I
basically left the reserve, well there was a Veteran back home named Eric Dylan
who was in Korea and that more or less inspired me to see the world. I was stationed
in Winnipeg for four, the whole four years I did my basic (training) in Nova
Scotia for ten weeks then to battle school in Wayne right for four months and
then I was stationed in Winnipeg for the remaining four. We went over to Yugoslavia
for the start of the war that was in 1993; we went over as an advance party
and basically took over for 3 PPCLI that were there before us. The type of operations
we did there were everything from checkpoints, mobile check points, like searching
vehicles on highways, long range and short range patrols, humanitarian aid,
security. There's a lot of old people that wanted to come back to there villages
because they were from the wrong side of the lines. We provided some security
to get them back so they could salvage some of what they got from their houses,
but most times you couldn't really go off of the pavement because of booby traps
and mines. Then about half way through the tour we got moved, we were in sector
west, we were basically in charge of keeping a UNPA United Nations Protection
Area. It's kind of like a reserve and we basically took all of their weapons
away, but like everywhere else it's pretty hard to do. You also have a lot of
guys smuggling weapons, mines, grenades, whatever and both sides would fight
it out pretty much. You see a lot of fire fights, a lot of explosions. That
was in sector west and half way through the tour we got moved to sector south.
There you pretty much experienced everything, artillery, mines, artillery comes
down on you probably every third or fourth day. It was a little rougher down
there because you were basically right at the frontlines. In October 5th 1993,
we came back home, our tour was over.
