pbfoot
1st Lieutenant
part of an article about the battle in the Medak pocket involving 2PPCLI based in Winnipeg your home
"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 **** 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."
