First Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment is on its way home to Petawawa, to replaced by the 2nd battalion, RCR from Gagetown New Brunswick. CTV's Paul Workman met with some of the soldiers at Patrol Base Wilson, a remote base west of Kandahar City:
A Chinook helicopter beats its way to the ground sending a cloud of dust and stones in all directions. It lands in the pitch of night, under a full moon, and as the tailgate drops, a line of soldiers comes running out, struggling under the weight of their packs and the force of the rotors.
Then with a signal from inside, another line of soldiers runs toward the chopper, whooping and yelling, some waving their weapons. After six months in Afghanistan, their tour of duty is over, and this is the first leg home. They've survived what will one day be remembered as "Canada's Afghan War." In particular, they've survived weeks and months living a bit like rats in one of the most inhospitable camps on the front line. They call it "Vimy."
Hours earlier, Private Jacob Williams was standing around, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, killing time as best he could before the flight back to Kandahar. He looked skinny and worn out, with dirty hair, dirty face, dirty uniform, an engaging humor and years of battlefield insight packed into six months. And he's only 21.
"It was a place of hell," he says, with a little forced laughter. "This has been a rough tour. Very rough."
What do you mean I ask? "It reminded me of Vietnam," he says, "not that I've ever been there, I've just seen the pictures."
During last summer's heavy fighting, he went 52 days without bathing. There was no time and no possibility when you're rushing to fill thousands of sandbags in 40-degree heat, with an enemy constantly testing your defences, hoping to make a lucky hit with an RPG. And many times they did.
Vimy is more officially known as Strong Point Centre, a crude outpost put together with maybe fifty thousand sandbags, connecting a series of trenches and bunkers, some for sleeping, some for watching the enemy. Think of a sepia photograph from the Great War, and 90 years later, you're there. Bunkers held up with strong wooden beams where you can't straighten up, mud floors, mud walls, and dust everywhere. There's a crude shower now and a crude toilet and the waste gets burned in an open fire-pit.
Three wooden crosses stand as a memorial to soldiers killed there last summer, yet there are also touches of military humor, men's humour. A black bra and a pair of women's pink underwear have been tacked up over the snack table. They've done what they can to make an impossible place comfortable with hot meals brought in twice a week, but overall it's harsh, tedious and dangerous.
There are two more "Vimy's" to the north and west of here that aren't much better.
"This is all the training I've done my whole life, right here," says Sergeant Jim Butler, as he leads me into his sleeping quarters. He was among the first replacements to settle in. "All we had to do was a little cosmetics here and there, the rest was all done."
There are seven or eight canvas cots inside, no electricity, heavy cross beams that can make a good gash in your head if you hit one. There's no privacy and a lantern that doesn't work. But he says, with a thick mud wall on one side, and layers of sandbags on the roof, at least it's safe.
"Nothing's getting in here that's for sure. You don't have to worry about rockets or RPG's, just the critters."
Many of those arriving expected it to be much worse. They'd heard the stories, seen the pictures, talked to their friends who'd been here. I stop and chat with Mark Baisley, the battalion's regimental sergeant major.
"A lot of the young guys, that's what they compare it to. They see the old photos and look around at the amount of sandbags and the trench system, and yeah, to them it's Vimy Ridge. You think, hey, 90 years later and we're still using sandbags for protection. There's something to be said for that."
For a lot of soldiers there's a sense of solidarity here with the veterans of past wars, from all the movies they've seen, the books they've read and the courses they've taken. This is what real war is all about -- living roug, and facing the enemy. Except the enemy in Afghanistan is often a faceless, invisible fighter who shoots and then slips away to strike again.
Before he left on the helicopter, I asked a young corporal, Jordan Woodacre what advice he passed on to the new troops coming in, who are as unprepared for life in the trenches of Afghanistan as he was six months ago.
"Stay sharp, don't get complacent," he says.
And what of his own experience? "I've got a much better understanding of what it means to be a combat soldier now."
