Croatia - A Different World

Heroes Remember

Croatia - A Different World

Transcript

Interviewer: And what can you tell us about what happened in Croatia? That was a different world. That was probably the biggest reality check I had ever had in my life. Because, and I don't, with Cyprus, everything had stopped. They weren't firing at each other, they weren't attacking each other daily, but there, when you went there, you'd hear it every night. It went on, my whole tour it didn't stop in 92' -93'. You would hear light arms fire, you would hear fifty calibre fire, heavy machine gun fire, you would hear artillery fire nightly. You would see fires burning, houses burning, you would see and hear children, and women and children crying that they couldn't find their loved ones. They were hungry, they wanted food, and you just, I mean, come on you might see the odd, you know people asking for change here in, in Canada, but you don't see, what you saw there. You don't see the mayhem of the nightly situation there. And you would have to patrol in it daily, nightly you would be tasked on this patrol to go to this area and you would just see the destruction. The daily destruction or stuff that happened that night, and you know people being belligerent to you. It was very hard because you would, you know, if other Veterans see this then I don't wanna say we were fired at nightly, and you know we were under constant barrage. But yeah we took, there was some firing going on, and you know you got three different sides of military that don't want you there because they just wanna go all out. But then you also got civilians there, who are asking you why you're not doing anything, "Why aren't you stopping what's going on?" And you know, what do you say to them? It's hard, it's like you know we're trying, we're doing our best, we're you know, governments have to be involved, we're just, we're here with you, we're going through the same things.

Description

Mr. Neepin explains how the conflict in Croatia was different from that in Cyprus.

Darcy Jeremy Neepin

Mr Neepin was born in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, and moved to Winnipeg with his family while still young. An uncle who served with the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) told him many stories as he grew up. From these stories he gained knowledge of what military life as an infantryman was like and before he turned 12 years old he was sure he wanted to serve. At the age of 18 Mr. Neepin joined the Cameron Highlanders Reserves. Being of Cree descent, he was the only Aboriginal Canadian in his recruiting class of 30. In 1990 Mr. Neepin answered the call for volunteers to join the 1st Battalion PPCLI for a peacekeeping tour in Cyprus. Having his first overseas experience under his belt, he returned home in the summer of 1991. Mr Neepin continued to volunteer for overseas peacekeeping missions, serving with the PPCLI for the 1992/93 tour in Croatia and in 1997 & 2000 in Bosnia.

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