Canada in Afghanistan

[Yeo.NT]

Tropper Rudd will be missed by the Squadron, Myself and the rest of maintenance crew.
Rudd was always trying to fix thing on he vehicle he wasn't suppose, trying to make you laugh and always ready to help you out. RIP http://www.mapleleafup.org/forums/ed...tpost&p=131021

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

RIP Sgt. Martin Goudreault

Canadian soldier killed by IED in Afghanistan


CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Mon. Jun. 7 2010 7:39 AM ET

A Canadian Forces sergeant died Sunday while on a mission to find a stockpile of insurgent weapons southeast of Kandahar.

Sgt. Martin Goudreault was near the village of Nakhonay, in the Panjwaii district, when an improvised explosive device went off about about 6:30 a.m. local time on Sunday.

Goudreault, 35, was on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan. A member of the Edmonton-based 1 Combat Engineer Regiment, his latest deployment in the Afghan theatre began only one month ago.

At a press conference at Kandahar Airfield, Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance described Goudreault as a brave soldier and natural leader.

"Sgt. Goudreault died doing what he loved doing best: leading his section from the front," Vance said Monday.

"If your way of life was in peril, you would want someone like Sgt. Martin Goudreault to show up and help."

Vance said Goudreault was "a model soldier, someone the soldiers in his section could look up to and emulate."

"His subordinates and superiors alike will remember him as a tireless leader who was passionate about his work."

Offering his condolences to the fallen soldier's family and friends, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said "the lives of the Afghan people are better due to the efforts of Canadians like Sgt. Goudreault who provide security and stability."

"These are the cornerstones that will allow the country to rebuild and grow into the future," Harper said in a statement.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Goudreault was an example of the risks Canadian soldiers face when serving in Afghanistan.

"Sgt. Martin Goudreault's sacrifice will not be forgotten and it will not deter us from continuing to help Afghans rebuild their country," he said in a statement.

Goudreault had served 15 years in the Canadian Forces at the time of his death.

The native of Sudbury, Ont., is the 147th Canadian soldier killed during the Afghan mission.

Figures from Canada's Department of Defence indicate that Goudreault is the 88th Canadian soldier to be killed by an IED in Afghanistan.

[Brian Gough]

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Sgt. James MacNeil of Glace Bay, N.S., was killed Monday morning while on a foot patrol in Nakhoney, about 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar.


MacNeil, a 28-year-old combat engineer with 2 Combat Engineer Regiment of CFB Petawawa, Ont. was on a foot patrol with other members of the Royal Canadian Regiment battle group in Panjwaii District, when he was killed by an improvised explosive device — a homemade landmine.


He is the 148th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan since 2002



Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/...#ixzz0rVeHYArG

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

RIP MCpl. Giesebrecht and Pte. Miller. You shall not be forgotten.

An improvised explosive device struck an armoured vehicle in Afghanistan, killing two Canadian medics, the military said Saturday.

Master Cpl. Kristal Giesebrecht, 34, and Pvt. Andrew Miller, 21, were responding to a report that a mine was found in the doorway of a home when an IED detonated at about 11 a.m., killing them both about 20 km southwest of Kandahar.

A third soldier is in steady condition in a hospital at the Kandahar Airfield Base.

Our thoughts are with the families and friends of our fallen soldiers during this difficult time. We will not forget the sacrifice of these soldiers as we continue to bring security and hope to the people of Kandahar Province,² said the Department of National Defence in a media release.

Both soldiers were members of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group.

Miller was born in Sudbury, Ont., and was based at CFB Petawawa. This was his first overseas mission.

Giesebrecht, the third Canadian woman to be killed in Afghanistan, was from Wallaceburg, Ont., and was also based at Petawawa.

Capt. Nicola Goddard of the 1st Regiment of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery was the first Canadian woman killed in Afghanista, in a grenade attack on May 17, 2006. Trooper Karine Blais of Les Mechins was killed by a roadside bomb blast last April.

The tragic news brings the death count of Canadians in Afghanistan to 150 soldiers and four civilians.

This comes less than a week after Sgt. James MacNeil of Glace Bay, N.S., was killed on June 21.

[John McGillivray]

Canadian soldier killed by explosive device
CTV.ca News Staff
Date: Tue. Jul. 20 2010 4:09 PM ET
Canada has lost another soldier in Afghanistan in an IED attack.
Sapper Brian Collier dismounted from his vehicle Tuesday and was killed by an IED blast. He was 24 years old.
The attack happened near Nakhonay, about 15 kilometres west of Kandahar city.
Collier's death marks the 151st among Canadian military personnel in Afghanistan since Canada's mission began in 2002.
"Canadian soldiers are in a constant struggle with insurgents in places like Nakhonay and elsewhere in the Panjwaii district," said Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance, commander of Task Force Kandahar.
"We are working so diligently in the Panjwaii district so that we can bring about the sort of positive changes that have resulted from our operations over the past year in neighbouring Dand district. We seek to do the same in Panjwaii over the next year."
Collier had narrowly escaped death in a previous encounter with an IED earlier in this tour of duty.
Vance said Collier "fought hard" to overcome his injury so he could rejoin his comrades.
"Today, the entire task force -- both military and civilian -- is mourning our fallen comrade. Any Canadian who could have seen Brian in action would have been proud of him and proud of our country for the work being done with and for Afghans."
Collier was a member of 1 Combat Engineer Regiment based at CFB Edmonton. It was his first deployment to Afghanistan.
Born in Toronto and raised in Bradford, Ont., he was serving with the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group.
Attacks using improvised explosive devices have been the single biggest cause of casualties among Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
Ninety-two of the 151 Canadian fatalities in Afghanistan were due to IEDs.
Two civilians, diplomat Glyn Berry and journalist Michelle Lang, have also been killed in Canada's mission to Afghanistan.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories...nistan-100720/

[John McGillivray]

No life like it: Taliban just one of the perils faced by infantry

Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News • Monday, Aug. 2, 2010

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/can...984/story.html

SPERWAN GHAR Afghanistan — Pte. Blair Kearley was in a dither.
The 25-year-old infantryman from Baie d’Espoir, N.L. had tripped days earlier while running across a hilly field during an engagement with the Taliban, badly spraining his left ankle.
After pleading with the camp doctor, it was agreed Pte. Kearley would only have to wear a cast for four days. But with two days left before he would be able to go to war again with an ankle brace, Pte. Kearley was going stir crazy — so badly did he want to be out fighting against the insurgents in Panjwaii District with 9 Platoon, Charles Company, 1 Royal Canadian Regiment.
“Unless my wife wants me out, I’m a lifer,” Pte. Kearley said as he chain-smoked his way through a pack of Marlboro Lights and reflected on the perilous, austere life he had chosen.
Pte. Kearley, who enlisted four years ago, confided he doesn’t talk too much about the war with his wife or anyone else at home.
Part of that is operational security, but it also so as to not cause worry.
Few military jobs are more dangerous than being in the infantry. About two-thirds of the 151 Canadians who have died in Afghanistan have come from its three infantry regiments.
The risks are such that 9 Platoon infantry use a lot of black humour to mask their apprehensions. When a soldier lost a leg, the joke was that he would be “back on his foot in no time.”
But in what is a very tightly knit outfit, not much bigger than a high school class, each loss has been deeply felt.
“One IED struck the guy who had trained me and that hit me pretty hard, but he’s back home now,” said Derek Boutin of Fort Erie, Ont. “Walking through the grape fields, IEDs have hit my buddies. They have been as close as you can imagine.”
The media may be focused on the effect of thousands of leaked documents that have described the war they are fighting. But such issues and the political currents back home — where many have expressed reservations about Canada’s first shooting war in half a century — have almost no impact deep in the field. Although prouder Canadians than most, the infantry soldiers all said that they fought for each other rather than for any cause.
And although the soldiers in Charles Company acknowledged that others in their battle group have been having a harder time of it lately, their unit has had its fair share of bad scrapes, too.
“When something bad happens outside the wire you don’t think of it then, but when you get back you realize that it was like a scene in a movie — something you never thought you’d be part of,” Pte. Kearley said. “Like any job, you love it one day and hate it the next. But I like what I do. I definitely picked the right career.”
One of the toughest parts of being a grunt in Afghanistan are the 12 or 14 hour foot patrols conducted in temperatures that invariably reached into the 50s. On every one such outing the soldiers had to lug as much as 40 kilograms of water, rations, ammunition and body armour with them.
“When you in full battle rattle in the heat in the middle of the day it is almost impossible to breathe if you are under contact because of the weight of the gear, the heat and the adrenalin,” Pte. Kearley said, as he surveyed a bleak landscape that included a forest of concrete blast walls and endless acres of sand and rock.
“If there is a situation, you don’t know until it is over that you’ve got nothing left to give. It really drains you. You come back having sweated through your body armour and your boots.”
Every remedy for dealing with heat involved consuming prodigious quantities of water the night before a patrol even if that meant three visits to the latrine before dawn.
“I went down with dehydration when we were a week into it,” Pte. Boutin said. “My vision went blurry. My arm went numb. I don’t call it sweating here. I call it flooding.
“I was so gung ho I thought I didn’t need so much water. It taught me how much you need to prepare before you go out. I now try to drink 15 or 20 bottles of water the night before.”
Before deploying to Panjwaii, the RCR battle group had trained for desert warfare in California, “but there really is no way to train properly for the heat except to be here,” Pte. Boutin said, adding that some soldiers had already lost as much as 35 pounds during their tour.
Master Cpl. Kyle Manser, a 24 year old from Kitchener, Ont. served in Kandahar as a private with Charles Company in 2006. Now a crew commander, he described the heat as “the fight you just cannot win. You cannot force soldiers to drink but we push them to drink a bottle every hour. Even if you get properly hydrated, once you are out there half an hour, you won’t have to piss.”
When not trying to survive the searing heat, cope with sand fleas or malarial mosquitoes or staying alert for scorpions and deadly snakes, the main preoccupations of the infantrymen in Panjwaii is avoiding IEDs and being ready at any moment to engage the Taliban.
“I keep in mind the tactical point-of-view and I don’t worry about IEDs because that would hinder the job that has to be done,” Pte. Boutin said. “The Taliban are as creative as anyone can be. They have found some pretty innovative ways to get at us but we’ve picked up on most of them. They adapt. We adapt. They are always trying to sneak stuff past us, but we catch them.”
Like Master Cpl. Manser, Master Cpl. Mike Martin of Ottawa was in Kandahar four years ago, too.
“I can’t give you a number on how many Taliban are out there right now, but there are lots of them and, yes, they’re close,” he said. “Back in ‘06 there were large numbers of Taliban who would stand and fight. Now they shoot and scoot and try to lure us into where they’ve put IEDs.”
“I told my guys: ‘You could step on something at any time, so don’t spend your time thinking about it. That can drive you nuts and could make you miss something. Keep your eyes and ears open.’”
As dangerous as it had been during 1 Royal Canadian Regiment’s first tour in Kandahar, which included the bloody Operation Medusa, “Panjwaii is a harder fight now,” Master Cpl. Manser said. “The enemy is definitely present. They are right outside the camp and are a lot craftier with the IEDs than they used to be.”
From what he’d seen of the Taliban, “I’d say they are pretty good,” Pte. Kearley said. “It’s like playing hockey on their rink. They know this ground and they know what they need. They’ve been doing this a long time and they’re doing a pretty damn good job.”
Aside from the lethal risks posed by the Taliban, “if you are in the infantry long enough, it will break your knees and your back,” Master Cpl. Manser said.
His fellow crew commander, Martin, who is 32, put it another way.
“Infantry years are like dog years,” he said. “You use them up pretty fast. Something goes and then you can’t do this anymore.
Asked how 9 Platoon would stack up for fitness against a professional football or hockey team, Pte. Kearley replied: “They would be in better shape, but there is not a chance that they could do our jobs.”
Although as privates they were the constant butt of jokes from those who outranked them, Pte. Kearley and Pte. Boutin both spoke highly of their immediate superiors.
“I really look up to the guys who’ve been here before, even if they trash talk you all the time,” Pte. Boutin said. “If a buddy gets hurt or there is a family problem, they are always there for us, like father figures. I have learned from them that you can push yourself further as a soldier and as a person than you think you can.”
Referring to their hardscrabble forward base, which has great chow and such unexpected comforts as beds, rather than cots, Kearley said: “This is home and when we are outside the wire, we like to get back here. It is where we eat and sleep. It is where our friends and family are.”
Master Cpl. Martin, who like Pte. Kearley is married and has a child, said that “people at home might sit back and say we are crazy but what is there not to like about this? Sitting in an office punching numbers into a computer or talking about your tennis game beside the water cooler isn’t the same. We are seeing the world and making a difference.”