One Martyr Down: The Untold Story Of A Canadian Peacekeeper Killed At War

January 2, 2013 by Adam Day

 PATROL BASE KHIAM, SOUTHERN LEBANON.
JULY 25, 2006, 19:10 LOCAL

Two nights ago Wolf dreamed he would die in this bunker. He dreamed he was going to burn as the metre-thick concrete walls collapsed on top of him. And though he was now calm, Wolf was still pretty sure he was going to die and nothing happening at the moment could have changed his mind. The shells and bombs were right on target; the last wave had landed inside the small white UN compound and blew the door off the underground bunker, the last refuge of the four peacekeepers now under siege. Across Lebanon and across the world responsible people were trying to stop the attack: “You’re killing my people,” they yelled into phones and radio handsets. They were trying to save Wolf but something had begun and it wouldn’t be stopped so easily. Wolf tried to call his wife in Kingston, Ont.; the phone rang but all she heard was static. “I love you. I love you,” she yelled into the static. The peacekeepers called for help but there was no help. They were alone, trapped and unarmed in the middle of a Middle Eastern war zone, supervising a truce that didn’t exist on a mission that didn’t make sense.

This is the story of how Wolf–Canadian Army Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener—came to be in that bunker and who killed him and why, which remains an unanswered question. It is also the story of the world’s oldest peacekeeping mission, the lost organization in charge of that mission and the failed dream behind it all.
Read moving story here