MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – 5 Nov 10

• Canada’s Governor General and Commander-in-Chief David Johnston is back from his first visit to Afghanistan. - more on that from Postmedia News and the Canadian Press.
• According to QMI/Sun Media:  “Five previously unnamed lakes in northeastern Manitoba now bear the names of some of the province’s fallen sons. Pte. Lane Watkins, Cpl. James Arnal, Cpl. Michael Seggie, Sapper Sean Greenfield and Trooper Corey Hayes (links to entries in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial) were honoured by the Manitoba government during a ceremony at the legislature Thursday where it was announced small lakes northwest of Utik Lake, located about 50 kilometres north of Oxford House, will forever bear the names of the fallen soldiers …. The families of Watkins, Arnal, Seggie and Greenfield attended the ceremony and were presented with plaques by Premier Greg Selinger.  Hayes will be honoured at a separate ceremony at a later date as his family was unable to attend Thursday …. “  More from the Winnipeg Free Press here and CTV Winnipeg here – Manitoba’s news release here.  One of the parents, though, is quoted saying “standing in line behind an NHL hockey player takes the lustre off the honour”.
• The Toronto Star looks over a statistical snapshot of Canadians wounded more than two years ago:  “Gun shot wounds, buried bombs, vehicle rollovers, rocket attacks and suicide bombers. For seven months in 2008 — from March to September — those were just a few of the battlefield traumas suffered by Canadian troops as they tangled with insurgents. They are the very incidents that the military has tried to keep out of the public eye with its decision to keep details on wounded soldiers under wraps. The policy of releasing the number of injured soldiers only once a year — on Dec. 31 — has obscured the intensity of fight facing Canadian soldiers, as well as the nature of the sometimes life-altering injuries. It has also given Canadians back home a mental buffer against the numbing realities of war — soldiers who fight hard also get hurt ….”
• Going into more detail, the Toronto Star also shares the ongoing story of a Sudbury reservist, Bill Kerr, as he learns to live without his legs and one arm:  “Cpl. Billy Kerr has a burning sensation in his heel and on the last two toes on his right foot. “I look down and I want to scratch them,” he says. “I feel it.” He can’t scratch them. He doesn’t have heels. Or toes. On the morning of Oct. 15, 2008, he stepped inside a mud compound in Afghanistan shortly before noon and a bomb ripped off his legs above the knee and his left arm a few inches below his elbow. Kerr, Canada’s only triple amputee to return from Afghanistan, remembers everything about that day ….”
• More on Canada leaving Camp Mirage in Dubai, via the Globe & Mail:  “…. Military planners were given one month to vacate a base that was not only an operational hub, but one they had been counting for Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan next year.  “It was a scramble,” chief of Defence staff General Walter Natynczyk said during a visit to Kandahar Airfield. “We had to move a lot of equipment over a month’s period of time.” Much of the logistical capacity has been transferred to an American base in Spangdahlem, Germany …. (and) the Canadian government was in the process of hammering out a memorandum of understanding with another country for use of an additional site ….” More on that from the Canadian Press.  (P.S.:  If you you believe the G&M’s anonymous “government source”, it wasn’t cheap, either.)
• How’s Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan going down in some quarters?  Not well, according to Macleans.ca:  “In private, American and British military officers have never hidden their disdain for the way Canada is handling this pullout. In February, a British general I was speaking with in Kabul called it “bad campaign work, and bad coalition work”. When I was back there in late September, I asked an American two-star general working at the IJC what they were going to do when Canada left. He sighed, then shrugged his shoulders ….” (Hat tip to Mark at unambig.com)  First to pipe up on the record (politely), via the Canadian Press:  Estonia.
• Some details about how Canadian troops are helping Afghan troops train, from the Canadian Forces information machine:  “4th Company is just about ready for the big time. The artillery battery of Kandak 4, 1st Brigade, 205th (Hero) Corps, Afghan National Army (ANA), showed its stuff recently in a highly successful training shoot with live ammunition …. The soldiers of the Kandak 4 Artillery Mentor Team — Warrant Officer John Lannigan, WO Steph Meinert, Sergeant Steph Houde, Bombardier Matt McCron and (Lieutenant Joshua Barber) — have worked tirelessly for seven months with 4th Company ….”
• Russia to NATO:  “Hey, whaddya doin’, driving the Taliban outta Kandahar into northern Afghanistan?  You think we want THEM as neighbours again?”
• Taliban Propaganda Watch: Usual list o’ alleged attacks in Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, plus a pack o’ lies interview with an alleged Taliban commander in Arghandab.
• Canada’s Special Operations Command (CANSOFCOM) has a new (and first-ever) Colonel Commandant, according to this CF news release.
• Well done to VIA Rail, which is offering discounted rail travel year-round to “Forces’ members and veterans who qualify” – waiting to hear back from VIA regarding what kind of proof you need of former military service to get the discount.

Enjoy your weekend!

A REAL Canadian Hero

Big h/t to Babbling Brooks at The Torch, for spotting this snippet in a National Post story about the Royal Visit during Remembrance Day (red bits highlighted by me):

Cpl. William Kerr was among a group of Canadian soldiers on foot patrol just over a year ago in Afghanistan’s Zhari-Panjwaii district. There had been a skirmish between the Canadians and Taliban in the area a few weeks earlier, and the soldiers were going from one village hut to the next, searching for Taliban observation points. Kerr was the fifth man through the doorway of the last hut the group was to clear, and as he turned to get in position, an IED detonated under him.

As a result of the explosion, Kerr lost both legs above the knee, as well as his left arm just below the elbow.

A year later, he talks about his good fortune: “I found out that the reason everybody survived in the room was that I was standing on top of it when it went off,” he says. “If I were a metre to the left or a metre to the right, we all would have been dead.

“Five guys got to walk out because of me. That’s how I look at it. That’s how I try to keep myself motivated.”

Well done!

Latest on Sudbury War Wounded Fundraising

An update on the campaign to raise funds for an accessible home for Corporal Bill Kerr, who suffered multiple amputations in a 15 Oct 08 IED blast while on foot patrol in Afghanistan.  This, from Northernlife.ca:

“The Home for a Hero project is pleased to report that as a result of the Oct. 4 successful Hike for a Hero event, funds raised for the home total $195,000 to date,” said Derik McArthur, committee chair and president of the Northern Joint Council, RWDSU/UFCW union, in a release last Friday….

Well done organizers, and well done Cpl. Kerr for coming as far as you have in a year.

Good on CDS Walt Natynczyk…

…for foregoing an anniversary reunion at the Royal Military College in order to be in Sudbury for the Hike for a Hero event in support of Corporal Bill Kerr, a Reservist wounded in Afghanistan learning to live with multiple amputations.

During the fundraiser, Corporal Kerr was apparently able to walk further than he has to this point since his injuries.

I know skipping even a prestiguous reunion is what SHOULD be done in this instance, but with some leaders, what SHOULD be done sometimes doesn’t become what IS done.

Well done Cpl. Kerr, and well done Gen. Natynczyk!

USA Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Visits Wounded Canadians…

…during his visit to Canada, with a US military journalist sharing some of their stories.