The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
[ "I fantasmi della sacca di Medak": si chiama cosi' un libro
recentemente uscito in Canada. I "fantasmi" dei quali parla il libro
sono, da una parte, gli abitanti serbi della zona di Medak,
nell'attuale Croazia, sterminati nei primi anni Novanta; al contempo,
"fantasmi" o, per meglio dire, "scheletri nell'armadio" sono anche
quelli delle truppe canadesi inquadrate nella missione ONU, all'epoca
(1993) impegnate nel cosiddetto "peacekeeping" in quella zona, che si
trovarono di fronte alla pulizia etnica dei miliziani croati. Con
questi ultimi i canadesi furono anche coinvolti in uno scontro armato,
sul quale i media ed i politici canadesi da subito hanno steso un velo
di imbarazzata censura.
Questo libro, finalmente, potrebbe riportare in vita quei "fantasmi":
ma non in senso letterale, purtroppo, poiche' ai serbi di Medak nessuno
puo' restituire la vita. Ricordiamo che per la pulizia etnica nella
Slavonia e nelle Krajne la Croazia ed i suoi responsabili politici non
hanno mai subito alcuna sanzione da parte della cosiddetta "comunita'
internazionale", viceversa: quasi per ricompensa, sono stati oramai
persino aperti i negoziati per l'accesso della Croazia nella UE. Janko
Bobetko, il principale responsabile della carneficina della sacca di
Medak, e' stato graziato dal "Tribunale ad hoc" dell'Aia "a causa delle
sue condizioni di salute" - vedi:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2262
Sullo stesso argomento vedi anche, ad esempio:
La eliminazione dei serbi dalla Croazia / 1: Il ruolo degli USA
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2665
Croatie : après les élections, nouvelles inculpations ?
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/3006
Coverup at The Hague Tribunal: Mercenary Outfit on Contract to the
Pentagon behind 1995 Ethnic Massacres in the Krajina region
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO307D.html
(a cura di I. Slavo) ]
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/books/0679312935/reviews/
ref=cm_rev_more_2/702-5371429-3231253
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: the Story of Canada's Secret War
by Carol Off (Author)
List Price: CDN$ 34.95
Our Price: CDN$ 24.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on
orders over $39. See details
You Save: CDN$ 10.48 (30%)
Hardcover - 320 pages (October 12, 2004)
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle:
“Off is a smooth and powerful writer, delivering a mixture of
descriptive passages, contextual background and editorial argument
which collectively produce a provocative page-turner.”
—The Globe and Mail
Book Description
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most
significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their
extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that
battlefield have haunted them ever since.
Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep
in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a
deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations
protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead,
they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence.
In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light
Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do.
When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back
valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in
Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath
— the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians
searched for survivors. There were none.
The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of
the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the
horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In
time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers
to despair, to homelessness and even suicide.
Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle
of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and
untold story.
From the Inside Flap
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most
significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their
extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that
battlefield have haunted them ever since.
Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep
in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a
deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations
protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead,
they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence.
In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light
Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do.
When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back
valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in
Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath
— the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians
searched for survivors. There were none.
The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of
the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the
horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In
time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers
to despair, to homelessness and even suicide.
Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle
of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and
untold story.
From the Back Cover
Praise for The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle:
“Off is a smooth and powerful writer, delivering a mixture of
descriptive passages, contextual background and editorial argument
which collectively produce a provocative page-turner.”
—The Globe and Mail
About the Author
Carol Off has witnessed and reported on many of the world’s conflicts,
from the fall of Yugoslavia to the US-led war on terror. She has won
numerous awards for her television and radio work, including coverage
of the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. She lives and works in Toronto.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE: A NEW WAR DAWNING
Fate is the same for the man who holds back,
the same if he fights hard.
We are all held in one single honour,
the brave with the weaklings.
—The Iliad of Homer
Rudy Bajema got up before dawn on September 9, 1993. He wanted a moment
of quiet and solitude before the bustle of the day in order to wish his
mother a happy birthday. There was no way to talk to her directly, so
he just thought about her, hoping mental telepathy would convey his
feelings. Somehow he knew she’d get his message. And so Bajema was
already wide awake when the first shell slammed into the ground at
six-thirty.
A mortar explosion near their living quarters was nothing new for the
soldiers of the Second Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian
Light Infantry. They had been dodging indirect fire ever since they
moved into an area called the Medak Pocket, where they were guarding a
ceasefire line between two hostile divisions of seasoned fighting
forces: Serbs on one side and Croats on the other. Both of the forces
had benefited from the training and expertise of what until recently
had been one of the great military machines of Europe: the Yugoslav
National Army. Now they were using the considerable skill they had
acquired as a unified force in order to kill each other. The Patricias
had long ago come to the realization that the ceasefire line they were
assigned to guard was a barrier that existed only in the imaginations
of international diplomats. The surprise on this particular morning was
that the first shell was followed immediately by another one that came
in almost on top of the Canadians, and shook the building.
Lieutenant Tyrone Green, a university student from Vancouver, consulted
his compass after the first mortar explosion to determine which of the
two adversaries was on the offensive this time. The second shell
knocked him off his feet. He ran through the barracks that housed his
soldiers, sending out the alarm. “Artie, artie artie!” he hollered
(incoming artillery shells), while more mortar bombs smashed into the
ground around them. As they scrambled out of their sleeping bags and
jumped into their boots, grabbing their weapons, the peacekeepers knew,
with a mixture of exhilaration and terror, that they were no longer
incidental bystanders at someone else’s battle —they had become one of
the targets.
Green dashed out to the yard and climbed into his armoured vehicle. His
platoon had been in what they called Medak House for just over a week —
not long enough to set up a proper communications system. The mobile
radio in the vehicle was all he had. Green called Charlie Company
headquarters to report this new development; by now the shells were
landing all around them with the rhythm and the urgency of a major
offensive operation. Charlie Company’s Nine Platoon was suddenly in the
middle of a war. To the young Canadians, the rules of engagement, if
there were any, were as incomprehensible as the long, complicated
Balkan history that had led up to this terrifying moment. Rudy Bajema
had got his birthday greetings out just in time.
***
Eight kilometres south of Medak House and two kilometres straight up a
mountain from the Canadian battalion’s base camp in Sveti Rok, Sergeant
Rod Dearing and his section of Charlie Company’s Eight Platoon were
deep asleep in and around their bunker. It was a standard war-zone
shelter, its dirt walls and ceiling shored up by pit props, netting and
prayers. The soldiers had dug into the stony ground of the Lika
Highlands of Croatia, overlooking the villages and pastures on the
Serbian side of Medak. A few metres away, precariously perched on the
brow of a hill, they’d scooped out a second bunker to use as an
observation post. Twenty-four hours a day, the Canadians peered out
from that position into the deep valley below them, watching the
comings and goings of soldiers as well as civilians.
Living in an earthen bunker with several other men might not be
everyone’s idea of pure joy, but Dearing loved being outdoors,
surrounded by the dense oak forests of the Lika Highlands. The moors,
valleys and woodlands of central Croatia resonate with dark, bloody
history and an even darker mythology. Legends of clan warfare and
revenge killing twist and turn through local folklore like the maze of
goat trails that criss-cross the empty hills.
To the north and east of the bunker and lookout, long spurs of the
Austrian Alps tumble down into the interior of Croatia and merge with
the Dinaric Mountains, which roll up from the southeast in a single
rocky backbone. The green expanse of the Medak region’s pasturelands
flows away to the south and squeezes between foothills. Through a gap
in the white rock of the Velebit Mountains to the west, the soldiers of
Eight Platoon could sometimes see the blue water of the Adriatic, not
more than twenty kilometres away.
It was early September and the woods were just beginning to turn gold
and red. The setting reminded Dearing of his boyhood home in Armstrong,
British Columbia, where he and his friends had played and explored, and
where he’d acquired his love of the outdoors. A steady diet of G.I. Joe
comics and a love of the Canadian war stories he learned in school —
whenever he could sit still long enough to read — had filled him with
the single desire to be a soldier. He’d joined the Rocky Mountain
Rangers as soon as he was old enough to be a soldier in the reserves.
At twenty-eight, muscular and fit, Dearing was exactly where he always
wanted to be. He was living in nature. He was a soldier. But he was in
somebody else’s country, caught in the middle of someone else’s bloody
war
---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20041029.bkghost1030/BNStory/SpecialEvents/
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Saturday, October 30, 2004 BOOKS
When peacekeepers go to war
By MICHAEL BOIRE
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of Canada's Secret War
By Carol Off
Random House Canada, 310 pages, $34.95
In the autumn of 1993, while attempting to separate Serbs and Croats
fighting in the Medak Pocket in Croatia, the soldiers of C Company,
Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (2PPCLI)
went to war. More precisely, war found them.
As she tells the extraordinary story of these young Canadian men and
women enduring their baptism of fire, veteran broadcast journalist
Carol Off, whose work has included covering the aftermath of ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia, makes three important points. First, in the Medak
Pocket, Canada's army made the violent passage from the predictable and
relatively secure style of Cold War peacekeeping to the hazardous
peacemaking that characterizes the New World Order.
Second, "Canada has assigned itself the role of peacemaker: It's in our
mythology, our history and foreign policy, but as a nation we are
colossally deluded about what the role really entails. That delusion
has meant that Canadian soldiers have repeatedly been sent to face the
horrors and violence of wars in foreign countries, and have actively
fought in those wars, without Canadians ever hearing much about it."
Finally, it is a travesty that Canadians have been kept in the dark
about the dangers their soldiers have faced and the courage they have
shown.
Off is on solid ground in this riveting account of the Medak action. By
the time 2PPCLI joined the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR),
Serbs and Croats had been battling for possession of the Krajina
(Western Croatia) since Yugoslavia's disintegration in 1991. Faced with
yet another violation of the cease-fire in September, 1993, United
Nations forces were clearly losing what little grip they had left on
the situation.
To re-establish its credibility, UNPROFOR ordered its most steadfast
contingent, the Princess Patricias, to pry apart the warring factions
and then compel them to disengage. While conducting this dangerous
assignment, C Company came under sustained heavy fire from Croatian
forces. For 15 hours, the Canadians defended themselves while
resolutely pursuing their mission. When the smoke cleared, they had
beaten back the Croats, inflicting heavy casualties, according to the
local media. On the Canadian side, nobody had been killed or seriously
wounded. Lady Luck had indeed smiled on C Company as it fought and won
the Battle of the Medak Pocket.
Unfortunately, this was soon to prove a hollow victory. In the days
after the battle, 2PPCLI discovered the remains of Serbs who had been
murdered in their homes by Croats, who had used their action against
the Canadian peacekeepers to cover their vicious ethnic-cleansing
operations.
In addition to a stirring account of the battle, Off provides the
historical context an uninitiated reader needs to understand the
origins of the bewildering and precarious situation Canadian soldiers
faced while peacemaking in Croatia. In several user-friendly chapters,
we travel from the Middle Ages right through to the disintegration of
Tito's Yugoslavia and the resulting emergence of modern Croatia. Off
relates the brutal roles president Franjo Tudjman played in leading
Croatia to independence, as well as directing the "ethnic cleansing" of
the Serb population of the Krajina, albeit in retaliation for the
Serbs' cruel treatment of the Croats who lived among them.
The author serves up a few surprising facts, as well. It is
disconcerting to read of the unwavering moral and financial support
that Tudjman's brutal regime received from militant elements within
Canada's Croatian community. Off's question is as disturbing as it is
ironic: How many of the weapons used against Canadian soldiers in the
Medak Pocket had been purchased with money from Canada?
By far the most poignant passages of this book treat the heavy price
that Canadian reservists paid for their Balkan experience. Because it
had already sent many of its own soldiers to reinforce Canadian units
Deploying into the Balkans, 2PPCLI found itself under strength for its
own deployment. Several hundred army reservists from across Canada
stepped forward to fill the battalion's ranks. Many would serve in C
Company in the Medak Pocket.
Although 2PPCLI returned home to a lukewarm welcome that offered little
moral support, its regular soldiers would remain together, helping each
other face the strains of re-adapting to normal life. The reservists,
however, had come from every corner of Canada. They returned home as
individuals, without access to the support structures that might have
eased their transition to peace. Many found themselves isolated and
alone. The ghosts of Medak continued to haunt some members of the
battalion for years after their return. For an unfortunate few,
alcohol, drugs and violence became coping strategies.
Carol Off has written a first-class account of Canada's soldiers in
action. Her prose is lively and her tone impassioned. Combining
credible secondary sources with a large collection of first-hand
accounts, the best evidence of all, she has made a solid argument for a
reassessment of Canadians' attitudes toward peacekeeping. As she states
with admirable conviction: "The time has undoubtedly come for Canada to
figure out what role the Canadian Forces should play in the modern
world, but also to acknowledge and understand what the Forces have been
doing, on difficult missions their fellow citizens have paid scant
attention to since the end of the Cold War."
In Croatia in 1993, when many national contingents in the United
Nations forces avoided their obligations to separate warring forces and
support the humanitarian mission, the soldiers of C Company, Second
Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, put duty and
honour first.
Major Michael Boire has served in Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
He teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada, in Kingston, Ont.
---
http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?0679312935&view=print
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
The Story of Canada's Secret War
Written by Carol Off
Category: Current Affairs - International
Publisher: Random House Canada
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Pub Date: October 2004
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 0-679-31293-5
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most
significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their
extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that
battlefield have haunted them ever since.
Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep
in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a
deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations
protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead,
they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence.
In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light
Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do.
When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back
valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in
Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath
— the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians
searched for survivors. There were none.
The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of
the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the
horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In
time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers
to despair, to homelessness and even suicide.
Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle
of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and
untold story.
REVIEW QUOTES
Praise for The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle:
“Off is a smooth and powerful writer, delivering a mixture of
descriptive passages, contextual background and editorial argument
which collectively produce a provocative page-turner.”
—The Globe and Mail
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Carol Off has witnessed and reported on many of the world’s conflicts,
from the fall of Yugoslavia to the US-led war on terror. She has won
numerous awards for her television and radio work, including coverage
of the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. She lives and works in Toronto.
---
http://www.army.dnd.ca/lfwa/transcript_CBC_Carol_Off.htm
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
Transcript taken from CBC News World
Interview With Carol Off
November 8 , 2004
David: Welcome back. In 1993, some Canadian peacekeepers serving in
Croatia were forced to defend themselves. They were caught in the
middle of an intense fight between Serbs and Croats. The battle has
been called the biggest firefight Canadian troops were involved in
since the Korean War. The CBC's Carol Off has documented this event
extensively. It's also the subject of her latest book, titled "The
ghosts of Medak Pocket," the story of Canada's secret war and Carol Off
joins us now. Carol thanks for joining us. I don't remember, Carol,
1993, I don't remember the troops coming back and hearing this great
fanfare about, boy, did you hear what these Canadian troops did. What
an amazing thing. I don't remember any ticker tape parades. What
happened here?
Carol Off: Isn't that amazing. 1993, These peacekeepers, Princess
Patricias Canadian Light Infantry had single-handedly saved the U.N.
Mission. They had saved the mission in the Balkans. All the other
peacekeeping contingents from other countries had been running away
from the violence that was continuing in Croatia. Canadians didn't.
They stood their ground. They fought the Croats back when they were
trying ethnically cleansing this region called the Medak pocket. They
wedged themselves between two armies and fought them to a draw. They
tried to save the villagers, found they got there too late. Did this
amazing investigation for the war crimes tribunal that's one of the
best investigations they've had. They came home. They kind of thought
there might have been a bit of reception. There was a few yellow
ribbons. There was some warmth, but say in Winnipeg, places like that,
it just wasn't there. What was worse for these soldiers is Ottawa and
the department of national defence just didn't want anyone to know that
this mission had happened.
David: Time and again, it seems the P.P.C.L.I. gets thrown in these
kinds of things. I want to ask you about a moment in the book that I
found so fascinating. Here they are wedged between these two opposing
forces. The Canadian troops and almost conditioned by this point to ask
what are the rules of engagement and don't fire back, whatever else,
suddenly find themselves having to make their own decisions. When you
talk to the soldiers about that, what was that like for them?
Carol Off: They were amazing. First of all, you have to realise that
about half of the troops that were over there for P.P.C.L.I. were
reservists. They were weekend warriors. They were off on an adventure.
They had no idea that their peacekeepers wasn't handing out candy to
can is and kids and guarding a green line. They were in a war. They
were soldiers, classic Albertans most of them, and they found
themselves in this crunch. They thought, okay, so what are the rules?
You fire back if you're fired upon. You might meet fire with equal
fire. The Croats fired on them. They turned and said, okay, we're going
to give as good as we're getting. We don't know why you're firing at
us. We're just peacekeepers. If you're going to take us on, man, you're
going to get a fight. These guys fought with everything they had, with
light arms. They had machine guns. They had their personal weapons.
They fought for 18 hours. They fought this battle. They probably almost
undoubtedly inflicted casualties on the Croats who they could see not
very far away. They did it. Then the Canadian forces were able to push
their way through to try and get in to the Medak pocket and try and
save the lives of the people they hoped were still alive at that point.
David: They dug trenches and thinking about they've only talked about
some of these moments in history. They pushed the Croats back. They
inflicted some heavily y damage according to the local media. The
Canadians walked away relatively unscathed. Those wounds showed up
later, didn't they.
Carol Off: When they got in to the Medak pocket, they've been sort of
sitting on the side lines for many days watching and listening to this
ethnic cleansing going on, and they wanted to go in there and take
charge. They had weapons. They thought they could do it. But the United
Nations was dithering someplace in new York or Washington trying to
come up with some language someplace. These guys had watched it,
wanting to do something. By the time they got in to Medak and found
that all these civilians had been not just killed but tortured and
mutilated, they felt this personal sense of failure that they couldn't
overcome when they came back to Canada. In many cases, Mr. Marin, the
ombudsman, talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, this is an
epidemic in the forces. They did whatever they thought they had to do
and came back to a relatively indifferent country and an indifferent
department of national defence, have suffered greatly throughout the
1990s.
David: Carol Off, I could talk to you a lot more about this. But we're
out of time. The book is called "the ghosts of Medak pocket." I thank
you very much for joining us, Carol.
Carol Off: Thank you, David.
[ "I fantasmi della sacca di Medak": si chiama cosi' un libro
recentemente uscito in Canada. I "fantasmi" dei quali parla il libro
sono, da una parte, gli abitanti serbi della zona di Medak,
nell'attuale Croazia, sterminati nei primi anni Novanta; al contempo,
"fantasmi" o, per meglio dire, "scheletri nell'armadio" sono anche
quelli delle truppe canadesi inquadrate nella missione ONU, all'epoca
(1993) impegnate nel cosiddetto "peacekeeping" in quella zona, che si
trovarono di fronte alla pulizia etnica dei miliziani croati. Con
questi ultimi i canadesi furono anche coinvolti in uno scontro armato,
sul quale i media ed i politici canadesi da subito hanno steso un velo
di imbarazzata censura.
Questo libro, finalmente, potrebbe riportare in vita quei "fantasmi":
ma non in senso letterale, purtroppo, poiche' ai serbi di Medak nessuno
puo' restituire la vita. Ricordiamo che per la pulizia etnica nella
Slavonia e nelle Krajne la Croazia ed i suoi responsabili politici non
hanno mai subito alcuna sanzione da parte della cosiddetta "comunita'
internazionale", viceversa: quasi per ricompensa, sono stati oramai
persino aperti i negoziati per l'accesso della Croazia nella UE. Janko
Bobetko, il principale responsabile della carneficina della sacca di
Medak, e' stato graziato dal "Tribunale ad hoc" dell'Aia "a causa delle
sue condizioni di salute" - vedi:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2262
Sullo stesso argomento vedi anche, ad esempio:
La eliminazione dei serbi dalla Croazia / 1: Il ruolo degli USA
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2665
Croatie : après les élections, nouvelles inculpations ?
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/3006
Coverup at The Hague Tribunal: Mercenary Outfit on Contract to the
Pentagon behind 1995 Ethnic Massacres in the Krajina region
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO307D.html
(a cura di I. Slavo) ]
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/books/0679312935/reviews/
ref=cm_rev_more_2/702-5371429-3231253
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: the Story of Canada's Secret War
by Carol Off (Author)
List Price: CDN$ 34.95
Our Price: CDN$ 24.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on
orders over $39. See details
You Save: CDN$ 10.48 (30%)
Hardcover - 320 pages (October 12, 2004)
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle:
“Off is a smooth and powerful writer, delivering a mixture of
descriptive passages, contextual background and editorial argument
which collectively produce a provocative page-turner.”
—The Globe and Mail
Book Description
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most
significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their
extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that
battlefield have haunted them ever since.
Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep
in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a
deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations
protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead,
they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence.
In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light
Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do.
When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back
valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in
Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath
— the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians
searched for survivors. There were none.
The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of
the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the
horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In
time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers
to despair, to homelessness and even suicide.
Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle
of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and
untold story.
From the Inside Flap
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most
significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their
extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that
battlefield have haunted them ever since.
Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep
in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a
deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations
protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead,
they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence.
In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light
Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do.
When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back
valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in
Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath
— the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians
searched for survivors. There were none.
The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of
the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the
horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In
time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers
to despair, to homelessness and even suicide.
Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle
of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and
untold story.
From the Back Cover
Praise for The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle:
“Off is a smooth and powerful writer, delivering a mixture of
descriptive passages, contextual background and editorial argument
which collectively produce a provocative page-turner.”
—The Globe and Mail
About the Author
Carol Off has witnessed and reported on many of the world’s conflicts,
from the fall of Yugoslavia to the US-led war on terror. She has won
numerous awards for her television and radio work, including coverage
of the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. She lives and works in Toronto.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE: A NEW WAR DAWNING
Fate is the same for the man who holds back,
the same if he fights hard.
We are all held in one single honour,
the brave with the weaklings.
—The Iliad of Homer
Rudy Bajema got up before dawn on September 9, 1993. He wanted a moment
of quiet and solitude before the bustle of the day in order to wish his
mother a happy birthday. There was no way to talk to her directly, so
he just thought about her, hoping mental telepathy would convey his
feelings. Somehow he knew she’d get his message. And so Bajema was
already wide awake when the first shell slammed into the ground at
six-thirty.
A mortar explosion near their living quarters was nothing new for the
soldiers of the Second Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian
Light Infantry. They had been dodging indirect fire ever since they
moved into an area called the Medak Pocket, where they were guarding a
ceasefire line between two hostile divisions of seasoned fighting
forces: Serbs on one side and Croats on the other. Both of the forces
had benefited from the training and expertise of what until recently
had been one of the great military machines of Europe: the Yugoslav
National Army. Now they were using the considerable skill they had
acquired as a unified force in order to kill each other. The Patricias
had long ago come to the realization that the ceasefire line they were
assigned to guard was a barrier that existed only in the imaginations
of international diplomats. The surprise on this particular morning was
that the first shell was followed immediately by another one that came
in almost on top of the Canadians, and shook the building.
Lieutenant Tyrone Green, a university student from Vancouver, consulted
his compass after the first mortar explosion to determine which of the
two adversaries was on the offensive this time. The second shell
knocked him off his feet. He ran through the barracks that housed his
soldiers, sending out the alarm. “Artie, artie artie!” he hollered
(incoming artillery shells), while more mortar bombs smashed into the
ground around them. As they scrambled out of their sleeping bags and
jumped into their boots, grabbing their weapons, the peacekeepers knew,
with a mixture of exhilaration and terror, that they were no longer
incidental bystanders at someone else’s battle —they had become one of
the targets.
Green dashed out to the yard and climbed into his armoured vehicle. His
platoon had been in what they called Medak House for just over a week —
not long enough to set up a proper communications system. The mobile
radio in the vehicle was all he had. Green called Charlie Company
headquarters to report this new development; by now the shells were
landing all around them with the rhythm and the urgency of a major
offensive operation. Charlie Company’s Nine Platoon was suddenly in the
middle of a war. To the young Canadians, the rules of engagement, if
there were any, were as incomprehensible as the long, complicated
Balkan history that had led up to this terrifying moment. Rudy Bajema
had got his birthday greetings out just in time.
***
Eight kilometres south of Medak House and two kilometres straight up a
mountain from the Canadian battalion’s base camp in Sveti Rok, Sergeant
Rod Dearing and his section of Charlie Company’s Eight Platoon were
deep asleep in and around their bunker. It was a standard war-zone
shelter, its dirt walls and ceiling shored up by pit props, netting and
prayers. The soldiers had dug into the stony ground of the Lika
Highlands of Croatia, overlooking the villages and pastures on the
Serbian side of Medak. A few metres away, precariously perched on the
brow of a hill, they’d scooped out a second bunker to use as an
observation post. Twenty-four hours a day, the Canadians peered out
from that position into the deep valley below them, watching the
comings and goings of soldiers as well as civilians.
Living in an earthen bunker with several other men might not be
everyone’s idea of pure joy, but Dearing loved being outdoors,
surrounded by the dense oak forests of the Lika Highlands. The moors,
valleys and woodlands of central Croatia resonate with dark, bloody
history and an even darker mythology. Legends of clan warfare and
revenge killing twist and turn through local folklore like the maze of
goat trails that criss-cross the empty hills.
To the north and east of the bunker and lookout, long spurs of the
Austrian Alps tumble down into the interior of Croatia and merge with
the Dinaric Mountains, which roll up from the southeast in a single
rocky backbone. The green expanse of the Medak region’s pasturelands
flows away to the south and squeezes between foothills. Through a gap
in the white rock of the Velebit Mountains to the west, the soldiers of
Eight Platoon could sometimes see the blue water of the Adriatic, not
more than twenty kilometres away.
It was early September and the woods were just beginning to turn gold
and red. The setting reminded Dearing of his boyhood home in Armstrong,
British Columbia, where he and his friends had played and explored, and
where he’d acquired his love of the outdoors. A steady diet of G.I. Joe
comics and a love of the Canadian war stories he learned in school —
whenever he could sit still long enough to read — had filled him with
the single desire to be a soldier. He’d joined the Rocky Mountain
Rangers as soon as he was old enough to be a soldier in the reserves.
At twenty-eight, muscular and fit, Dearing was exactly where he always
wanted to be. He was living in nature. He was a soldier. But he was in
somebody else’s country, caught in the middle of someone else’s bloody
war
---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20041029.bkghost1030/BNStory/SpecialEvents/
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Saturday, October 30, 2004 BOOKS
When peacekeepers go to war
By MICHAEL BOIRE
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of Canada's Secret War
By Carol Off
Random House Canada, 310 pages, $34.95
In the autumn of 1993, while attempting to separate Serbs and Croats
fighting in the Medak Pocket in Croatia, the soldiers of C Company,
Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (2PPCLI)
went to war. More precisely, war found them.
As she tells the extraordinary story of these young Canadian men and
women enduring their baptism of fire, veteran broadcast journalist
Carol Off, whose work has included covering the aftermath of ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia, makes three important points. First, in the Medak
Pocket, Canada's army made the violent passage from the predictable and
relatively secure style of Cold War peacekeeping to the hazardous
peacemaking that characterizes the New World Order.
Second, "Canada has assigned itself the role of peacemaker: It's in our
mythology, our history and foreign policy, but as a nation we are
colossally deluded about what the role really entails. That delusion
has meant that Canadian soldiers have repeatedly been sent to face the
horrors and violence of wars in foreign countries, and have actively
fought in those wars, without Canadians ever hearing much about it."
Finally, it is a travesty that Canadians have been kept in the dark
about the dangers their soldiers have faced and the courage they have
shown.
Off is on solid ground in this riveting account of the Medak action. By
the time 2PPCLI joined the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR),
Serbs and Croats had been battling for possession of the Krajina
(Western Croatia) since Yugoslavia's disintegration in 1991. Faced with
yet another violation of the cease-fire in September, 1993, United
Nations forces were clearly losing what little grip they had left on
the situation.
To re-establish its credibility, UNPROFOR ordered its most steadfast
contingent, the Princess Patricias, to pry apart the warring factions
and then compel them to disengage. While conducting this dangerous
assignment, C Company came under sustained heavy fire from Croatian
forces. For 15 hours, the Canadians defended themselves while
resolutely pursuing their mission. When the smoke cleared, they had
beaten back the Croats, inflicting heavy casualties, according to the
local media. On the Canadian side, nobody had been killed or seriously
wounded. Lady Luck had indeed smiled on C Company as it fought and won
the Battle of the Medak Pocket.
Unfortunately, this was soon to prove a hollow victory. In the days
after the battle, 2PPCLI discovered the remains of Serbs who had been
murdered in their homes by Croats, who had used their action against
the Canadian peacekeepers to cover their vicious ethnic-cleansing
operations.
In addition to a stirring account of the battle, Off provides the
historical context an uninitiated reader needs to understand the
origins of the bewildering and precarious situation Canadian soldiers
faced while peacemaking in Croatia. In several user-friendly chapters,
we travel from the Middle Ages right through to the disintegration of
Tito's Yugoslavia and the resulting emergence of modern Croatia. Off
relates the brutal roles president Franjo Tudjman played in leading
Croatia to independence, as well as directing the "ethnic cleansing" of
the Serb population of the Krajina, albeit in retaliation for the
Serbs' cruel treatment of the Croats who lived among them.
The author serves up a few surprising facts, as well. It is
disconcerting to read of the unwavering moral and financial support
that Tudjman's brutal regime received from militant elements within
Canada's Croatian community. Off's question is as disturbing as it is
ironic: How many of the weapons used against Canadian soldiers in the
Medak Pocket had been purchased with money from Canada?
By far the most poignant passages of this book treat the heavy price
that Canadian reservists paid for their Balkan experience. Because it
had already sent many of its own soldiers to reinforce Canadian units
Deploying into the Balkans, 2PPCLI found itself under strength for its
own deployment. Several hundred army reservists from across Canada
stepped forward to fill the battalion's ranks. Many would serve in C
Company in the Medak Pocket.
Although 2PPCLI returned home to a lukewarm welcome that offered little
moral support, its regular soldiers would remain together, helping each
other face the strains of re-adapting to normal life. The reservists,
however, had come from every corner of Canada. They returned home as
individuals, without access to the support structures that might have
eased their transition to peace. Many found themselves isolated and
alone. The ghosts of Medak continued to haunt some members of the
battalion for years after their return. For an unfortunate few,
alcohol, drugs and violence became coping strategies.
Carol Off has written a first-class account of Canada's soldiers in
action. Her prose is lively and her tone impassioned. Combining
credible secondary sources with a large collection of first-hand
accounts, the best evidence of all, she has made a solid argument for a
reassessment of Canadians' attitudes toward peacekeeping. As she states
with admirable conviction: "The time has undoubtedly come for Canada to
figure out what role the Canadian Forces should play in the modern
world, but also to acknowledge and understand what the Forces have been
doing, on difficult missions their fellow citizens have paid scant
attention to since the end of the Cold War."
In Croatia in 1993, when many national contingents in the United
Nations forces avoided their obligations to separate warring forces and
support the humanitarian mission, the soldiers of C Company, Second
Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, put duty and
honour first.
Major Michael Boire has served in Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
He teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada, in Kingston, Ont.
---
http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?0679312935&view=print
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
The Story of Canada's Secret War
Written by Carol Off
Category: Current Affairs - International
Publisher: Random House Canada
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Pub Date: October 2004
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 0-679-31293-5
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most
significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their
extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that
battlefield have haunted them ever since.
Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep
in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a
deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations
protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead,
they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence.
In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light
Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do.
When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back
valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in
Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath
— the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians
searched for survivors. There were none.
The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of
the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the
horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In
time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers
to despair, to homelessness and even suicide.
Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle
of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and
untold story.
REVIEW QUOTES
Praise for The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle:
“Off is a smooth and powerful writer, delivering a mixture of
descriptive passages, contextual background and editorial argument
which collectively produce a provocative page-turner.”
—The Globe and Mail
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Carol Off has witnessed and reported on many of the world’s conflicts,
from the fall of Yugoslavia to the US-led war on terror. She has won
numerous awards for her television and radio work, including coverage
of the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. She lives and works in Toronto.
---
http://www.army.dnd.ca/lfwa/transcript_CBC_Carol_Off.htm
The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
Transcript taken from CBC News World
Interview With Carol Off
November 8 , 2004
David: Welcome back. In 1993, some Canadian peacekeepers serving in
Croatia were forced to defend themselves. They were caught in the
middle of an intense fight between Serbs and Croats. The battle has
been called the biggest firefight Canadian troops were involved in
since the Korean War. The CBC's Carol Off has documented this event
extensively. It's also the subject of her latest book, titled "The
ghosts of Medak Pocket," the story of Canada's secret war and Carol Off
joins us now. Carol thanks for joining us. I don't remember, Carol,
1993, I don't remember the troops coming back and hearing this great
fanfare about, boy, did you hear what these Canadian troops did. What
an amazing thing. I don't remember any ticker tape parades. What
happened here?
Carol Off: Isn't that amazing. 1993, These peacekeepers, Princess
Patricias Canadian Light Infantry had single-handedly saved the U.N.
Mission. They had saved the mission in the Balkans. All the other
peacekeeping contingents from other countries had been running away
from the violence that was continuing in Croatia. Canadians didn't.
They stood their ground. They fought the Croats back when they were
trying ethnically cleansing this region called the Medak pocket. They
wedged themselves between two armies and fought them to a draw. They
tried to save the villagers, found they got there too late. Did this
amazing investigation for the war crimes tribunal that's one of the
best investigations they've had. They came home. They kind of thought
there might have been a bit of reception. There was a few yellow
ribbons. There was some warmth, but say in Winnipeg, places like that,
it just wasn't there. What was worse for these soldiers is Ottawa and
the department of national defence just didn't want anyone to know that
this mission had happened.
David: Time and again, it seems the P.P.C.L.I. gets thrown in these
kinds of things. I want to ask you about a moment in the book that I
found so fascinating. Here they are wedged between these two opposing
forces. The Canadian troops and almost conditioned by this point to ask
what are the rules of engagement and don't fire back, whatever else,
suddenly find themselves having to make their own decisions. When you
talk to the soldiers about that, what was that like for them?
Carol Off: They were amazing. First of all, you have to realise that
about half of the troops that were over there for P.P.C.L.I. were
reservists. They were weekend warriors. They were off on an adventure.
They had no idea that their peacekeepers wasn't handing out candy to
can is and kids and guarding a green line. They were in a war. They
were soldiers, classic Albertans most of them, and they found
themselves in this crunch. They thought, okay, so what are the rules?
You fire back if you're fired upon. You might meet fire with equal
fire. The Croats fired on them. They turned and said, okay, we're going
to give as good as we're getting. We don't know why you're firing at
us. We're just peacekeepers. If you're going to take us on, man, you're
going to get a fight. These guys fought with everything they had, with
light arms. They had machine guns. They had their personal weapons.
They fought for 18 hours. They fought this battle. They probably almost
undoubtedly inflicted casualties on the Croats who they could see not
very far away. They did it. Then the Canadian forces were able to push
their way through to try and get in to the Medak pocket and try and
save the lives of the people they hoped were still alive at that point.
David: They dug trenches and thinking about they've only talked about
some of these moments in history. They pushed the Croats back. They
inflicted some heavily y damage according to the local media. The
Canadians walked away relatively unscathed. Those wounds showed up
later, didn't they.
Carol Off: When they got in to the Medak pocket, they've been sort of
sitting on the side lines for many days watching and listening to this
ethnic cleansing going on, and they wanted to go in there and take
charge. They had weapons. They thought they could do it. But the United
Nations was dithering someplace in new York or Washington trying to
come up with some language someplace. These guys had watched it,
wanting to do something. By the time they got in to Medak and found
that all these civilians had been not just killed but tortured and
mutilated, they felt this personal sense of failure that they couldn't
overcome when they came back to Canada. In many cases, Mr. Marin, the
ombudsman, talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, this is an
epidemic in the forces. They did whatever they thought they had to do
and came back to a relatively indifferent country and an indifferent
department of national defence, have suffered greatly throughout the
1990s.
David: Carol Off, I could talk to you a lot more about this. But we're
out of time. The book is called "the ghosts of Medak pocket." I thank
you very much for joining us, Carol.
Carol Off: Thank you, David.