Commandant David Lavin is the United Nations ceasefire equivalent of a lighthouse keeper.
He works at UN observation post No 51 in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. There with him are fellow UN observers Captain Pertu Pohjola from Finland, Major Fernando Aguilar of the Argentine air force, and Mango, their faithful cat.
“Mind you don’t frighten Mango,” says Comdt Lavin, opening the door to a small shed to show us something inside - not easily done, one imagines, seeing as Mango’s job is to keep snakes at bay and mount counter-attacks on the giant bugs that invade the post.
The main job of Comdt Lavin and his colleagues is to keep an eye out for breaches of the 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria.
They are unarmed and theirs is a solitary task: assigned to the post for a year, they work two weeks on and then several days off, three or four, perhaps even a week, before going back on again for another fortnight.
When in the post, they work in relays: one will be observing, one on standby, and the other will be resting. This is what goes on 24/7.
The post is supposed to be self-sustaining. It has its own power generator and oil tank for 1,900 litres, as well as solar panels, and three large water tanks containing 11,000 litres.
The post is approached along a long, narrow, tar-topped track that winds through minefields, patches of the landscape abandoned to nature for some 40 years and consequently teeming with plant and bird life.
There’s a high, chain link fence around the post. The only gate into it is kept padlocked day and night, opened from the inside and only when necessary - which is not very often.
Around the post is a mine-free perimeter, a one metre wide corridor marked by red paint daubed on rocks.
Prefab cabin
Inside the post, Cmdt Lavin and colleagues live in a prefab cabin that has an office in the centre and, at one end, a small kitchen, and at the other, two small bedrooms with bunk beds. They call it the caravan.
Should the post come under attack, it has a newly-built above ground bunker of formidable proportions. It has steel doors and is rather like a panic room from the movies.
The bunker walls are made of reinforced, steel-lined concrete and are 15 inches thick. They are built to withstand the impact of a 155mm artillery shell.
Behind an internal steel door, there is a 12 by 5ft bedroom with two bunk beds and sufficient food and water for seven to 10 days. Where the third observer sleeps in the event is unclear.
The shelter also has its own filtration system for screening out the effects of nuclear, biological and chemical air contamination, as well as its own power supply and communications system.
The post’s observation tower is a eight ft square cube, with bullet and shrapnel proof glass windows, from where 360 degrees of the surrounding countryside may be surveyed through high-power binoculars.
What is seen is recorded and passed up the line to the UN truce supervision organisation and to Undof, the disengagement observer force.
The land around the post is lush and green at this time of the year. Soon it will be sunburnt brown and susceptible to bush fires.
“Do they set off the mines,” I ask Comdt Lavin.
“Of course, yes, they can,” he replies.
They keep their UN four wheel drive always parked nose front, pointing at the gate.
