War zone nightmare unmasked

War zone nightmare unmasked: The Ghosts of Medak Pocket
London Free Press (Canada) - November 10, 2004

IAN GILLESPIE, Free Press Columnist

Most of us recognize the names Vimy Ridge and Dieppe. And that's how it should be. Few of us, though, have heard of Medak Pocket.

And that should be a source of shame.

According to former Londoner Carol Off, we all share responsibility for "the conspiracy of silence" that surrounds what happened to about 860 Canadian soldiers who, in September 1993, engaged in the most intense combat involving this country's forces since the Korean War.

"There is a mythology in Canada that peacekeeping is kind of a benign, benevolent, handing-out-candy-to-kids activity," says Off, who went to high school and university here after her family moved to London from Winnipeg in 1971. "And Ottawa didn't want to break that illusion of peacekeeping, because it gets them kudos.

"So we all worked together, in a perverse way, to leave these soldiers stranded in their own story."

That story, as described in Off's new book, The Ghosts of Medak Pocket, is both horrific and heart-rending. Off recounts the circumstances that put the members -- many of them ill-prepared reservists -- of Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry into a chaotic war zone in Croatia.

From the beginning, Operation Harmony was compromised by Canadian complacency. Off writes that the government's overriding goal was to ensure the operation remained trouble-free and obscure.

But there was nothing obscure about the horrors faced by the so-called "peacekeepers."

There were booby traps, mines, rats and stifling heat. There was a lack of food, drinking water and medical supplies. While shovelling sand from the site of an old aluminum smelter, the soldiers were likely exposed to toxic bauxite.

And squeezed between besieged Serbs and advancing Croats, the Canadian peacekeepers found themselves under fire from snipers and heavy artillery -- with no defensive air or artillery cover of their own.

Even worse, Off writes that the soldiers were operating without any clear sense of objective and under orders to do nothing -- except in extreme self-defence.

Finally though, under relentless enemy fire, the Canadians engaged the enemy, killing 27 Croats in a bloody 18-hour firefight. There were no Canadian fatalities.

But any sense of victory was short-lived when the Patricias soon realized the Croat gunfire had been a cover for the "ethnic cleansing" of nearby Serbian villages. In the days after the battle, the Canadian peacekeepers became corpse hunters as they uncovered the mutilated bodies of civilians.

Back in Canada, Kim Campbell was an embattled prime minister and the Department of National Defence -- and indeed, the Canadian media -- was preoccupied with details of military wrong-doing in Somalia.

When they returned, the Patricias were met with chilling indifference. Off recounts one incident where homecoming soldiers were greeted by nothing more than doughnuts and a coffee urn.

"One day they're picking up corpses," says Off in an interview. "And the next day they're standing in their living rooms, looking at their kids."

Perhaps the saddest aspect of Off's book is her account of what happened to the post-battle Patricias -- particularly reservists without military support structures. It is a sobering list of failure and loss, suicide, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, panic attacks and insomnia.

"They were just abandoned by our government and the military," says Off. "I still believe there are a lot of knuckle-draggers in the defence department who believe anyone with post-traumatic stress disorder is some kind of a girlie-man who shouldn't be in the forces."

Off says our national ambivalence about the military lies at the heart of this tragedy. She says the recent fatal fire aboard HMCS Chicoutimi has left some Canadians saying we need better submarines, and some asking if we need subs at all.

"We've never had a debate in this country about what we want the military to do," she says.

Tomorrow, as we salute the veterans of Korea and two World Wars, maybe we should spare a thought for the Patricias who performed so valiantly in the highlands of Croatia.

Lest we betray them, once again.