Fallen soldiers knew the risks
Troops should be honoured, not pitied
Apr. 24, 2006. 01:00 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
COLUMNIST
<!-- icx_story_begin -->Since their deployment to Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers have been lauded for their valour and their professionalism as combat troops.
What's not often cited is the moral clarity they have about this mission. And that's not me talking; it's them.
It is something to be kept in mind on the sorrowful occasions when they die, as occurred in such a terrible cluster on the weekend, and as no doubt will happen again because Afghanistan is a country of inherent, intrinsic risks.
Weep (and not crocodile tears) for those who made what is routinely and somewhat hollowly described as the "ultimate sacrifice,'' because that is proper. But grant them honour rather than pity, and acknowledge their commitment to duty rather than undermine it by exploiting the loss.
Every casualty absorbed is wrenching. But do, please, listen to their words and believe their sincerity.
Cpl. Matthew Dinning, Lieut. William Turner, Bombardier Myles Mansell, Cpl. Randy Payne: all knew what they were doing and were precisely where they wanted to be.
Turner, like his tragic predecessor in the specific job of liaising with village elders — Capt. Trevor Green, gravely injured when a teenager struck him in the head with an axe during a community meeting — had come late to soldiering and was a reservist, in Afghanistan as a volunteer civil-military co-operation officer, trying to make a difference, to improve the quality of life in a country unhinged by nearly three decades of conflict.
Dinning had followed in the footsteps of a father who served in Bosnia; Mansell had realized a life-long dream in seizing the adventurous career of a military man; Payne was attached to Gen. David Fraser's personal protection detail but so little has been made public about him that speculation is he may have been special forces.
No one knows better than the coalition soldiers in Afghanistan why Afghanistan needs coalition soldiers. They see it and live it every day, on every patrol, every convoy excursion along Highway 1 — the soldiers call its forbidding stretches, variously, Michelob and Whiskey and Miller — that can so abruptly swerve from routine to chaotic, every probing from a forward operating base, every report of another roadside explosion or suicide bombing.
And they suck it up, as no Canadian civilian can, at every solemn "ramp ceremony'' for a fallen comrade, regardless of nationality. Four more, now, of those. And four coffins transported home to grieving families.
Yet resolve is something Canada's soldiers — unlike a great many compatriots who are diffident about the military when not outright hostile — have in spades, along with courage.
In Afghanistan, in quiet late-night conversations over cigarettes, I never heard a single soldier speak of regrets or mission misgivings.
It was, indeed, with dismay that they spoke about those back home who claim to speak for them out of a professed concern for their fate and the political parameters of Task Force Afghanistan, nee Operation Enduring Freedom.
It was bewildering, sometimes, to realize that these Canadian troops were held in greater esteem by the vast majority of ordinary, war-weary Afghans than they and their objective are in their own country.
This is not a time for sophistry or polemics or, frankly, cowardice.
Ottawa, under the former Liberal regime, put Canadian troops in harm's way, perhaps back when they thought it wouldn't be so harmful at all, unlike Iraq. For possibly the wrong reasons, they did the right thing, as did all the other nations contributing forces to Task Force Afghanistan — the Germans who are in the north, the Italians in the West, the Americans who are still chasing Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in the East (where, it is believed, Osama bin Laden is hiding, somewhere in the lawless tribal territory that straddles the border with Pakistan), the British and Dutch in the south, the Australians and the French, the Romanians and the Spanish.
Some would have you believe that soldiers are all brawn and no brain, most especially the younger troops who comprise the vast majority of Task Force Orion, the three-company Canadian battle group that is doing most of the heavy lifting in Afghanistan — the patrolling and, when necessary, the fighting.
That is profoundly untrue. It takes intelligence, as well as bravery, to be a good and effective soldier. It requires a sixth sense — a quality that can only be honed in the trenches — to recognize danger and respond with alacrity, almost organically, so that everything one has learned in rigorous training can be applied to the heart-pounding hurly-burly of crisis, the sporadic violence that is the real pace and choreography of war by insurgency.
Soldiers don't sit around talking geopolitics and nation-building.
Indeed, the sitting around part — which is endemic in the army, hurry-up-and-wait the bane of a soldier's existence — tries character and spirit far more so than action and perilous assignments. Yet they are not mere ciphers, doing the bidding of generals and political masters, with no intellectual grasp of the mission.
These are not the men and women who, in a mainly support role, never actually leave the Kandahar airfield base. They are the ones who venture far from safety, taking the fight to the Taliban and the drug criminals, while simultaneously fostering trust in the populace through their frequent shuras to small towns and villages.
They're the ones who prefer sleeping on the ground, outdoors, under the stars, to the child-size bunk beds in the crammed Big Ass Tents on base.
They're the grunts who established a foothold in Gombad, 75 kilometres north of KAF, from which excursions more distant could be launched. It was from that crude outpost that the Canadian convoy was returning when one of the vehicles, a G-Wagon, was blown up by an improvised explosive device early Saturday morning.
Whether a lucky hit or a clever hit is as yet unknown. But a lethal hit, most certainly, three Canadian soldiers dead on the scene and one, Payne, dying after evacuation and surgery at the multinational KAF hospital.
Canada's military vehicles have largely stood up well to IED attacks, the gallant LAV-III in particular withstanding explosions and rocket assaults.
But there is no such thing as zero-risk, not when IEDs can be fitted with heavy-bang explosives. No doubt the insurgents realized their devices were having minimal effect and they cranked up the juice, such that Saturday's explosion was heard for miles around.
There are more than 10,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan, a number that will expand to 21,000 by November, by which time the combined forces will be under NATO jurisdiction, with the British assuming overall command.
But it still takes only a handful of insurgents to create havoc.
It won't win the war. It could, though, win the battle against faint hearts and conflicted minds.
<HR width="90%"></HR>Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno recently returned from a five-week assignment with the Canadian military in Afghanistan.
Troops should be honoured, not pitied
Apr. 24, 2006. 01:00 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
COLUMNIST
<!-- icx_story_begin -->Since their deployment to Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers have been lauded for their valour and their professionalism as combat troops.
What's not often cited is the moral clarity they have about this mission. And that's not me talking; it's them.
It is something to be kept in mind on the sorrowful occasions when they die, as occurred in such a terrible cluster on the weekend, and as no doubt will happen again because Afghanistan is a country of inherent, intrinsic risks.
Weep (and not crocodile tears) for those who made what is routinely and somewhat hollowly described as the "ultimate sacrifice,'' because that is proper. But grant them honour rather than pity, and acknowledge their commitment to duty rather than undermine it by exploiting the loss.
Every casualty absorbed is wrenching. But do, please, listen to their words and believe their sincerity.
Cpl. Matthew Dinning, Lieut. William Turner, Bombardier Myles Mansell, Cpl. Randy Payne: all knew what they were doing and were precisely where they wanted to be.
Turner, like his tragic predecessor in the specific job of liaising with village elders — Capt. Trevor Green, gravely injured when a teenager struck him in the head with an axe during a community meeting — had come late to soldiering and was a reservist, in Afghanistan as a volunteer civil-military co-operation officer, trying to make a difference, to improve the quality of life in a country unhinged by nearly three decades of conflict.
Dinning had followed in the footsteps of a father who served in Bosnia; Mansell had realized a life-long dream in seizing the adventurous career of a military man; Payne was attached to Gen. David Fraser's personal protection detail but so little has been made public about him that speculation is he may have been special forces.
No one knows better than the coalition soldiers in Afghanistan why Afghanistan needs coalition soldiers. They see it and live it every day, on every patrol, every convoy excursion along Highway 1 — the soldiers call its forbidding stretches, variously, Michelob and Whiskey and Miller — that can so abruptly swerve from routine to chaotic, every probing from a forward operating base, every report of another roadside explosion or suicide bombing.
And they suck it up, as no Canadian civilian can, at every solemn "ramp ceremony'' for a fallen comrade, regardless of nationality. Four more, now, of those. And four coffins transported home to grieving families.
Yet resolve is something Canada's soldiers — unlike a great many compatriots who are diffident about the military when not outright hostile — have in spades, along with courage.
In Afghanistan, in quiet late-night conversations over cigarettes, I never heard a single soldier speak of regrets or mission misgivings.
It was, indeed, with dismay that they spoke about those back home who claim to speak for them out of a professed concern for their fate and the political parameters of Task Force Afghanistan, nee Operation Enduring Freedom.
It was bewildering, sometimes, to realize that these Canadian troops were held in greater esteem by the vast majority of ordinary, war-weary Afghans than they and their objective are in their own country.
This is not a time for sophistry or polemics or, frankly, cowardice.
Ottawa, under the former Liberal regime, put Canadian troops in harm's way, perhaps back when they thought it wouldn't be so harmful at all, unlike Iraq. For possibly the wrong reasons, they did the right thing, as did all the other nations contributing forces to Task Force Afghanistan — the Germans who are in the north, the Italians in the West, the Americans who are still chasing Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in the East (where, it is believed, Osama bin Laden is hiding, somewhere in the lawless tribal territory that straddles the border with Pakistan), the British and Dutch in the south, the Australians and the French, the Romanians and the Spanish.
Some would have you believe that soldiers are all brawn and no brain, most especially the younger troops who comprise the vast majority of Task Force Orion, the three-company Canadian battle group that is doing most of the heavy lifting in Afghanistan — the patrolling and, when necessary, the fighting.
That is profoundly untrue. It takes intelligence, as well as bravery, to be a good and effective soldier. It requires a sixth sense — a quality that can only be honed in the trenches — to recognize danger and respond with alacrity, almost organically, so that everything one has learned in rigorous training can be applied to the heart-pounding hurly-burly of crisis, the sporadic violence that is the real pace and choreography of war by insurgency.
Soldiers don't sit around talking geopolitics and nation-building.
Indeed, the sitting around part — which is endemic in the army, hurry-up-and-wait the bane of a soldier's existence — tries character and spirit far more so than action and perilous assignments. Yet they are not mere ciphers, doing the bidding of generals and political masters, with no intellectual grasp of the mission.
These are not the men and women who, in a mainly support role, never actually leave the Kandahar airfield base. They are the ones who venture far from safety, taking the fight to the Taliban and the drug criminals, while simultaneously fostering trust in the populace through their frequent shuras to small towns and villages.
They're the ones who prefer sleeping on the ground, outdoors, under the stars, to the child-size bunk beds in the crammed Big Ass Tents on base.
They're the grunts who established a foothold in Gombad, 75 kilometres north of KAF, from which excursions more distant could be launched. It was from that crude outpost that the Canadian convoy was returning when one of the vehicles, a G-Wagon, was blown up by an improvised explosive device early Saturday morning.
Whether a lucky hit or a clever hit is as yet unknown. But a lethal hit, most certainly, three Canadian soldiers dead on the scene and one, Payne, dying after evacuation and surgery at the multinational KAF hospital.
Canada's military vehicles have largely stood up well to IED attacks, the gallant LAV-III in particular withstanding explosions and rocket assaults.
But there is no such thing as zero-risk, not when IEDs can be fitted with heavy-bang explosives. No doubt the insurgents realized their devices were having minimal effect and they cranked up the juice, such that Saturday's explosion was heard for miles around.
There are more than 10,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan, a number that will expand to 21,000 by November, by which time the combined forces will be under NATO jurisdiction, with the British assuming overall command.
But it still takes only a handful of insurgents to create havoc.
It won't win the war. It could, though, win the battle against faint hearts and conflicted minds.
<HR width="90%"></HR>Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno recently returned from a five-week assignment with the Canadian military in Afghanistan.
