For more than four months these professional fighters have been dodging shot and shell, acting as referees and lawmen, using moral suasion where others use mortar rounds. The security they provide has allowed a few Croatians to return home. But Canadian veterans of other U.N. peacekeeping missions predict gloomily that their grandchildren may be “keeping the peace” in the Balkans.
Young men like Lieutenant Cameron, 22, now face life-and-death decisions every day. When a drunken Croatian soldier accidentally shot a burst of submachine-gun fire into Cameron’s armored vehicle, wounding Cpl. Lloyd Rudolph, Cameron disarmed the drunk, patched up Rudolph, evacuated him and then returned to keeping the peace.
November Company has paid a price. One soldier lost his foot while opening up the Sarajevo airport, and a dozen more warriors have received wounds. But the Canadians have yet to fire a shot in anger. And they have often been paid back with respect. “Thank God for the U.N.,” one terrified woman-the daughter of a Serb father and a Croat mothertold some of the Blue Helmets with me one day in no man’s land. “You’re saving us from ourselves.”
