by Ray Wiss
We have two Bison ambulance crews here. One is attached to our quick reaction force (QRF)—the tanks and infantry tasked to respond to any emergency. The crew chief is Master Corporal Sylvain Vilandré (centre in the photo). At forty-eight, he is the only medical FOBbit (a hairy bunker inhabitant) in my age bracket. His nickname is “L’Père” (“Pops”), which leaves me nonplussed—I am two years older than he is. This is his second combat tour. He is built like a refrigerator—one of the strongest men on the FOB. This makes it even more embarrassing when he runs men twenty years younger than him into the ground. Despite hauling all that muscle around, he is in such amazing cardiovascular shape that he can go forever. He puts on a tough show on the outside, but he is so kind-hearted that he has been known to release mice caught in traps back into the wild.
Corporal Cynthia Bouthillier (left) is the medic. Twenty-two years old, she has already distinguished herself during an IED attack in Kandahar City. She did a masterful job of organizing the medical care of multiple victims. She has sought me out for extra teaching sessions on a number of topics. It is a pleasure to work with her.
Trooper Tony Houde (right), although thirty-six years old, has only been in the army for eighteen months. He is quiet and modest to a fault, but completely reliable. He helps out wherever he can when the casualties come in. He has three young children, and his oldest is going through many of the same ups and downs as my daughter. Like me, Tony worries about the effect his absences will have on her.
QRF Bison crew
Whenever possible, this crew gives clean bottled water to Afghan adults and candy to Afghan children. The locals have learned to recognize the vehicle by the teddy bear attached to one of its antennas. They invariably smile and wave, and even run after the Bison.
The second Bison ambulance crew is attached to the tank unit based here, a squadron of the Lord Strathcona’s Horse. This Bison is commanded by Master Seaman Richard Turcotte (right in the following photo), a thirty-seven-year-old senior medic. It may seem odd that a sailor is running an armoured vehicle crew in a land war, but the credo of the Health Services branch is interoperability: medics from all branches can perform their duties in any environment. Master Seaman Turcotte, the father of a six-year-old girl, is also a Roto 3 veteran. He has been through some harrowing experiences but remains rock-solid.
The medic, commonly called the GIB (guy in back), is Private Daniel Labonté. At twenty-three, he has a maturity far beyond his years and the same enthusiasm for medicine that I saw in Dominic at FOB Wilson. He is always asking questions and is particularly interested in knowing how to perform emergency ultrasound examinations. He is invariably in a good mood, all the more so lately since he discovered that his wife was carrying a baby girl.
Strathcona Bison crew
The driver, Master Corporal Jason Taylor, is a reservist from Prince Edward Island. Like many reservists you meet here, he comes closer to being a pure soldier than most regular force (full-time) troopers. No matter what combat or medical task we have assigned to him, he has accomplished it quickly and with little or no supervision. He is one of those utterly dependable individuals you sense you can count on in any situation. Because of that, I do not begrudge him his photophobia.*
JULY 6 Griffon Down
A very bad day.
Right on the heels of the deaths of Corporal Bulger and Master Corporal Michaud came the news that one of our Griffon helicopters had crashed. This was not caused by enemy fire. Flying of any kind does not allow for much in the way of malfunction or error before catastrophic events occur; flying helicopters in combat conditions magnifies this risk. It takes a special kind of person to crew these aircraft, a person who has both courage and skill, in ample measure.
We know that two Canadians are dead, but we are unsure as to their identities. This is causing a lot of anxiety on the FOB. The pilots and flight engineers are from the helicopter squadron. We will feel the pain of their loss as we do that of any fellow soldier. But the door gunners are infantrymen, from the same regiment currently deployed here. The combat troopers are desperate to learn if one of their friends is dead.
Everyone feels a little guilty at times like this. It starts when we hear that there have been casualties on our side. We know the likelihood is that they will be Afghan, because in this civil war it is the ANA that is taking most of the casualties. If that turns out to be the case, we are relieved, although no one would ever admit it. If we learn a Coalition soldier has died, we hope he is from another country.
The guilty feeling increases when it is confirmed that one or more Canadians have died. Now we are wishing for the death of someone we know less well. We are wishing for another Canadian family to be devastated instead of ours. None of us enjoys feeling that way, but none of us can help it.
No matter who these fallen Canadians are, they will be the first to die in one of our own helicopters. It has only been since the winter of 2009 that our squadron, equipped with Griffon gunships and Chinook transports, arrived in Kandahar. They have been flying continuously ever since.
I had thought that most routine Canadian FOB-to-FOB travelling on this Roto would be done in our own helicopters. I had emphasized this to Claude as a way of minimizing her worry before I left. And while some Canadians fly back and forth from the FOBs to KAF, the number of people we have travelling by convoy appears unchanged. It seems our aircraft and crews have been integrated into the overall war effort and not specifically assigned to us: our Griffon crashed at an American FOB.
Griffon gunship door gunner
So it was already a bad day, and it came to a bad ending. At last light, as I was working in the staff lounge, I heard a hissing sound I recognized. A rocket was flying overhead and was a second or two away from impact. I threw myself against the wall, waited for the detonation and then ran for the bunker. The rest of the medical team had been on the bunker’s porch. When I got there, they were scrambling to get inside. We got our helmets and frag vests on and waited for the all clear.
It looks like “rocket season” is upon us.
Addendum, July 7 (morning): We now know the name of one of the dead Canadians. He is Master Corporal Patrice Audet, of the 430th Tactical Helicopter Squadron. There is no information about his duties on the aircraft, but there are already recriminations against his branch of the service.
Our helicopter crashed on takeoff. “Experts” have been on the CBC news explaining how this was predictable because our pilots, our aircraft or our procedures are not good enough for the kind of combat operations we are flying here in Kandahar province. Apart from being extraordinarily insensitive—coming even before the bodies of our dead comrades arrive home—this criticism is Monday-morning quarterbacking at its worst.
In this heat, a helicopter’s blades generate far less lift than they do in colder, denser air. This makes the aircraft harder to control and much less forgiving of even a tiny misstep at low altitude. The dust is so bad that pilots land and take off in a cloud through which they can see nothing. By themselves, these environmental factors would make for the most challenging flying conditions a helicopter pilot can face. And our pilots also contend with the enemy threat. Takeoff and landing, the trickiest manoeuvres in flying, are also the occasions when helicopters are most vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.
In spite of these potentially lethal hazards, our air crews keep flying. In doing so, they give us an enormous edge over the Taliban: they resupply us in the most difficult terrain, they provide fire support that drives off Taliban attackers and they shuttle us around the battlefield, safe from IEDs.
Helicopters crash—even with the best pilots, flying the best machines, in the best of conditions. This is combat flying, so we should be prepared for the inevitability of incidents like this. I am sure that when this war is over our helicopters will have had an admirable safety record. I will not hesitate to get on one for the rest of my tour.
Addendum, July 7 (afternoon): The worst fears of the infantrymen here have c
ome true. So have mine.
Corporal Martin “Jo” Joannette was a member of the Third Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment. These are the Van Doos, the French Canadian infantry regiment that is serving here now. A lot of people on the FOB, including me, knew Jo. Though still a minority, veterans make up an important proportion of the troops deployed on this rotation. That Jo and I met during my previous deployment is no more than a minor coincidence, but it makes writing this entry physically painful.
Jo and I were together at Sperwan Ghar, the first FOB I served at in 2007. He was the combat team commander’s LAV (light armoured vehicle) driver. He went on every mission, big and small, that we ran out of that FOB. His vehicle was struck by an IED twice, had a near miss a third time, and he was under direct enemy fire numerous times. He came out of it all without a scratch. He had served another tour in Afghanistan before that. Knowing he came through so many close calls makes it somehow harder to accept that we have lost such a superlative soldier.
What I remember most about Jo was his uncanny ability to coax balky motors back to life. The internal combustion engine is something I know nearly nothing about, but Jo knew the inner workings of his armoured vehicle better than I know anatomy. He was the go-to guy for the combat team when it came to engine problems, and he was always ready to help.
In his photograph (at the back of this book), you will notice that Jo does not wear the traditional green beret of the infantry but rather the maroon beret of the airborne troops. So I close with the traditional parting wish of the paratrooper: “Light winds and soft landings, my brother.”
JULY 7 | Junior
On the two-way rifle range you will not rise to the occasion. You will sink to the level of your training. The combat arms attracts more than its fair share of big guys. Individuals of smaller stature stand out. Corporal Nicholas Cappelli Horth (the missing hyphen is intentional) stands out, in more ways than one.
—RSM BRIAN MCKENELLEY, Second Battalion, The Irish Regiment of Canada
Corporal Nicholas “Junior” Cappelli Horth
Although he is based here at FOB Ma’Sum Ghar, I had the opportunity to meet him before coming here. He is the medic assigned to the provincial reconstruction team, and these guys get around a fair bit. Whenever his team came to FOB Wilson he would pop by the UMS to look in on his medical brethren. He participated in some of the patient encounters I have described.
I know. In this photograph he does not look older than twelve, and I doubt he weighs more than fifty kilograms soaking wet. His nickname, “Junior,” seems almost preordained. But he is twenty-two and one of the more impressive young men you will ever meet. The gear he carries on patrol weighs almost as much as he does, but he never falters. It must be said that he is in amazingly good shape, being a marathon runner. He is also the prototypical “good soldier.” He always has a positive, can-do attitude.
His skills and attitude made him pretty much the perfect “garrison soldier.” In other words, he had everything the army looks for during training: fitness, drive, teamwork and smarts. But how will the aptitudes demonstrated during training translate when under fire? That is the question on everybody’s mind as a unit heads to war. For Junior, we got the answer today.
The provincial reconstruction team had been on a patrol not far from our FOB. The team was in the process of clearing a road, searching for IEDs. Junior was somewhere in the middle of the column of soldiers. An Afghan civilian on a motorcycle began to overtake them. Before he was allowed to go on, he was stopped and searched. He checked out: a villager, making his way to his fields.
The villager got back on his motorcycle and began to pass the soldiers. When he got level with Junior, a Taliban triggerman detonated a “directional” IED. The rear half of such a device is high explosive. This would not be lethal beyond a few feet. The front half consists of hundreds of metal fragments, which the high explosive will project forward at high speeds. You could think of a directional IED as a gigantic shotgun firing massive pellets.
The directional IED was a metre from the Afghan villager when it went off. Junior was two metres farther away. At such close range, a directional IED massively damages the human body. The villager had most of his mid-section blown apart. Junior was thrown to the ground, covered in blood and pieces of flesh, but the Afghan’s body had created a “blast shadow.” Junior’s ears were ringing, but he was otherwise unhurt.
What did Junior do then? On a patrol, soldiers are assigned an “arc of responsibility,” that area of the 360-degree circle around the patrol that they must watch. By the time Junior had finished rolling on the ground, he had his weapon up and facing outwards, covering his arc. In the time it took for the blast to stop acting on his body, he was back to being a fully operational combat soldier.
A patrol’s first priority when it comes under fire is to defeat the enemy. Even if there are wounded soldiers who need care, the combat medics will first help to drive back the enemy, “winning the firefight.” We are soldiers first, and Junior had reacted exactly as he had been trained to.
Although the IED attack was not followed up with gunfire or grenades, the patrol was still in grave danger. There were signs that the Taliban had laid secondary IEDs, additional mines whose purpose is to kill medics and others coming to assist those wounded by an initial blast.
When the patrol had secured the area, Junior rendered whatever aid he could to the villager. Before this, he had radioed the UMS to prepare us to receive a critically wounded patient. I got the team together and briefed them on the patient’s possible injuries, and we set up our IVs and other gear. Unfortunately, the man was long dead by the time we got to him.
Junior reported to the UMS when the patrol returned to the FOB. He still had his smile and his positive attitude . . . but his eyes had a slight watery sheen, and his voice had a touch of a tremor. I took him outside the UMS to have a word with him privately.
What do you say to someone who has come as close to dying as it is possible to do? You start by telling him how happy you are that he is okay. You follow that up with statements that are “normalizing.” This means that you list the possible reactions a normal human being might have after an event like this, so that he understands that what he is feeling is to be expected. Then you open the door for him to come and talk to you about those reactions if they prove to be distressing.
Then you step back, give your comrade some space and hope that he will prove to be one of the many who come through something like this psychically intact. And not one of the few who will be damaged forever.
Addendum, July 31: I am leaving FOB Ma’Sum Ghar in a few days. I have spoken to Junior a number of times since his close call. He seems remarkably well. His sleep patterns got back to normal three days after the incident and, a week ago, he had a dream in which he saw the Afghan villager who was killed. He could not recall much about the dream except that it had not been upsetting.
He has had a couple of other emotionally tough days, one of which I will describe in some detail later, but I think he will come through this war without any long-term emotional ill-effects.
JULY 8 | MRE: Medical Rules of Eligibility
One of today’s serious casualties was unusual, as war zone casualties go, because he was suffering from blunt trauma. This is the kind you get when your body is thrown against something hard. Whereas penetrating trauma is relatively simple to manage—plug the holes, stop the bleeding, get them breathing, ship them out—blunt trauma is a much more cerebral exercise. Patients have no holes or lacerations indicating where the damage lies. They must be examined much more carefully so that no serious injuries are missed. Keep that in mind as I present today’s interesting case.
As was the case at FOB Wilson, the perimeter security on the camp is the responsibility of a private company. One of their men was involved in a head-on collision with an American armoured vehicle. He was driving a pickup truck, so he was the loser in this exchange.
There was no external bleeding, and t
he patient was not having any difficulty breathing. He had no bruises, his vital signs were normal and ultrasound examination of the chest and abdomen were negative. He had no neurological symptoms, meaning that he had normal strength, sensation and movement in all four limbs. His only complaint was pain at the top of his head and in his cervical (neck) spine. He was alert and oriented, and he described having been projected into the roof of his vehicle.
A case like this could not be more straightforward. The accident had delivered a tremendous amount of “axial load” onto the patient’s cervical spine. This is the same thing that happens when people dive into shallow water. These individuals often break their cervical spines and end up paralyzed from the neck down. The medical team must therefore immobilize the patient’s spine immediately and keep it secure until X-rays or a CT scan can be done to rule out the presence of a fracture.
Pretty basic, eh? Not to some goof at KAF. The message we got back was: “We’re busy. Send the patient by road.”
I hit the roof. We are now doing helicopter medevacs for Canadians who need nothing more than a couple of stitches. The message I was getting was that this Afghan, with a potentially devastating injury, was not worth the same consideration. He may have been, for all intents and purposes, a mercenary, fighting for our side only for the money. That is irrelevant. He had been injured as a byproduct of the war. As a result, his care was our responsibility. Had he been a civilian or a Taliban soldier, I would have treated him the same way.
I am happy to report that this aberrant behaviour was limited to a single individual at battle group headquarters. I barked once (via a one-paragraph e-mail, dripping with sarcasm, venom and threat), and the air medevac was approved.
JULY 10 | Tac Recce: Tactical Reconnaissance
A quiet day—only a few patients, none of them critically injured.