According to Colonel Jim Calvin, the officer in charge of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Second Battalion, the notion of peace was something of a joke in the Balkans in 1993. It didn’t help that Calvin’s Canadian troops were the only peacekeeping contingent in the area that French General Jean Cot—the commander of the United Nations Protection Force for the Former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR)—felt he could trust.

In the autumn of 1993, only weeks before the end of their tour, Calvin’s Canadians were posted to the volatile Medak Pocket region of Southern Croatia to reinforce a French battalion. They soon found themselves caught up in one of the most difficult operations in UN peacekeeping history. The Canadians were the only thing protecting the region’s Serbian minority from the Croatian Army. When the Croatian Army broke the ceasefire agreement in September 1993 the Canadians knew that the Croats’ mission was ethnic cleansing.

To learn more about the “forgotten battle” of the Medak Pocket, check out the NATO Association of Canada.

Main photo: UNPROFOR medical evacuation at Camp Polom, Croatia. n.d. (Credit: LAC Mikan # 4113927).