Empty Casing
A Soldier's Memoir of Sarajevo Under Siege
After suffering gut-wrenching experiences during the Bosnian war, a soldier is left to struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.
WHEN CANADIAN soldier Fred Doucette was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a UN peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour of duty would be different. He had been posted to Cyprus in the 1970s and 1980s, but the horrors of the Bosnia conflict of the 1990s were beyond imagining.
Doucette takes us to the heart of the conflict as the Bosnian Serb forces launch a massive, concerted assault. Sarajevo, the largely Muslim Bosnian capital, is devastated, Thousands of Sarajevans perish. UN forces, tasked with imposing and maintaining peace between the warring forces, realize this is an impossible task.
Upon his return to Canada, Doucette begins his own war with post-traumatic stress disorder. Nightmares and flashbacks plague his days and nights. Traumatized and disoriented, he must learn to face himself, his family and his army once again.
FRED DOUCETTE won second prize, non-fiction in the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick's 2001 literary competition for his Memoirs of Sarajevo. He was released from the military in 2002 and now works with the Department of National Defense's Operational Stress Injury Social Support program to provide peer support to Armed Forces personnel and veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.