A "message" from Message - Greetings from the Sand Box
Update from Kandahar,
It's been 3.5 months now in theatre and it has been a series of many "firsts." It is the first time I've seen the Taliban, shot at him, been ambushed twice at close quarters and nearly blown up by him and seen the carnage an IED will do on a human body. We have seen a significant increase of "farmers" from Pakistan and with poppy harvest nearing completion things will only get hotter both in activity and temperature. Speaking of the latter, it reached 43C in the shade and 57C in the sun this week. This has made our foot patrols extremely uncomfortable with having to carry 70lbs of personal equipment (and I'm on the lighter side) with many of our force protection pushing 90lbs of gear. As most of the roads in my AO are either non-LAV passable or are strewn with IED's, we conduct both routine patrols and offensive operations dismounted. I figure I've walked about 350km since arriving here with an average mission being from a couple of hours up to one week living out of our patrol packs.
I've been on patrols and offensive ops with both coalition and Afghan National Army (ANA) and Police (ANP) and fortunately, all units I've worked with have been good to excellent. We were in a dismounted contact along with the ANP last month and other than a lack of fire control, all of them stood their ground and wanted to kill the insurgents themselves (their mentors had to hold them back as their enthusiasm was overflowing). For the Canadians, most troops average in age of 23 but they demonstrate professionalism and maturity far beyond the numbers. They interact easily with the locals and fight like demons when they have to. The last contact we were in 2 weeks ago (3 engagements in 90 Min's), I had a C9 gunner putting down a stream of lead down an alley while my colleagues and I carried a casualty through a canal. The gunner was the only one standing between me and AK, MG and RPG fire. When we got to the LAV's, there were more people than seats and the C6 gunner lay on the roof of the vehicle, putting down covering fire while we withdrew. All the time leaving himself completely exposed to enemy fire. This is courage that would make our forefathers of Vimy and Normandy proud. It is this tenacity and bravery that our fallen comrade, Corporal Mike Starker, demonstrated every day he donned his body armour. He was more than a friend and a medic......he was our "combat medic" till the end, providing essential life support from both an end of a barrel and a med bag.
We have also had our share of tragedies with four American colleagues (2 Army SOF and 2 Marines) killed by IED's less than 2km from our front gate. Regardless of which flag, we all mourn the loss of any brother warrior and my thoughts go out to my American colleagues who are walking or preparing to walk the warrior path. This week also saw the first suicide bomber attack on a coalition foot patrol in our AO. The bastards used a 14 year old boy with an adult male as the trigger man. The next day, my colleagues were extremely lucky when a trigger man detonated two large booby-traps in a compound they were searching. We manned a cordon for 14 hours, all the time getting scoped out by fighting age farmers.
Next to a LAV platoon, the asset that gives me the most confidence is the American attack helicopter. There is nothing sweeter than to see them sweeping compounds and giving us a bird's eye view of what is ahead of us. They have balls of steel, flying low and exposing themselves to ground fire in order to ensure we get the best coverage possible. I'd buy those guys beer if I could here.
Many of you have asked for photos so I've created an online album to save your Inbox from inundation. Here's the link: http://tonyh.myphotoalbum.com/
For those of you considering a tour here (both military and police), I would highly recommend it. There are many challenges however the rewards are plenty. It is the only arena that we as soldiers can ply our trade and those seeking the warrior path need only to spend a few weeks on the ground to reinforce the importance of realistic and applicable training. For my fellow senior NCO's, if you cannot deploy in trade, I would recommend the job I'm doing. Ron is with the Battle Group and I'm in my AO with the ANA & ANP and 90% of our time is spent on dismounted operations.
Thank you to all for your emails. It's nice to catch up on things back home.
Stay safe
Up The Dukes!
Tony
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