Captured Canadian Grizzly IFV - former Yugoslavia?

[Acorn]

What cause me the question the story was that it doesn't quite match the events in Bosnia that I'm aware of. Maybe it's the terminology (POW didn't come to my mind at the time) as the situation was one of the CDN soldiers in question being "blockaded" in their OPs, retaining their weapons. I was aware that some of their kit had been "liberated" from them, but not to that extent.

My apologies.

 

[FormerHorseGuard]

i remember seeing news footage of the war and seeing non Canadian soldiers operating what  looked like C6 GPMG , I knew it had to be stolen or something from Canadian Troops.  a lot of stuff went on over there and the Un chain of Command did not care.
I hope who ever has the former Canadian jeeps, and AFV has a better maintance plan then we do , because they are costly  to fix lol.
I do not think any of the troops who lost equipment under the conditions and the stress they were put under , should be ashamed of anything they did.

They did the best they  could under the conditions I am sure.

 

[3rd Horseman]

If you watched the CBC show on PTSD the young soldier who was in Bosnia was one of the soldiers taken as a POW. I worked with him on an occasion before the event he was a good soldier it broke my heart to see him like that all these years later.

 

[armyvern]

What cause me the question the story was that it doesn't quite match the events in Bosnia that I'm aware of. Maybe it's the terminology (POW didn't come to my mind at the time) as the situation was one of the CDN soldiers in question being "blockaded" in their OPs, retaining their weapons. I was aware that some of their kit had been "liberated" from them, but not to that extent.
My apologies.

There were the OPs that were blockaded but some Canadians were also taken POW during the Balkan conflict. I can still remember Capt Rechner all over the news tied up to a lightening rod and them threatening to shoot him. All being played out live on the TV. Meanwhile an RCD friend of mine had been taken as a POW and they had all been moved into a Police Station. The Red Cross was sending in packages for them as stated on the news, but my bud relayed to me that their captors had opened all the parcels to leave them with virtually nothing but the empty box.

http://www.geocities.com/famous_bosniaks/english/nicholas_ribich.html
http://www.histori.ca/peace/page.do;jsessionid=C40C85EB7A159ECB30B9FD422DB85BE6.tomcat2?pageID=340

 

[pbi]

Like many here, I did not believe the story about the AVGP when I first read it. I have since verified with somebody who was there that this is correct, along ith considerable losses of weapons. (Weapons were lost on our HARMONY tour in 04, but subsequently returned)  Personally, I find this business of trying to hide the unit's identity very silly. We're not quite so squeamish about dissecting Somalia, are we? So why Bosnia? 
As an Army we need to examine failures closely, see why they happened, and learn what we can do to avoid them in future.
Not putting our troops on missions with useless mandates and weak ROEs is a good start. I do believe we are much further ahead now than we were in those days in Bosnia.

Cheers

 

[Cloud Cover]

Well, wasn't the airborne in the middle of it's death throws at that point in time - and the Somalia Inquiry was just ramping up to take giant bite of many sets of lower cheeks? It seems like this AVGP thing was definitely part of the army of yesterday. [hopefully].

 

[Acorn]

There were the OPs that were blockaded but some Canadians were also taken POW during the Balkan conflict. I can still remember Capt Rechner all over the news tied up to a lightening rod and them threatening to shoot him. All being played out live on the TV. Meanwhile an RCD friend of mine had been taken as a POW and they had all been moved into a Police Station. The Red Cross was sending in packages for them as stated on the news, but my bud relayed to me that their captors had opened all the parcels to leave them with virtually nothing but the empty box.

Capt Rechner comes to mind, but I didn't consider him a POW - he was a hostage.

 

[Acorn]

i remember seeing news footage of the war and seeing non Canadian soldiers operating what   looked like C6 GPMG , I knew it had to be stolen or something from Canadian Troops.  

The C6 is basically the FN MAG 58 GPMG in use by quite a few armies other than Canada. It could have been Canadian, but could also have belonged to another contingent or been bought through the underground arms market.

 

[Bzzliteyr]

I am at home right now, but I am sure there is a "lessons learned" dispatches booklet on our mistaken interpretation of the ROE during the early UNPROFOR tours and our failure to learn (or be taught rather) about our entitlement to SELF DEFENCE!!

I know when I went to Bosnia-Herzegovina myself in 93, I had it in my head (as did many others) that the only time we could shoot was once we had been engaged, then identified the attacker, his weapon type and found the same weapon calibre to fire back with.  We were afraid to even cock our weapons over there and I could see how some equipment was "liberated".  It was too bad and had we been better prepared, several incidents could have surely been prevented.


Bzz

 

[KevinB]

Bzz  -- you gotta admit that was JAG inspired interpretations.  But the chain never took its time to explain that to the soldier -- I know I never gathered I had a pre-existant right to self defence until MUCH more recently.

I recall the flip flop from the ROE in the proposed OP Cobra, to the fiasco with ROE on the DART Rwanda debacle.

 

[Bzzliteyr]

It was crazy.. people having their Iltises taken right out from under them at gunpoint, not knowing that as soon as they felt threatened they could have fought back!! We went there scared to do our jobs, and had we known the real "rules" we might have behaved a lot less wimpy. 

I recall once when one of the Brits whom I had befriended in our camp (Visoko) came to me looking for a spare 5.56mm.  He had dropped a mag and one had rolled out into a sewer.  He was afraid of a reprimand and I asked him why, he said they'd get in more trouble for losing a round than they would for having emptied out a mag returning fire in an engagement!!  All they'd have to do is write up a report saying they got shot at and 30 more rounds would come thier way!  I found that funny because I knew lots of us had collected extra ammo from wherever and had no problems losing any, but the complete opposite applied to us.. we wouldn't fathom firing at anything!!

Goes to show how the saying "knowledge is power" would come into play in those circumstances.

 

[MG34]

Bzzliteyr

I don't know how that the soldiers and leaders didn't undersatnd the ROEs and the right to self defense,that was established on Roto 0 back in '92 and was put into practice on many occasions,what you are describing is a definate break down in the chain of command,and down right incompetance on the part of the leadership of that tour,pretty pathetic really. The ROEs and right to self defense were pretty well spelled out in both Roto 0 and Roto 5 of UNPROFOR in my personal experience.

 

[aesop081]

Bzzliteyr

I don't know how that the soldiers and leaders didn't undersatnd the ROEs and the right to self defense,that was established on Roto 0 back in '92 and was put into practice on many occasions,what you are describing is a definate break down in the chain of command,and down right incompetance on the part of the leadership of that tour,pretty pathetic really. The ROEs and right to self defense were pretty well spelled out in both Roto 0 and Roto 5 of UNPROFOR in my personal experience.

I was on  OP HARMONY   roto 5 and i will be to differ on the clarity of the ROEs.   I though they were pretty clear until one day AAP drove on a mine and my section was called to go get them out.   I was the first one in to clear the road up to them and had barely gotten started when the bullets started flying. The BN ops O ( and OC of E coy)   was on the radio in very short order with instructions that we were not to shoot back.   So much for the ROE permitting self-defence.

 

[pbi]

I was on HARMONY Roto 04 and our ROES were, I would say, quite "robust".  We were free to use lethal force if we had reasonable ground to believe that our lives or the life of another Canadian soldier were in danger. This did NOT require us to wait to be shot at. We were also able to return fire with the weapon we were armed with: this meant that the ring gunner on an M113 could use the .50 cal. I know that on at least one occasion an OP returned Croat fire using a C6, which did not cause any problems.

These ROES were part of our pre-deployment training: in particular we taught examples such as kicking in a door and being confronted with a weapon pointed at you: the response was to fire, not wait to see what happened.

As we were still under the "shadow" of Somalia, there was alot of uncertainty amongst the troops about pulling the trigger. Despite our training, this uncertaint did not go away until they got into theatre. One night one of my patrols was fired on, and returned fire in a healthy manner. It was reported to battalion HQ and guess what: no Spanish Inquisition. I think that, after that, the troops felt better.

A good point has been made by Bzzliteyr: if the troops don't understand the ROEs, that is a command and leadership problem, not something to be blamed on the JAG. Just reading the ROEs out in the drill hall doesn't really cut it. You have to train with them and talk about them until they are second nature.

Cheers

 

[Timmy!]

Was looking at a set of marking schemes for Grizzly tanks in an eastern European model kit today; aside from UN and three-colour camouflage markings for Canadian Forces vehicles, there was a paint scheme for a "captured Grizzly' taken from Canadians in Yugoslavia.

Does this represent an actual event, or does it represent a Serbian toy-maker's fantasy?

What is the model company? I build models as a hobby. I would love to get my hands on a Grizzly.

 

[herringchoker]

What a fascinating story but a bit too conspiratorial I think. The real story is a bit more mundane, but not a lot.

The vehicle in question was one of two lost by the Vandoos in the spring of '95 near Coralici, March or April I believe. One of the coys had been invited to the local Boz Serb bivvy for some getting to know the locals. They travelled by ML but took 2 x AVGP along as security. All the vehicles were left in the veh park with the drivers. Anyway, to make a long story short, about an hour or so into the festivities, the Vandoos suddenly found themselves the only ones without their weapons drawn. The Serbs made a dash for the vehicle compound but the drivers managed to get both Grizzlys moving, albeit sans gunner or crew commander. Anyway the two vehicles bolted away from the Serb camp but got hung up at a checkpoint a few kms down the road and both vehicles, fully kitted out, were grabbed by the Serbs (along with the MLs I think). The Vandoos were allowed to keep their pers weapons but had to walk out.

I think at the time there was a lot of thought that the drivers had screwed up but they were hypersensitive about bajaing with the AVGPs on that tour after one ran over a local child who had dashed out into the middle of the road.

As for the Serbs, they were grabbing anything they could lay their hands on. Anyone who was there remembers that the summer of '95 was quite hairy (that was the summer of Srebernica, hostages and airstrikes). It was also the last roto for Op Cavalier as IFOR went in afterwards.

At the time I was with 2VP and we were gearing up to replace the Vandoos in Coralici. The Grizzlys were part of our intelligence briefing (along with the story of their seizure) and, as I recall, the ROEs allowed for the seizure of the vehicles if we came across them, including destruction to prevent their use by the belligerent forces.

Anyway, after OP Cav ended, we were bumped from IFOR (2RCR went instead) and, I think they moved from Coralici to Zgon soon afterwards.

 

[3rd Horseman]

What a fascinating story but a bit too conspiratorial I think. The real story is a bit more mundane, but not a lot.

  It is the actual story, now maybe the one grizz we are discussing was from another capture, possibly the one you described. I dont know, but the story of the loss I described is accurate and complete.

  Some guys are still waiting for the POW medal that will never come. For those that fought and held ground those days we got other satisfaction.

spell typo

 

[PAUL AYERST]

the CANADIAN GOVERNMENT chose to cover up most of what really happened over in YUGO during that time period and this is one of the cover ups. Many troops who where wounded never received a wound stripe because the incident was officially recorded as an accident and lets not forget  MEDAK a TOTAL BLACKOUT and cover up I personally will never forgive the LIBERAL PARTY FOR. shameful


PAUL

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Just reading the website http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/vehicles/avgp/avgp.htm

The captured Grizzly, as photographed and displayed on a Serbian website. ACE, a Ukrainian plastic model company, produced a 1/72 scale kit of the Grizzly with a painting guide showing the captured vehicle's new colours. The boxtop also featured a painting of the captured Grizzly, in a base colour of light blue-green mottled with dark green and olive green.


I never knew they captured some of our vehicles and I certainly don't recall the media reporting this. Any other AFV's lost in this battle? Any comments from people who were there would be quite interesting.

 

[Bluebulldog]

Covered in another thread on here.

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/36228/post-292333.html#msg292333

Cheers.