Scarce Heard Amid the Guns tears the curtain of myth away, providing a rare, visceral inner perspective of the various Canadian peacekeeping missions.

In the Service of Peace simple words that adorn the obverse of every United Nations medal, yet behind this eloquence lurks violence and an unheralded heroism invisible to an often misunderstood quarter of Canadas military history. The Canadian contribution to peacekeeping is enormous but ensnared in a lethal mythology that has seen it abandoned to popular folklore. From the early and intrinsic Canadian contribution to the U.N. Emergency Force in 1956, through the blur of the frenetic 1990s down to the anemic level of contemporary Canadian participation, it is difficult to make sense of the wide circumference of this significant legacy. Until now.

Scarce Heard Amid the Guns provides an incisive perspective on the various Canadian missions: their omnipresent doubt and un-telegraphed terrors. This insiders guided tour of our military at war in peace introduces us to some of the men and women who carried the day ordinary Canadians who did extraordinary things and continue to bear the scars of forgotten fields in their bones.

John Conrad has served thirty-three years in the Canadian Armed Forces. A bestselling author and colonel in the Canadian Army reserve, he works today as a civilian executive with the Province of Alberta. He has authored a number of books and articles on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, including What the Thunder Said, a Military Book of the Month club selection in 2009. Conrad currently resides in Sherwood Park, Alberta.

John Conrad's profile page

Conrad rightly points out that while we have much of places like Vimy and Ypres and Juno Beach we are only now beginning to understand what Canadian soldiers did in places like Kapyong Reservoir in the Korean war and in Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia.

Daytime Durham

"Conrad rightly points out that while we have made much of places like Vimy and Ypres and Juno Beach we are only now beginning to understand what Canadian soldiers did in places like Kapyong Reservoir in the Korean War and in Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia."

The Owen-Sound Sun Times