Hundreds of Canadian soldiers and their allies bid farewell Sunday to Cpl. James Hayward Arnal, whose body was airlifted onto a military plane for his final voyage home.
The 25-year-old Arnal, who was killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar City on Friday, was praised as a born leader.
"(Arnal) was the type of soldier who set the example for all of us to emulate," said Lt.-Col. Dave Corbould, Arnal's battle group commander.
"He was a key motivator -- almost the glue of the platoon and the section -- to which people naturally just joined on to."
Arnal had given up a fairly lucrative career in the information technology sector to join the military four years ago.
Based in Shilo, Man. with the Princess Patricia's Canadian light Infantry, Arnal was on his second tour of Afghanistan, and had volunteered for a third.
Corbould called Arnal fearless.
"He couldn't wait to get on our current task force, and he was already trying to butt in line to get on the next tour," he said.
"That's the kind of adventurous spirit and sense of duty he had."
Arnal became the 88th Canadian soldier to die in the Afghanistan mission.
The solemn ceremony was held on another violent, deadly day in Afghanistan. U.S.-led troops in eastern Afghanistan killed nine Afghan police, believing they were militants. The U.S. troops called in airstrikes and fought four hours with the Afghan forces, each side mistaking the other for militants.
On Saturday night, NATO accidentally killed at least four Afghan civilians in a separate incident. A NATO soldier also was killed in the east.
Canada's new top soldier, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, acknowledged on CTV's Question Period Sunday that the situation in Afghanistan is "worsening."
The comments appear to be backtracking from earlier comments in which Natynczyk said that there wasn't a significant increase of violence this year.
