Canadian troops made huge difference in Visoko

I was one of the Canadian soldiers there living in the Tannery and trying to survive while at the same time trying to make sense of it all and try to make a difference.

The National Day of Honour was recognized in Windsor, Ont. on Friday, May 9, 2014, during a ceremony at the downtown cenotaph. Flags bearing the names of the 158 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were prominently displayed. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

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Re: The Ghosts of Visoko, by Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News, July 4.


I live in South Windsor now as I was posted to Windsor in 2000. I was a member of the Royal Canadian Dragoons sent to Bosnia and Visoko in 1993-94.

Imagine my surprise to open The Star and see my old digs in a picture in our local paper. I can tell you this brought back a flood of memories.

We were tasked with numerous dangerous missions including minefield clearance, VIP protection, monitoring front line advancement of all parties and civil protection to a degree. Body exchanges were among some of the worst things we did.

I was a little put off at some of the comments that we did not understand the concept of what was happening as we fully understood the gravity of everything that happened. Indeed, we were centred in Visoko for that very reason.

Visoko was situated in the Muslim sector, yes. However, we were only 10 minutes from Serbian-held territory and the same for Croatian territory. We interacted with all the warring factions trying to maintain peace in an otherwise war-ravaged, lawless country and helped all the factions deal with each other.

On one Serbian push, about 120 of us were captured by Serbian forces and held as prisoners, treated like crap and tied to bridges to ensure NATO fighters would not bomb the bridges. We had to mount an operation in conjunction with Canadian Elite forces (JTF2) to attack and rescue our brothers.

I can remember my first week there. The Muslims were shooting at us and I was on patrol with my outgoing counterpart.

He had ducked inside our armoured vehicle and was yelling at me to get down. Geesh, I didn’t even know we were being shot at until the bullets started pinging off our vehicle.

Did we accomplish anything, you ask? Due to the presence of a United Nations Force on the ground, we gave the warring factions an avenue to spill out their frustrations to the world or take it out on us. We gave them stability, jobs, food, clothing.

We gave them Canadian troops to shoot at instead of each other and we gave them our lives.

How dare the person say we did not contribute! Why don’t we say what difference did it make when Canadians stormed Juno?

BRUCE A. CAMERON, Warrant Officer (ret’d), Windsor


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