Major Paeta Hess-Von Kruedener

[17thRecceSgt]

RIP Sir 

A hard month for the PPCLI family. 

 

[retread]

I can't believe I had not heard this news before I read it here.  I did my JLC with HVK back in '85.  My condolences to his family.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Monument to remember....

During the summer of 2006, when Israel engaged the Hezbollah faction in Lebanon in a 34-day conflict, the United Nations Patrol Base (PB) in the Lebanese village of El Khiam was struck by a 1,000-pound bomb that killed its occupants. PB KHIAM was the temporary home of a military observer team, called Team Sierra, from the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) who were assisting the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

As is normal in UNTSO, Team Sierra was a group of four experienced army officers from four different countries: Major Hans-Peter Lang from Styria, Austria, as team leader; Lieutenant Senior Grade Jarno Mäkinen from Kaarina, Finland, as deputy leader; Major Du Zhaoyu from Jinan in the People’s Republic of China; and Major Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener — known as Wolf — of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton, Alberta.

Over 63 years of operations in the most volatile areas in the Middle East, UNTSO has suffered 50 fatal casualties, including 18 U.N. Military Observers (UNMOs).

On 25 July 2011, the fifth anniversary of the attack on Patrol Base KHIAM, the fourth annual memorial service was held in El Khiam, led this year by New Zealand Army Lieutenant-Colonel Helen Cooper, the current chief of Observer Group Lebanon (OGL) ....

CEFCOM Info-Machine, 29 Sept 11

Her Excellency Ms. Hilary Childs-Adams, the Canadian Ambassador to Lebanon pauses in remembrance after laying a wreath at the PB KHIAM site memorial on behalf of Canadians.

 

[beirnini]

Details of Major Hess-Von Kruedener's last moments

The first barrage of artillery shells and guided bombs started at 12:11 and right away they all knew something wasn’t right. In the past, incidents of firing close had always been bombs or shells or missiles intended for nearby Hezbollah positions that missed their target. But now, there were no Hezbollah targets within hundreds of metres.

The four peacekeepers sheltered in the underground bunker began furiously radioing for help.

In the early afternoon—from 14:18 to 14:49—there was a second barrage.
[...]
At 18:29 the third wave of the attack hit the patrol base. Twelve 155-mm artillery rounds landed within metres of the base and four landed directly inside the compound, destroying most of the buildings above ground and blowing the door off the underground bunker. At this point General Alain Pellegrini, the man in charge of UN operations in Lebanon, called the Israeli liaison officer and shouted at him, no holds barred, “You are killing my people.”
[...]
[A]t just before 19:30, an Israeli F-16 pilot managed to do what so many other pilots and gunners failed to do that day—he dropped his 1,000-pound GPS-guided JDAM inside the compound, inside the blown-off door of the stout little underground bunker.

Canada's PM and Conservative Party leader at the time, Stephen Harper, responded

"We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals,"

The DND's inquiry can be found here. Oddly it "was published [but] was subsequently removed from government websites for “security reasons.”" (Obtaining an official copy as of Jan 2013 requires a freedom of information request, which might be responded with a letter claiming it can't "be released within the legally-allotted time".)

The board report does seize upon the one huge question that remains—the attack on Patrol Base Khiam lasted nearly seven hours and during that time the Israelis received a blizzard of calls and protests all up and down the liaison network
[...]
“While the IDF has acknowledged the receipt of the protests from the UN, it has failed to explain why the attack was not halted,” the board writes. “Considering that on previous occasions the IDF had halted fires when protests were received, no indication has been offered as to why protests of this nature and severity did not result in the halting of fires. The ability of the IDF to halt fires on previous occasions, combined with the functioning on the UN side of the liaison network, and the ability of the IDF side of the liaison network to contact the implicated headquarters indicates there was sufficient time for appropriate information to have been transmitted to the appropriate IDF decision maker in order to halt fires on PB Khiam."