Title: The Ghosts of Medak Pocket by Carol Off
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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
Also
available as a trade
paperback.
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.
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