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Published by Vanwell - hopefully somebody can post a review soon ...
http://www.canada.com/components/printstory/printstory4.aspx?id=dd81b77e-322a-41c4-9cb7-524b0e2212d8
Christmas in an evil place
Kurt Grant, National Post, December 24, 2004
On Christmas Day, 1994, Kurt Grant was a peacekeeper in Croatia as part of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group during Operation Harmony. What follows is that day's entry from his diary.
Last night, the cook prepared a traditional Christmas dinner for the platoon, and the celebration went on long into the evening. The camp is now as quiet as a church on a Monday morning.
My friend Mark showed up at my trailer at 8:30 and asked if I would drive him to the village of Donja Bruska, where we had an observation post. We had to pick up a sergeant who'd volunteered to fill in for us while we celebrated the night before. I agreed. There really wasn't anyone else who could have done it, anyway. Everyone else in camp was still in bed, sleeping off last night's revelry. On the way out the door I grabbed my camera. There was a place I wanted to visit, and this, I thought, was the right day to go.
After dropping the sergeant off at his base, I asked Mark if we could make a detour on the way back to our camp, and swing by a cemetery in the area I'd heard of. When Croatia's Serbs in the Krajina region attempted to break away, they had gone to this, and other Croatian graveyards and destroyed them by opening the graves, scattering the bones, and smashing headstones. Having only ever heard about this activity -- and not really believing it -- I wanted to see the results for myself.
We bounced along the back roads southwest of the town of Karin-Slana for a while, and then rolled to a stop as we approached the cemetery. The engine of our vehicle spluttered to a halt as Mark and I threw open the doors and stepped out into the cool air of Christmas morning. Rifles in hand, we skirted the perimeter wall that marked the hallowed ground, slipped quietly passed a pile of rubble that had once been a bell tower, and moved through what remained of the main gate.
The sky was dark and overcast. In the distance across the valley, the clouds came down to meet the tops of the blue-green hills, and on the ground, there lay two or three inches of freshly fallen snow. Spread out before us lay the destruction wrought by a vengeful people.
Everything was still. The kind of deafening quiet you get in the woods just after a snow storm, when nothing has had a chance to start moving yet, not even the air. It seemed somehow appropriate for this holiest of mornings.
We began to move, working our way toward the centre of the graveyard, ever conscious as we went that someone might have paid a recent visit and left a booby trap behind. There remained the very real possibility that we could add our own bodies to the remains of those scattered about us. There would be no one to come and find us since nobody knew we were here.
As we walked, I took several pictures to record for others what I was seeing. For my own sake, I needn't have bothered. What I saw there this morning will remain with me the rest of my life.
At the middle of the graveyard stood what had once been its most prominent landmark, the chapel. All that was left was its outline. All four walls were no higher than two feet above the foundation. It was obvious that someone had used powerful explosives to destroy the building because the rubble radiated out from the centre of what was left of the structure, and seemed to cover the entire area of the cemetery.
At one end of the chapel, to the left of what had once been its entrance, there was a hole in the floor filled with bones. I was told that it is tradition in this part of Yugoslavia to remove the bones of long-deceased relatives from the family grave and place them in hallowed ground so that more recently deceased persons can be buried in the family plot. The cover had been broken and pushed aside, exposing the bones to the elements. There was no way of telling how many bodies had been piled on top of one another.
We continued on, weaving our way through the rubble, the open graves and the scattered human remains. While I stood surrounded by the evidence of so much hatred, time seemed to stand still. Then Mark looked at his watch and made a sign that we should be getting back.
Driving away from the graveyard, I felt an urge to apologize to the dead, both for what had been done to them, and for my adding to the insult by taking pictures. I wanted to say a prayer of some sort, but not being religiously trained, I instead composed some words on the spot, jumbled in with snippets of distracted thoughts.
Mark and I had been in the area for half an hour or so. As we'd wandered about, neither of us had said a word. What could one say? What kind of logic drives a man to not only kill someone out of hatred, but then continue on to that person's most sacred of places and commit this kind of crime? I don't know. Blessedly, the thinking was utterly alien to me, and leaves me cold.
Sitting here in my trailer writing this, I am reminded of a poem by William Blake that sums up my feelings about the morning's experience:
Oh for a voice like thunder, and a tongue to drown the voice of war,
When the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand?
When the souls of the oppressed fight in the troubled air that rages,
Who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the throne of God,
When the frowns of his countenance drive the nations together,
Who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle, and sails rejoicing in the flood of death,
When the souls are torn to everlasting fire, and fiends of Hell rejoice upon the strain,
Oh who can stand?
Oh who has caused this?
Oh who can answer at the throne of God?
The Kings and the Nobles of the land have done it,
Hear it not Heaven,
Thy ministers have done it!
Kurt Grant is a serving member of the Brockville Rifles. The diary he kept of his experience on tour in the Balkans, All Tigers, No Donkeys, has recently been published by Vanwell Publishing.
http://www.canada.com/components/printstory/printstory4.aspx?id=dd81b77e-322a-41c4-9cb7-524b0e2212d8
Christmas in an evil place
Kurt Grant, National Post, December 24, 2004
On Christmas Day, 1994, Kurt Grant was a peacekeeper in Croatia as part of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group during Operation Harmony. What follows is that day's entry from his diary.
Last night, the cook prepared a traditional Christmas dinner for the platoon, and the celebration went on long into the evening. The camp is now as quiet as a church on a Monday morning.
My friend Mark showed up at my trailer at 8:30 and asked if I would drive him to the village of Donja Bruska, where we had an observation post. We had to pick up a sergeant who'd volunteered to fill in for us while we celebrated the night before. I agreed. There really wasn't anyone else who could have done it, anyway. Everyone else in camp was still in bed, sleeping off last night's revelry. On the way out the door I grabbed my camera. There was a place I wanted to visit, and this, I thought, was the right day to go.
After dropping the sergeant off at his base, I asked Mark if we could make a detour on the way back to our camp, and swing by a cemetery in the area I'd heard of. When Croatia's Serbs in the Krajina region attempted to break away, they had gone to this, and other Croatian graveyards and destroyed them by opening the graves, scattering the bones, and smashing headstones. Having only ever heard about this activity -- and not really believing it -- I wanted to see the results for myself.
We bounced along the back roads southwest of the town of Karin-Slana for a while, and then rolled to a stop as we approached the cemetery. The engine of our vehicle spluttered to a halt as Mark and I threw open the doors and stepped out into the cool air of Christmas morning. Rifles in hand, we skirted the perimeter wall that marked the hallowed ground, slipped quietly passed a pile of rubble that had once been a bell tower, and moved through what remained of the main gate.
The sky was dark and overcast. In the distance across the valley, the clouds came down to meet the tops of the blue-green hills, and on the ground, there lay two or three inches of freshly fallen snow. Spread out before us lay the destruction wrought by a vengeful people.
Everything was still. The kind of deafening quiet you get in the woods just after a snow storm, when nothing has had a chance to start moving yet, not even the air. It seemed somehow appropriate for this holiest of mornings.
We began to move, working our way toward the centre of the graveyard, ever conscious as we went that someone might have paid a recent visit and left a booby trap behind. There remained the very real possibility that we could add our own bodies to the remains of those scattered about us. There would be no one to come and find us since nobody knew we were here.
As we walked, I took several pictures to record for others what I was seeing. For my own sake, I needn't have bothered. What I saw there this morning will remain with me the rest of my life.
At the middle of the graveyard stood what had once been its most prominent landmark, the chapel. All that was left was its outline. All four walls were no higher than two feet above the foundation. It was obvious that someone had used powerful explosives to destroy the building because the rubble radiated out from the centre of what was left of the structure, and seemed to cover the entire area of the cemetery.
At one end of the chapel, to the left of what had once been its entrance, there was a hole in the floor filled with bones. I was told that it is tradition in this part of Yugoslavia to remove the bones of long-deceased relatives from the family grave and place them in hallowed ground so that more recently deceased persons can be buried in the family plot. The cover had been broken and pushed aside, exposing the bones to the elements. There was no way of telling how many bodies had been piled on top of one another.
We continued on, weaving our way through the rubble, the open graves and the scattered human remains. While I stood surrounded by the evidence of so much hatred, time seemed to stand still. Then Mark looked at his watch and made a sign that we should be getting back.
Driving away from the graveyard, I felt an urge to apologize to the dead, both for what had been done to them, and for my adding to the insult by taking pictures. I wanted to say a prayer of some sort, but not being religiously trained, I instead composed some words on the spot, jumbled in with snippets of distracted thoughts.
Mark and I had been in the area for half an hour or so. As we'd wandered about, neither of us had said a word. What could one say? What kind of logic drives a man to not only kill someone out of hatred, but then continue on to that person's most sacred of places and commit this kind of crime? I don't know. Blessedly, the thinking was utterly alien to me, and leaves me cold.
Sitting here in my trailer writing this, I am reminded of a poem by William Blake that sums up my feelings about the morning's experience:
Oh for a voice like thunder, and a tongue to drown the voice of war,
When the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand?
When the souls of the oppressed fight in the troubled air that rages,
Who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the throne of God,
When the frowns of his countenance drive the nations together,
Who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle, and sails rejoicing in the flood of death,
When the souls are torn to everlasting fire, and fiends of Hell rejoice upon the strain,
Oh who can stand?
Oh who has caused this?
Oh who can answer at the throne of God?
The Kings and the Nobles of the land have done it,
Hear it not Heaven,
Thy ministers have done it!
Kurt Grant is a serving member of the Brockville Rifles. The diary he kept of his experience on tour in the Balkans, All Tigers, No Donkeys, has recently been published by Vanwell Publishing.
