Well first of all I volunteered to go.
I had a choice to go being that young in
the military you want to go and
experience things. The culture shock I
remember landing in Zagreb at the airport and
we didn’t see much of the effects of the war.
Even from the air we didn’t see that much
because Zagreb is somewhat in the valley
and you got mountains all around so when
we landed at the airport but it’s after
going through and it was funny we still had
to go through customs as weird as it was.
We got on our buses and then we started
driving through the town and I think a
kilometre past the airport and then
I saw the first reality of the war.
We saw one house that was totally intact
and this one was totally imploded, blown
up and this one was intact.
So that was the first, I remember the
briefing we had when they were doing
culture ethnic cleansing. I imagine that
house could have been a Serbian house
so I saw that effect right there and it really,
holy cow, this is what it is?
And further down the road I just can’t
remember the name of the town we went
down like this like a 401 highway type
of thing and then we got off and then
we turn off towards where we are going,
was it Daruvar, going towards that way
and then we saw armoured vehicles from
the old Yugoslavian army all blown up on
the side and then it all just started sinking
in looking at this. It was just like 72 hours
ago I was in Winnipeg and your mentality is
you’re living in Canadian space and then
bang you’re there, “Holy cow, is this real?”
It was surreal for the first little part of the
tour and then coming into lecture
when we got on the, when we got to Daruvar
our UMS was not at the beginning,
was not on the base per se.
We were in a school and it was an orphanage
so a quarter of that was the UMS so we
were a bit living in the suburb area of Daruvar
so we got to see a lot of the local people and
in the evening if we went out for a jog and
stuff like that of course we had to have
somebody with a weapon and we just jogged
around the little area and seeing the houses,
you know, and the artillery shell holes left
on the cement walls and the gunshots
in the cement walls, blown up vehicle.
You know it took about a few weeks to adjust
to that area as per se back in Canada this
does not exist, don’t walk on the grass
because of possible landmines, booby traps.
So all this new psyche in your head,
it’s a different adjustment period and then
when you’re in the middle of your tour and
you go home on R&R you get back to
Canadian soil and you’re seeing people
walking on the grass, you’re seeing
houses and all that and just the adjustment,
holy cow, it seemed you were on
one planet and then you came
to another planet.
