In September, 1993, Canadian troops stationed in an area of
Croatia known as Vojna Krajina engaged in a fierce battle with
Croatian forces attacking a predominantly Serb enclave. The
engagement, little known outside of military circles, was not
publicized by the Canadian government, which was hesitant to draw
attention to the increasing dangers the country's troops were facing
abroad. But this December, Ottawa will finally honour the soldiers
who took part in that firefight by presenting them with a unit
commendation. Maclean's tells the story of the battle:
PTE. SCOTT LeBLANC'S machine gun jackhammered against his
shoulder as he fired at the Croatian troops dug in 150 metres away.
Grenades exploded around him; bullets and orange tracer-fire
screamed through the smoky air. The Croatians hammered the Canadians
for 15 hours straight -- thinking the 30 soldiers from the Princess
Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry would buckle and run like other
UN peacekeepers had often done. But the Canadians, members of one of
three platoons making up the Patricia's Charlie Company, held their
ground. "They're trying to flank us," LeBlanc's section leader
barked, sending a jolt of adrenalin through LeBlanc's exhausted
body. Standing halfway out of his trench, the 19-year-old reservist
swung his gun around and opened fire on the Croatians. "We could see
muzzle flashes and threw everything we had at them," recalls
LeBlanc, now a 28-year-old lieutenant who has just returned from
Afghanistan. "After that, everything got real quiet."
The fierce battle took place in September, 1993, about a year and
a half after Canadian peacekeepers had first arrived in the former
Yugoslavia. Vicious fighting and appalling acts of ethnic cleansing
made their task of disarming and separating the various combatants
nearly impossible. Especially volatile was one mountainous region of
Croatia called Vojna Krajina, or Military Frontier, home to an
isolated pocket of some 500,000 Serbs. Fiercely nationalistic, the
Krajina Serbs began to drive out Croats. But on Sept. 9, Croatian
Commander Rahim Ademi launched an attack to capture an area of
Serb-controlled territory in Krajina called the Medak Pocket. The
UN, fearing that 400 Serbs living in four unprotected villages in
the area were at risk of being slaughtered by Croatian troops,
ordered the Patricia's into the area -- and into the biggest
firefight Canadian forces had been involved in since Korea.
Five months into a six-month tour of duty, the Canadians were led
by Lt.-Col. James Calvin, 41. The 875-man battle group was a
patchwork of regular and reserve soldiers. In fact, 70 per cent of
the front line soldiers were reservists -- a makeup that, Calvin
says, could prove dangerous in a war zone. "Reservists are just as
long on valour and courage," the now-retired Calvin told Maclean's
from his home on Wolfe Island, Ont., near Kingston. "But you can't
expect one to do the same things you expect from a regular soldier."
Still, after four months in the region, Calvin considered his
force seasoned, especially with his hand-picked group of platoon
leaders, including reservist Lt. Tyrone Green. The morning of Sept.
9 started nicely enough for the Vancouver native in charge of 9
Platoon, Charlie Company, with sunshine poking through the cracks in
the boarded windows of the platoon's quarters, a two-storey concrete
building on the outskirts of the Serb-held town of Medak.
But as Green dragged a razor across his chin, his morning shave
was interrupted by incoming artillery shells. With soap still
clinging to his face, Green, who is now a captain in charge of a
Canadian Forces recruiting office in Vancouver, grabbed his helmet
and raced to his M-113 armoured personnel carrier. At one point he
was knocked down when a shell landed in a nearby ditch. He wasn't
hurt, but four Canadians were injured in the shelling. "We counted
500 or more shells by the end of the first day," says Green. "About
a dozen fell in our compound and one landed about 10 metres from the
front door."
Not knowing where the shells were coming from, Green sent Sgt.
Rudy Bajema to establish an observation post. For the next five
days, Bajema watched as the Medak Pocket was attacked by more than
2,500 Croat troops, backed by tanks, rocket launchers and artillery.
The Serbs finally slowed the Croatian advance on Sept. 12, but it
was not until they launched rockets into a suburb of Zagreb,
Croatia's capital, that the Croats relented and accepted a UN
ceasefire.
Calvin, who didn't really expect the Croatians to live up to the
agreement, ordered his troops to occupy the Croat positions. "We
started taking fire almost immediately from the Croats," recalls
LeBlanc. The battle raged for the next 15 hours. It was so intense
that at night the light from burning buildings reflected off the
soldiers' blue UN helmets, prompting them to wrap them in
khaki-coloured T-shirts. Finally realizing the Canadians would not
back down, the Croats sent word to Calvin that they wanted to talk.
They had good reason to call a truce: the Canadians had killed 27
Croats while not taking a single casualty.
Joined by Col. Michel Maisonneuve, a Canadian officer from the UN
headquarters in Zagreb, Calvin met with Ademi at his headquarters in
a town near the fighting. Ademi sat on one side of the table,
blustering and yelling at the Canadians. "He looked like he was
enjoying the role he was playing," says Calvin. "Emotions were very
high and I was irate my men were getting shot at." But after an hour
and a half, Ademi finally relented and promised to pull his troops
out at noon the next day.
The Croatian commander, however, was determined to terrorize the
Serb civilians living in the area before he left. By 10 a.m. the
next morning, a thick umbrella of smoke covered all four towns in
the Medak Pocket as the Croats tried to kill or destroy everything
in their wake. The Canadians witnessed scenes that still haunt many
of them. "They could see what was happening from their foxholes,"
says Calvin. "My soldiers knew their role was to protect the weak
and the innocent and they were absolutely incensed." But fearing the
ceasefire agreement with Ademi would collapse if they advanced, the
Canadians could do nothing but hold their ground.
Finally, when the noon deadline passed, the Canadians raced
ahead, but immediately encountered a company of Croat troops behind
a barricade -- and supported by missiles launchers and an ominous
Soviet-era T-72 tank. Calvin approached the senior Croat brigadier;
their conversation quickly became heated. The large, bearded Croat
ordered his men to cock their weapons and point them at the
Canadians. "We knew they were stalling so they could clean up
evidence of their ethnic cleansing," Calvin recalls.
Calvin did not order his troops to fight, and instead tried
another gambit. With the Medak attack almost a week old, the
international media had converged on the area. As negotiations with
his bearded counterpart deteriorated, Calvin held a news conference
in front of the barricade and bluntly described the atrocities he
believed were being committed by the Croatians. Realizing his
country's reputation was in jeopardy, the Croat commander suddenly
stepped aside. "The transformation was instantaneous," says Calvin.
"He made a big show of removing the barriers."
The Patricia's then pushed on. Every building in their path had
been demolished and many were still smouldering. Corpses lay by the
side of the road, some badly mutilated and others burned beyond
recognition. "We knew it was going to be bad," says Green, "but the
things we found there were worse than anything we expected."
The Canadians documented everything they saw. Calvin's subsequent
report helped convince the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia to issue an indictment in 2001 against Ademi,
charging him with crimes against humanity. Made public one year ago,
the report is a brutal list of murder and torture. Among the
victims: Sara Krickovic, female, 71, throat cut; Pera Krajnovic,
female, 86, burned to death; Andja Jovic, female, 74, beaten and
shot. In all, the Patricia's found 16 mutilated corpses -- some with
their eyes cut out.
The soldiers rotated home four weeks later, but there was no
hero's welcome. At the time, Canadians were focused on the
disturbing revelations that a teenager named Shidane Arone had been
tortured and killed by Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia. Kim
Campbell's Conservative government was also facing a federal
election and didn't want the increasing dangers Canadian troops were
facing in the Balkans raised as an issue. "When we got back to
Canada a couple of weeks later, the first thing I did was call
home," says LeBlanc. "My folks hadn't heard anything about the
battle."
The force did receive high honours from the United Nations in
1994, when its members were given the United Nations Force
Commanders' Commendation -- the first of its kind and only one of
three ever awarded. And, this December, the Canadian government
finally plans to honour the troops by presenting them with a unit
commendation. But the honours only go so far. With vivid memories of
the battle, many of the soldiers still suffer from post-traumatic
stress syndrome.
As for Ademi, his case rests in legal limbo. After the
indictment, he voluntarily turned himself over to the war crimes
tribunal, proclaiming he had a clear conscience because "I did not
order any atrocities." Last February, the UN granted him a
provisional release on condition he return to The Hague when the
trial proceeds, likely next year. Calvin may be called to testify.
"Ademi should be called to account," he says. "No soldier should be
able to get away with that."
