My hiatus is over and I am back with many opinions to share, but I feel it's appropriate to begin by republishing this piece in honour of Remembrance Day - Please leave comments.
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As high school students my friends and I were Air Cadets and military buffs. While I didn't have the discipline for it, some of my friends joined the real military upon turning eighteen. I lost touch with those friends for several years, but one day I ran into one and we sat and chatted in the food court of a mall.
We caught up on old times and reminisced as old friends do - I told him about my exploits trying to make it in a band and all the silly jobs I had held to finance that project. We laughed - a lot. When I asked him what he had been up to, his eyes suddenly glazed over. His face became very cold and a wedge appeared between us. "Not much" he said.
I pushed further and asked if he had traveled as a soldier, seen action, lived the dream as I saw it through the eyes of a WWII movie lover... He told me he had been to Cyprus, Bosnia and parts of Africa as a UN peacekeeper along with several other of my old friends, but it was like a tooth extraction to get any info out of him. One word answers, grunts and nods. After a few minutes of this I gave up... I wished him well and moved on with my day. A strange run-in indeed. "People change" I thought to myself.
I thought nothing of it until several months later when in a bar I ran into another one of these friends who had joined the service together. This was a much friendlier run-in, especially as we were both fairly intoxicated. I learned in this conversation that he had in fact served with the UN alongside the first friend mentioned above. He told me about the beaches in Cyprus and the girls in Germany...then he told me about Bosnia.
Their first detail upon arrival in Bosnia had been to assist a UN crew in cleaning up an elementary school and it's yard. I remember feeling really proud to be Canadian when he said that - the mental image of handsome young Canadian soldiers helping to re-open a school....very romantic and idealistic.
He then proceeded to describe to me in grotesque detail that in fact the school was a crime scene. The UN squad was actually there cleaning out a mass grave of Muslim children that had been executed by Milosevic's christian militia in their classroom, and then buried in the yard several months previous. There aren't words to describe the horror he communicated, but suffice to say that they found themselves carrying the partly decomposed bodies of elementary school children.
He went on to tell me that the mission was much easier after that, though there was the story of being pinned down under live fire as an enemy sniper shot civilians in the street in front of him...including a pregnant woman.
Even more disturbing was that as he told these stories, he did so with the same tone I would use to tell you about taking my kids shopping for shoes at the mall yesterday. (He also downed at least 4 drinks in the half hour or so we spoke.) Of course I was speechless - I couldn't find words. What do you say to that? "Wow dude...rough job...?" Instead, I asked him how he was dealing with it. He looked up, stared into my eyes and said, "I'm not."
Enough said.
I can't tell you how many times I've wondered how those friends are doing today. I think about them every time I see a Canadian death in Afghanistan reported on the news. Worse, I think of them every time I read about another one of our best and brightest committing suicide.
Sixty five thousand Canadians will have served in Afghanistan by 2012 - It's not enough to just drive around with a "Support the Troops" sticker on your car. We owe it to them to understand the horror and duress that haunts many of them for the rest of their lives. Read a book like Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire.
We owe it to them to respect the sacrifices they have made in the name of our country, so buy a poppy and take your kids to the local Cenotaph on November 11th; explain to them why you are there.
And we owe it to them to hold our government accountable for providing the support and treatment they need, so write a letter to your Member of Parliament demanding they support funding for programs like Operational Stress Injury Support Service. (OSISS)
That's my opinion, and it should be yours too.
Learn more:
Organization: Operational Stress Injury Support Service
Absolutely great post, Chris. I can't stand when people put down the Canadian military and claim that they do nothing.
ReplyDeleteI've been considering joining for about 2 years now and I decided that by December I have to make a final decision. This post is definitely putting a new spin on how I look at it.
Very Touching! Very interesting post. A different look that we don't see very often on TV. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteWell put my friend.
ReplyDeleteI remember. Vividly.
I was on a chairlift in the late 70’s. I was probably 9 or 10, not even zit faced pre-teen yet. I often skied on my own because I didn’t have a lot of friends that could ski where I could. I was paired up on the lift with a skier – wearing jeans and a jacket – of all things.
I asked the usual questions. Do you ski here a lot? Where are you from? Where did you go to school.
No, just learning. Grew up in Seattle. High School in Seattle.
What have you been doing since school, I asked.
I was in Vietnam.
The conversation stopped there. That moment haunts me still. All the things I wanted to say about “thanks” and appreciation. I recall the words swirling in my head. However, I was not able to grasp the moment, between being suddenly self conscience or maturity to make that kind of statement. I literally left that young Vietnam vet hanging on the chairlift, in silence, alone.
I often have thought about how he felt. Especially after Vietnam. Did he assume I shunned him, as many other Americans had, for fighting in this war.
Never again.