Pages: [1] 
|
 |
|
Author
|
Topic: Memories..... (Read 391 times)
|
Mike Blais
SSM (NATO Bar), CPSM, UN-Cyp, CD
Ultimate 2000+ Member
 Offline
Gender: 
Posts: 3213
A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
|
Return to Innocence.
May 6, 2007
Return to innocence
By THANE BURNETT
Our heroes were once children: They laughed, they learned to swim, they ate macaroni and cheese and trapped beavers. Now their families give us a glimpse of their younger years -- long before they died for their country in Afghanistan.
Before they were warriors, they were children with sticks as swords and indestructible capes made of beach towels.
Before they died, far from loved ones, they each lived young lives in the great expanse and endless wonder of their own backyards.
The faces of Canada's loss in Afghanistan often come back home to us in static, military-approved headshots of strong-jawed fighters who have paid for their patriotism -- berets all at the same tight angle, a flag in the background and solid, passport stares that mirror the next man or woman in line.
There is no reason or command to "smile" for a modern soldier at war.
And little chance of seeing how they each grew into the uniform.
But there were days, in summers and holidays not so long ago, when the pictures of each of the 50-plus Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were bursting with bright colours and blinding rays of marvelous possibilities. It was a different photo album then.
The pictures here, and those painted by these few words, are a brief and too limited return to that innocence.
We have gathered cherished snapshots and memories from families of many of the fallen -- from one coast to the other -- so you might see what their own mothers and fathers often still see, when ever they close their eyes.
Because before they were Canada's sons and daughter, their young hearts and new souls belonged to families who couldn't imagine the world turning without their touch. They are parents and siblings who now wish these moments of childhood back.
When Carol Klukie sees her youngest of three sons, Josh, it's not as we came to know him -- a 23-year-old Shuniah, Ont., soldier, killed on Sept. 29, 2006. Her mental snapshot is of him outside the family home, when he was eight or nine years old. He had memorized the entire dialogue to a Star Wars movie. Even the farthest galaxy wasn't so far, far away in those days.
'JOSH ON THE ROCKS'
One afternoon, his brother was coming home, just in time to see Josh lift up his stick-turned-light-sabre and take a bow, before leaping off a large rock.
"What are you doing?" his brother asked.
"Just finished Star Wars," Josh answered.
For endless hours, Josh would stand defiant on the line of huge boulders his dad had used to ring the land's septic field.
"Josh would wave a stick, and jump from end to end ... 60 to 70 feet of boulders," his mom recalls.
"He'd be waving the stick and delivering the dialogue."
"Where's Josh?" someone would ask. "On the rocks," would be the familiar answer.
He forever became -- in the private and odd language of close families -- "Josh on the rocks."
His mother holds onto those memories in places that can never fade them or curl their edges.
"He was always thrilled with heroes," she says of a young man who grew into a hero.
But she still doesn't see him on a last foot patrol in Panjwaii.
Instead, she says: "I see him on those rocks."
For Alice Murphy, her son Jamie -- a 26-year-old from Conception Harbour, N.L., who died in Afghanistan on Jan. 27, 2004 -- didn't suddenly become brave in that often dry and dusty war zone. He showed his colours, and the makings of his own man, long before, in a pond near his home.
When he was 11 months old, he was put on a rock, near a shoreline. As his family was playing, he fell into the water. His father jumped in to pull him to the surface, but for many years after, Jamie -- who volunteered to face men shooting at him and the threat of suicide bombings, which ultimately killed him -- was terrified enough to stay clear of water.
"Then, when he was 15 years old, he came to me and said, 'Mom, I can swim,' " Alice recalls.
In a nearby pond, he had decided to face what scared him the most, and taught himself to stay afloat. That, says his mom, was bravery.
'ALWAYS SMILING'
When Nancy Mansell leafs through albums of her son, Myles, who died at 25 when his G-Wagon was destroyed by a roadside bomb near Gumbad in April 2006, she can rarely find his scowl.
Because he had to try real hard for that look.
"When he was 3 or 4, we always called him 'Smiley Myley,' because he was always smiling," the B.C. mom remembers. "We'd say, 'Let's see your mad look,' and he'd have to turn his back to form a scowl.
"It didn't come easy to him."
And what of Antonio Boneca's memories of his only child, Anthony, who died at 21 years old in an Afghan fire-fight on July 9, 2006? The images of a flag-draped coffin and slow, loud steps of pallbearers on a cold airport tarmac are eclipsed by memories of an Ontario child standing in a different uniform -- that of the Boy Scouts.
Just as David Braun's mother, Patty, can see helpings of macaroni and cheese in front of her Saskatchewan boy, who died in a suicide bomb attack in Kandahar City last August 22.
She can also clearly see his messy room, rather than a death at 27 years old.
For Margie Walsh, her son Jeff's other life -- the one before he souped up a Camaro, became a man, got married, had three children and went to war -- can be neatly wrapped up in a stick of chewing gum.
"I remember, when he was young, he had a pack of gum, and began to pass out pieces," Margie recalls of Jeff's childhood in Regina. "He gave a stick to everyone, and had none left (for himself)."
And when he would go off to birthday parties, this young man, who would not see 34 candles on his own cake, would always remember to ask for a loot bag for his little sister.
Tom Reid can see his son Christopher -- a Truro, N.S., soldier who was killed last August 3 -- on his mountain bike or sorting through comic books.
Errol and Elaine Cushley, from Port Lambton, Ont., can also see their own boy William on a bike. And off.
'BLACK IN BLUE'
"He hurt himself all the time on the BMX bikes, skateboarding or ice skating," Errol recalls of William, a son among three sisters. "He'd be black and blue with the skin off (his knees). And he'd just get up and do it all again."
Some children, he reasons, are unstoppable.
Their William, at the start of manhood at 21 years old, died last Sept. 3, just a month after he arrived in Afghanistan.
Glen Arnold died later the same month, when a suicide bicycle bomb went off while the 32-year-old corporal was on foot patrol in Panjwaii.
He left behind four children. And his own moments as a young man, who, before the sound and the fury of that final patrol, sought shelter of his own.
When Glen was in his early teens, his father, George, was hiking on their rural Ontario property.
"There, among the bush, I came across a tent of branches he had made -- a place to be by himself and just read," George reminds himself.
How many times, he continues, did his son drop the tools he was working with, to run off to find the next great project. His father would find them all over the yard.
"He planted more tools, but they never grew," he says, in a refrain he would often use on his son.
For the families, there are more memories -- snapshots of the mind and protected in albums -- than could fill this space a million times over.
They include the stories still told around the Mitchell household in Owen Sound, Ont., about Robert -- killed last October, at 32 years old, during a mortar attack just west of Kandahar City.
They are tales of his mischief, and, sadly ironic, his draw -- along with most young men -- to things that blow up.
'SO TENDER'
His mom, Carol, is reminded of the day when he was about 16 years old when she found he and his cadet friends had made their own bomb, because homemade firecrackers just didn't have the impact they wanted.
Carol handed it over to the local police, and her son and his friends were sternly told how dangerous it was. So they agreed, and instead, took up rappelling across canyons.
There is a line from him extending to Craig Gillam.
Tucked away from a grateful but sad country, there are pictures of a young Craig, who grew up in South Branch, N.L., just two miles from his future wife, Maureen.
He died, along with Robert Mitchell, last October. Craig was a 40-year-old hero sergeant for spotting and firing at approaching insurgents.
But it was his quiet disposition, and the fact he never had a bad thing to say about others, which, as children, drew Maureen to him.
"So tender," she recalls.
Just as it was Bobby Girouard's sense of big-brother responsibility over his younger sibling Peter -- teaching him about surviving in the wilderness and watching his back while playing hockey -- that formed a bond even tighter than he had with fellow soldiers in battle. Bobby was killed last Nov. 17.
But perhaps there are no more pure Canadian reflections than those offered by Hank Stachnik of his son, Shane, who, at 30 years old, was killed Sept. 3, 2006.
From the family home in Waskatenau, Alta., Hank remembers teaching his son to trap beavers on their acreage. From there, a creek flows into the North Saskatchewan River.
'ALMOST AS BIG AS HE WAS'
When Shane was four years old, Hank began to teach him how to toast peanut butter sandwiches over an open fire. Shane's rocking horses were trees that fell across their creek.
And when the boy was 12 years old, he went off by himself -- armed with courage and his father's .22 rifle.
He trudged off across the north country. And much later, he came back home, carrying a beaver.
"It was almost as big as he was," says Hank, his voice still proud of the memory and moment.
"He had made his way across (four-foot-high) fences. Huffing and puffing when he came home with it."
He was taught to play hockey, but after a few seasons, he gave that up, because he couldn't bear to watch his father go off and ice fish without him.
"This whole acreage was to be that boy's," says Hank. "He was going to take it over one day."
Now, the father says, he is left with the reflections of past days when Shane was the prince and heir to a Canadian landscape.
So, whenever he can, Hank gets lost in the snapshots and in his mind's eye.
Reflections of a lifetime when his boy was all his.
Before we all had to embrace him -- and so many others -- as a nation.
|
1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
|
|
|
ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
Ultimate 2000+ Member
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 2135
|
I hope that all will have a chance to read these captions.. the very hearts of our heros, as they grew up to do their duty so well...thanks for getting this up here for us all.. ranrad
|
RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
|
|
|
Pages: [1] 
|
|
|
|
|
Logged