On Remembrance Day

Some thoughts of mine followed by a guest essay by a Canadian soldier

Following are a few thoughts of mine on Remembrance Day. After that is a short essay by a Canadian soldier. I get a little political, I’m afraid. He doesn’t.

Outside Canada, my country is generally seen as one of those blessed places that knows nothing of war. Within Canada, the view looks much the same to a great many Canadians.

Sure, there was war long ago. Sixty-five thousand Canadians died in the First World War. Forty thousand in the Second. More than five hundred in Korea. But Canada sat out America’s squalid misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq, and in popular Canadian lore, Canada’s modern military is devoted to the honourable work of United Nations peacekeeping missions. We’re not Switzerland. But we are certainly not a nation that fights wars.

That lore is a lie.

Peacekeeping was and is honourable work (you’ll read more about that below) but Canada’s involvement has long been exaggerated and peacekeeping as most Canadians imagine it — blue helmets standing guard between two sides, as they did in Cypress in the 1960s — ceased to exist long ago. More to the point, peacekeeping was never more than a relatively minor additional responsibility handed the military. The central mission of the Canadian Armed Forces is war. It always has been. Canada’s security is ensured by alliances, notably NORAD and NATO, and within those alliances, Canada is required to carry its load in any future conflict. It is the job of the CAF to be ready to fight.

Generations of Canadian soldiers knew this. They sweated and grunted their way through the endless training that prepared them for battle in wars they hoped would never come. An old colonel of my acquaintance — “old” meaning a colonel of my vintage — told me that when he was stationed in Germany our soldiers described themselves as a “speed bump” because their job was to slow a Soviet invasion enough to allow NATO reinforcements to arrive. War was not merely a possibility for Canadian soldiers, sailors, and airmen. It was their raison d’être.

Happily for them and the world, they never had to fight the Soviets. But the relatively peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union allowed Canadians to fully immerse themselves in the peacekeeping delusion. Many did, including government officials who should have known better. War vanished from popular consciousness. Like the Soviet Union, war was consigned to the history books. At least for we blessed Canadians.

The military knew better. Its mission didn’t change. It kept training, getting ready to meet enemies on battlefields. The military’s purpose remained war.

If you read Wikipedia’s article about the longest sniper kills in history, you’ll find something few people inside or outside Canada would expect to see: In March, 2002, in Afghanistan, a Canadian sniper team with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, beat the then-longest shot in history by hitting a man at 2,310 metres (2,530 yards). That record only lasted a few days before another team from the same Canadian unit hit a man at 2,430 metres (2,657 yards). That record was broken in 2009 by a British team.

But in June, 2017, a Canadian sniper team fighting ISIS in Iraq beat that by more than one kilometre, killing an enemy fighter an almost inconceivable 3,540 metres (3,871 yards) away. The names of the men involved have never been released because they are members of Canada’s secretive JTF2, a tier-one special operations unit — Canada’s equivalent of the US Army’s Delta Force, the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six, and Britain’s SAS.

How many Canadians know any of that? I doubt it’s many. I suspect quite a lot of Canadians have never even heard of JTF2. I've occasionally mentioned the unit in conversation with Americans and been met with blank stares, which is no surprise, but I’ve gotten the same reaction from Canadians. That’s unsettling. The disconnect between the importance, courage, and quality of Canada’s warriors and the Canadian population is profound. And that has consequences.

It means that a large portion of the Canadian population has wrapped itself snugly in the delusion that Canada has nothing to do with war, that trouble will forever remain far away, and that we do our bit for the world by sending our noble peacekeepers. All of that is overwhelmingly false. And it’s becoming less true by the day. But the delusion is strong and deep. As a result, while most Canadians respect those who serve in the military, they see no need to put their precious tax dollars into the weapons of war. And Canadian governments that should have known better — both Liberal and Conservative, please note — have indulged them.

As a consequence, Canada’s military has been so grossly underfunded for so long that the CAF is long past mere atrophy. It is crumbling. There are still pockets of strength, where professionalism, excellence, and high standards are maintained. But snipers don’t win wars.

Among informed observers, there is now little dispute that in the event of a major crisis — in Europe, in the Pacific, in the Arctic, wherever — Canada would be incapable of shouldering its share of the burden. Canada’s population is more than 40,000,000 yet there only 68,000 uniformed personnel in the entire regular force of the CAF, plus 27,000 in the Reserve. To put that in perspective, at the end of the Second World War, Canada’s population was only twelve million but the Royal Canadian Air Force alone had 232,000 airmen.

Still, if the military were small but well-equipped, lethal, and ready-to-go — and capable of scaling rapidly in an emergency — there would be no reason for alarm. But it’s nowhere close to that. Many basic capabilities of modern militaries simply don’t exist in the CAF. And what equipment the military has is too often old, even obsolete. You know the Javelin and NLAW shoulder-fired missiles the Ukrainians use so effectively to take out Russian tanks? They are a relatively cheap weapon, they are essential on the modern battlefield, and they have been deployed by our allies for around twenty years. Canada has none. The main anti-armour weapons we have instead are a generation earlier, originally designed in 1946 (along with some 1970s-era weapons we recently brought out of mothballs.)

And given the sorry state of procurement, it would take Canada years of all-out effort to even begin to get ready for a major war. The endless delays and overruns buying jets, ships, and helicopters are well known. But recently, the CAF bought new winter sleeping bags only to discover they aren’t suitable for Canadian winters. In line with the government’s priorities, the CAF does have extensive diversity, equity, and inclusion programs which, I’m sure, are world-class, but they won’t help much should Canada face the sort of crisis the government apparently assumes will never happen. (For more, see the second half of this essay.)

If history calls again, the strongest elements of the Canadian Armed Forces will answer, but, through no fault of theirs, they won’t be able to do much. The nation whose navy played a critical role safeguarding the North Atlantic lifeline to Britain during the Second World War, whose air force made major contributions to fighter defence and strategic bombing, whose army took one of the five beaches on D-Day and was front and centre in the drive to Germany — that nation would have no choice but to mostly sit and watch as the allies it had let down were forced to shoulder Canada’s share of the burden along with their own. And that is far from the worst-case scenario.

In 1998, I went to the battlefields of the First World War for the ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the war that spawned the 20th century and I interviewed Canadian veterans. They included a man who stood with General Sir Arthur Currie in the town square in Mons at 11 AM on November 18th, 1918 — when Belgians cheered, handed drinks to their liberators, and celebrated the end of the war.

There is a straight line between those men and the men and women who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces today. They have the same duty, as did the many generations between them. They are all one.

On this day, Remembrance Day, we honour them. And perhaps reflect on whether we need to do more for them.

Following is a personal reflection of a friend of mine. He’s still serving in one of those branches of the Canadian military that values quiet professionalism so he’d prefer that I not share his name. The photographs and captions are his.

Sending Sapper Gilles Desmarais home. There would be no hero’s welcome.

Reflections of a Canadian soldier

One hundred and six years ago, the guns fell silent on the Western front.

Six-hundred nineteen thousand Canadians — seven percent of the population at the time — served in the Great War. Proportionate to today’s population, that would be 2.8 million. In the Second World War, it was twelve percent and equivalent to having 4.8 million serving. In uniform. And countless others supported the effort at home. No corner of the country was unaffected. If you look, you can see the legacy still. Memorial cenotaphs in every town, no matter how small. The Royal Canadian Legion soldiers on, their clubs blended into the landscape. If you observe carefully, you’ll find plaques on buildings and boulevards commemorating the sacrifices of the country. As horrifying as the conflict was, it must have been no small comfort for the veterans of that Great War and its sequel to find commemoration in every community. Talk to anyone on the street, and they would be only a degree or two away from someone who served in one way or another.

 Growing up, I wanted to live in history like those generations did, to experience an existential struggle. I watched and re-watched all of the black and white documentaries on TV and imagined what it would be like. I got my chance, in 1998, when I first deployed to Bosnia. The guns had been silent there for three years by that time, but the scars were fresh. I was shocked by how ugly it was in real life. Touring the Olympic sites in Sarajevo and seeing it all burned out I was struck by the utter waste of it all. How stupid it was.

The bobsled track in Sarajevo, home of the 1984 Winter Olympics.

This was the late 90s, when the Canadian Armed Forces were only slowly emerging from the shadow of the moral failures in Somalia. For a time, we were even discouraged from wearing our uniform in public. But the tide was turning, and the Canadian Forces were starting to regain the country’s esteem again. Not that we were thought of much. My first ramp ceremony, where an honour guard forms to escort the bodies of the fallen on a plane for repatriation to Canada, was in September 1998 for Sapper Gilles Desmarais, who had been killed constructing a building on one of our camps. As soon as I was able, I called home to let my family know I was okay. They had no idea what I was talking about. His death wasn’t newsworthy. When he returned to Trenton, there was no tribute along Highway 401 when his body was returned home to his family. There was no Highway of Heroes. Yet.

I would return to Bosnia five years later, a country starting to blossom in the stability that Gilles Desmarais and many other Canadians and their families had sacrificed to secure. It was the end of an era. We had suffered our first casualties in Afghanistan the year before, in 2002. The tragic deaths of Sgt Marc Leger, Cpl Ainsworth Dyer, Pte Richard Green, and Pte Nathan Smith shocked Canada out of its complacency. The entire country shared the loss and mourned with their families. And so did a corner of Bosnia where I was in 2003.

Marc Leger had served there in 2000 and had been the champion of returning Serbian refugees. He did everything he could to help them return and rebuild their community. At one point, he told them it would help if they elected a mayor to represent them. They elected him. He refused, of course, but they called him “King Marko” anyway. When they heard of his death, they were among the first to send their condolences. A year later, I was there as his widow Marley was opening a community centre in Livno Valley, King Marko’s village, in his honour.

 I would soon make my own way to Afghanistan, completing three tours of duty there. War was still an ugly waste. But there were things worth fighting for. Worth sacrificing for. You can’t negotiate with people who express their political views by throwing acid in the faces of girls trying to go to school.

We were fighting against the odds to give Afghans a chance at a better life. We knew what the odds were, but we did it anyway. It’s easy to be a cynic and sit on the sidelines and point out what could have done better. We spent ourselves in a worthy cause, and I mourn for my Afghan friends and their families, but I know I did all I could to give that stark, arid, and ruggedly beautiful country and its people a chance. I would do it all over again, even with the same odds of failure.

Flying out of Kandahar

I I remember looking out over the ramp of the helicopter as I was flying out for what I thought would be my last tour there and wondering if I could do this job anymore if I couldn’t go back. I wasn’t sure I could train that hard without the reward of being in the arena for the real thing. Everything I had spent the last 18 years trying to master was finally being tested. I was lucky; I had a good war. I had rounds rip past my ears like angry, lethal hornets. My ears still ring from returning fire. My hands shook uncontrollably as I scrambled off the ramp of a Chinook helo and into the dark as we landed in the Taliban heartland of Panjwaii district. I remember the moment, how powerless I was to control my body, as I pictured Tom Hanks on the landing craft in Saving Private Ryan. I had dreamed of being in combat, but when it found me, I wanted nothing more than to be out of it. And as soon as I was out, I wanted to go back in. If I was insane, so was everyone else with me. We were never more alive. Life was never simpler. It mattered not what your opinion was on any story in the news or the then-fledgling social media. Who you were was all that mattered — not what you said but what you did.

In Afghanistan, outside the wire and in a completely different world.

I envied the Greatest Generation for their opportunity to live in History. I’ve had a small share of my own, but I now envy something else from that generation. Understanding. Community. Everyone shared and sacrificed; you didn’t have far to go to find someone who could relate to how you felt about the experiences, about the dichotomies of war. How much you viscerally hated it, and how you desperately wish you could go back.

I went to university full-time a few years ago, and I was a unicorn on campus, a mythical creature most had heard of but never thought they would encounter. Sometimes, I was an insect on a pin to be examined. I recall being asked if I had killed anyone and if I had PTSD. I’m not sure that’s something previous generations had to contend with.

I am grateful that few have had to experience war with its sacrifice and waste. I appreciate that I am thanked for my service, although I’m probably more thankful for it than they are. I’m proud of being one of the few. It’s the privilege of my life to have served this incredible country. While Canada has come a long way in showing its gratitude for us, there are some things still missing. Recognition of what our families have had to endure for one. I was deployed for the births of my first two children. When I was in Afghanistan, a late phone call or a military-looking vehicle driving in the neighbourhood would be enough to make my wife’s heart drop and her knees shake with fear. I’ve had friends who have opened the door to a notification team, and their lives have changed forever in that instant. One stood out of the sunroof of the limousine as they escorted her husband’s body along the Highway of Heroes, waving at everyone who lined the route to thank them for honouring her husband.

I’ve lost friends to combat and its aftermath. As a kid, I used to stroll the military cemeteries, looking at all of the names and feeling as distant from them as the far-away lands they had served in. Now I find my friends there. For others, I may not have known them, but I know their stories as they’re now part of Regimental lore and memory. Remembrance Day is the day we tell their stories. It’s the day we make sure they live again, that people know who they were, that they lived, that they mattered, that they had an impact.

For myself, what I wish for on this day is an understanding of our service and what it means to us. Listen to the stories. Ask. We want to be understood; we want the country we love so much to know. The ones under those neat headstones are the best of us. Like King Marko. But they’re also ordinary. That’s what’s so difficult about the hero label. Most of us are quite ordinary. We just chose to meet the challenge that history put before us. It’s worth remembering. It’s worth honouring. And it’s worth living up to, striving to be a better country worthy of such sacrifice.

Lest We Forget.