly re­tired on No­vem­ber 6, hand­ing over com­mand to Brigadier Roland Maun­dy dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas. The fol­low­ing day, Dil­lon cel­e­brat­ed his 55th birth­day. Apart from the army, the TTDF con­sists of the Coast Guard and the Air Guard. Charis­mat­ic and wise be­yond his 55 years, Dil­lon, in a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view at his home at Fed­er­a­tion Park, Port-of-Spain, spoke can­did­ly about the mil­i­tary, shar­ing his mem­o­ries and vi­sion for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Pen­sion re­form

Crit­i­cal on the list of change was the pen­sion sys­tem which Dil­lon de­scribed as in dire need of re­form. The max­i­mum age of re­tire­ment in the TTDF is 55 but 5.5 per cent of an of­fi­cer's month­ly salary con­tin­ued to be de­duct­ed to­wards con­tri­bu­tions. "Full pen­sion is at 26 years and eight months' ser­vice but af­ter that pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion con­tin­ues be­cause re­tire­ment in the mil­i­tary is ear­ly," he said. "At that point you have to make a de­ci­sion whether you re­main in the job or leave and then you would stand to lose a num­ber of ex­pe­ri­enced per­son­nel. "Tru­ly there is no in­cen­tive to keep you on the job oth­er than a love for it."

Par­al­lel to that was the de­lay in ac­cess­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance.

"Some peo­ple die and don't ac­cess NIS. We must be able to im­me­di­ate­ly ac­cess it up­on re­tire­ment and not wait un­til 60," Dil­lon urged. The re-es­tab­lish­ment of a fam­i­ly clin­ic was al­so in­te­gral in the TTDF, he added. A ware­house of­fer­ing all type of goods, rang­ing from fur­ni­ture to gro­ceries, at a re­duced price to TTDF mem­bers, was on the draw­ing board, but yet to come to fruition.

Mould­ing young peo­ple in­to dis­ci­plined and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice­men, Dil­lon said, con­tin­ued to be one of the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing the De­fence Force.

Say­ing the mil­i­tary was made out of "90 per cent peo­ple and ten per cent equip­ment," Dil­lon added: "Its func­tion is to shape peo­ple's minds, to un­der­stand what are their roles and what so­ci­ety looks up to the mil­i­tary for. "Long ago, in­di­vid­u­als come in­to the mil­i­tary with ba­sic dis­ci­pline and they would an­swer, 'Yes sir.' Now we have to teach young peo­ple to even say that. "Some of them come in to learn to deal with weapons and then they leave the job af­ter."

Dil­lon said there could be a stark re­duc­tion in crime if sol­diers were grant­ed pow­ers to de­tain. Sol­diers work in con­junc­tion with the Po­lice Ser­vice, con­duct­ing Joint Army Po­lice Pa­trols (JAPP).

Dil­lon rec­om­mend­ed, how­ev­er, that if sol­diers were grant­ed pow­ers to de­tain, that would strength­en man­pow­er. "Sol­diers work in sup­port of the po­lice... There is no le­gal au­thor­i­ty for a sol­dier to be on the streets of T&T," he said. "I would def­i­nite­ly sup­port leg­is­la­tion to grant sol­diers the pow­ers to de­tain be­cause it would make a wide im­pact in crime re­duc­tion and the whole ques­tion of man­pow­er comes in­to play. "One of the main rea­sons we con­tin­ue to do so low in the crime sit­u­a­tion is be­cause of the use of re­sources."

Court mar­tial nec­es­sary

While there have been calls to do away with the court mar­tial sys­tem and in­stead al­low the ac­cused to be tried in open court, Dil­lon, how­ev­er, main­tained that court mar­tial was nec­es­sary.

"It is a nec­es­sary sys­tem of jus­tice in the mil­i­tary. Dis­ci­pline is the foun­da­tion pil­lar of the mil­i­tary and the court mar­tial sends a cer­tain kind of mes­sage," he said. "We don't have a sys­tem like the po­lice where we put you on sus­pen­sion and give you half pay and you get to stay home. We deal with you one time. If the sys­tem is re­moved them we'll lose the whole con­cept of pro­fes­sion­al­ism," Dil­lon said. Stat­ing that court mar­tial had a wide range of pow­ers, Dil­lon said the sys­tem was equiv­a­lent to the High Court where a sol­dier or sailor could be sen­tenced up to two years in prison or they can be sent to the "Brig" al­so known as de­ten­tion.

Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ed­mund Dil­lon, third from left, pos­es with his fam­i­ly. Daugh­ters Toni, left, Adeisha, wife Ava and son Cleav­on.

No re­grets–Dil­lon

Re­lax­ing on his front porch, Dil­lon took a trip down mem­o­ry lane.

He re­called his care­free high school days at Ves­signy Sec­ondary. A ca­reer in the mil­i­tary nev­er crossed his mind. "Join­ing the mil­i­tary was just a mat­ter of co­in­ci­dence. "I had three neigh­bours who were mem­bers of the Coast Guard and they told me to come and write the ex­am," Dil­lon said. On Sep­tem­ber 20, 1974, Dil­lon, donned in an im­pres­sive Coast Guard uni­form, cel­e­brat­ed his 19th birth­day on the pa­rade square in Ch­aguara­mas.

Four years lat­er he be­came a sol­dier. Dil­lon rapid­ly climbed the ranks, ex­celling in every as­pect of his mil­i­tary pur­suit. "The mil­i­tary is not a job, it is a way of life. You're con­di­tioned to do cer­tain things. The mil­i­tary changes your life," Dil­lon said.

Civil­ian life, how­ev­er, is yet to dawn on Dil­lon. "I worked down to my last day. I am still, in my mind, think­ing mil­i­tary. But as the days and weeks go by that will change," Dil­lon said. Al­ready faced with sev­er­al lu­cra­tive job of­fers, Dil­lon planned to merge his mil­i­tary skills with that of his ac­com­plished aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground.

De­scrib­ing his mil­i­tary life as "won­der­ful and en­joy­able," Dil­lon em­phat­i­cal­ly de­clared that he would do it all over again.

Ca­reer

Pro­fes­sion­al In­for­ma­tion

�2 Rank: Brigadier Gen­er­al

�2 Com­mis­sioned Date: (Coast Guard) Sep­tem­ber 1974

�2 Au­gust 1978 Ap­plied for an Of­fi­cer Cadet­ship with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment

Ed­u­ca­tion

�2 1979 - Grant­ed a com­mis­sion and com­plet­ed his Of­fi­cer Cadet train­ing at the Roy­al Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my Sand­hurst, UK

�2 Cana­di­an Forces Staff School and Col­lege

�2 Unit­ed States Army Com­mand and Gen­er­al Staff Col­lege

�2 Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence De­gree in So­ci­ol­o­gy (Hons) and Gov­ern­ment

�2 Mas­ters' in Mil­i­tary Arts and Sci­ence

Main as­sign­ments in T&T and abroad

�2 Bat­tal­ion Ad­ju­tant

�2 Com­pa­ny Com­man­der

�2 Staff Of­fi­cer Fi­nance

�2 Bat­tal­ion Sec­ond in Com­mand

�2 Bat­tal­ion Sec­ond in Com­mand of the Cari­com Bat­tal­ion (1994)

served dur­ing the Unit­ed States led Mul­ti Na­tion­al Force Op­er­a­tion, Re­store Democ­ra­cy in Haiti

�2 Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer of the 1st and 2nd In­fantry Bat­tal­ions

�2 Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer of the Sup­port and Ser­vice Bat­tal­ion

�2 Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment (2004)