By Alan Richardson

LEADING A successful seven-month mission to bring relative peace to one of west Africa’s most war-torn countries has won Major Mark McKinney a top military award.

Royal Marines Reserve officer Major McKinney (39), from Dunning, has been awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service for his work as an acting lieutenant colonel with the United Nations in Liberia last year.

He organised the deployment of 15,000 troops from over 20 different nations in a bid to bring an end to two decades of bloody civil war.

His efforts have been officially recognised as saving the entire UN mission in the war-ravaged state, which was on the brink of total collapse at one stage.

The award was given for carrying out “a difficult and dangerous mission with the highest distinction.

“The physical and moral courage demonstrated throughout a demanding period was outstanding, and in the finest traditions of the corps.”

Arriving in October 2003 with the peacekeeping force, Major McKinney discovered a country wracked by a brutal conflict and without some basic necessities.

“Conditions were horrendous and there was no law and order,” he said. “If you had turned up for any other reason, you would turn on your heels and get out of there.

“We were living extremely rough, with no running water or facilities and in the most hot and humid and weather imaginable.

“As well as the living conditions, the level of danger was high—there were many ill-disciplined and extremely well-armed people who were no strangers to bloody war and we went into the middle of that.”

From the capital Monrovia, the UN force gradually pushed out into the rest of the country, delivering aid and bringing an end to the violence.

“We also needed to instigate a cessation in the violence and get the weapons off the warring factions—the whole mission really hinged on that.

“We started in December and it went badly wrong and there was a huge flare-up in violence which we had to stabilise.

“There was one occasion when we had to stand HQ in order to defend it because we temporarily lost control, although we regained it quickly and effectively.”

The disarmament process was back on track by April and staying on for an extra month to oversee it provided Major McKinney’s ultimate reward.

“Once the pillars of what we wanted to achieve were in place by April, the mission took on a momentum of its own.”

No stranger to west Africa, having already completed operations in the Congo and Sierra Leonne, Major McKinney said his knowledge of local people and practices helped.

He has lived with his wife in the Perthshire countryside for 18 months and is the Officer Commanding the Dundee Detachment of the Royal Marines Reserve Scotland.

He left the regular Royal Marines in May 2003 after 17 years but was recalled after only 12 days.