Passage To Kandahar

Military 17 Comments

(from personal correspondance)

I leave Friday for sunny Afghanistan. This will prove to be quite an interesting eye opener of a trip. I will start out in Kabul and help teardown the camp to move to Kandahar, while doing my regular job. The ‘landlord’ has not extended our lease, so we are being evicted come December 1. Got to like that after all the work gone into setting it up. Making it so cozy. Or as cozy as a desert can be.
There are only ten of us from my unit splitting up in Afghanistan to cover the two sections. We have talked amongs ourselves and believe that this will be the most challenging of tours for us at the moment. Until the Congo and Sudan get up in full gear. We as Canadians have managed to take few casualties. There is a ‘saluting monument’ in the middle of Camp Julien, for the fallen. I don’t think our luck will hold out on this one. I hope I am wrong. More small incidents have occurred in and around both areas.
Kabul with the tearing down will become less secure and more vulnerable to the attacks. Kandahar with the setting up, is already vulnerable. Kandahar being so close to the mountains and border, is also right in the middle of the drug warlord territories. Maybe we can invite them in for a tea and a chat.
I have been reading your blog on and off, as I kill time till the deployment. This is my embarkment leave time. Time to get the last of my shit together before I leave for who knows how long. I was told anywhere from 4-6 months, depending on the elections and the assasination clause. Because the military, or maybe it is just our unit, is so short on new recruits, our deployments are being extended from 6 to 9 months in duration.
Once the word gets out, there will be a lot of releases put in. It is a long go at 6 months, working 24/7. Someone asked me if we get weekends off or two days a week off. What for? Where are we going to go? Not like you can take a stroll downtown Afghanistan.
I’ll take my camera and try to send a few ‘deconstruction’ pics.

17 Replies to “Passage To Kandahar”

  3. We know it will a restaging of a loaves and fish miracle: you have been sent on a major undertaking with little or no substantive support from the feds, and yet, we know you’ll prevail. Godspeed.

  4. Fight the good fight, to the extent necessary.
    Best wishes and best of luck,
    Mark
    Ottawa

  5. And if you ever get to Jalalabad, feast on the local Nan–it’s the best in the world.
    Mark
    Ottawa

  6. Wanna bet that Martin and company will weep and wring their hands as the body bags start streaming home …. and the Liberals will be anguishing over their electoral fortunes 30 days after Gomery reports..?!
    We will witness a nauseous CBC-Liberal-Goebbels propaganda assault once dead Canadian soldiers are shipped back in body bags …. the outrage by the Liberals will resonate from coast to coast as they pledge to rearm the Canadian Army with the $4.7 billion NDP budget goodies …. to save their electoral hides after 10 years of disassembling and destroying the Armed Forces of Canada.
    Meanwhile the Americans are dispatching their fully equipped Airborne troops to
    Afghanistan and they don’t take prisoners either ….. where are the Canadian Airborne 101 when you need them now …. after they were disbanded by the Liberals for domestic political correctness to placate the deviate-socialist-feminazi lobby of do-gooders ???!!!!

  7. Go, my good warrior, and fight the honorable fight.
    I fight with fire
    as I watch them conspire
    to blow my world apart
    between the light
    and the endless night
    -Song from “Commando”
    Somewhere, somehow, someone is going to pay…

  8. Canadian Patriot you said “…. to save their electoral hides after 10 years of disassembling and destroying the Armed Forces of Canada”.
    Ten years? I don’t think so. It started 30 years ago under Trudeau and I’m ashamed to say the Tories didn’t do a hell of a lot for the military under Mulroney but then back came the Libs and threw the decline into high gear until a mere shell is what we have today. Ask me. I’m a retired Lieutenant Colonel and I watched it happen until I couldn’t stand it any more.

  10. God Speed and a safe journey.
    You and your group are honored for stepping up to defend liberty and freedom in a part of the world, that until recently, has known none.
    Our prayers are with you.
    Keep your head down

  11. Why, does it seem, all the soldiers are from Alberta? This is the only place I have seen any attention given to our soldiers. Where is the CBC when we need to muster up support nationally? What a heart wrenching feeling I have right now. I wish I was there at the send off to say how proud I am. In any case, I’m saying it now.
    Thanks for posting this Kate

  12. This is one area where liberal spending of our funds to reward Afghani friends will not be criticised.
    Our military do need the help and intellegence support that only natives of Afghanistan can provide.
    There is no room for typical Canadian stingyness here. Hands must be greased, loyalty must be rewarded. This is an absolute for our guys to be effective.
    I suspect this is an obvious requirement, yet one has to mention the obvious. We do not want to learn that penny-pinching or penny-wise, pound foolish accounting has cost our guys undue losses.
    There has been so much of that foolishness in Canadian Military history that it makes me very uneasy. 73s TG

  13. It is easy for some of us to say that Canada should be in Afghanistan. All I can imagine is a tough meeting at work. It is truly an honorable, brave, and undoubtedly thankless task to bring order to some of the chaos in Afghanistan and the world. Best wishes to Canada’s true ambassadors.

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