Before he left to join Task Force Afghanistan last year, a senior officer told me he expected 50 deaths on the mission.
He said it with no callousness, no hubris or machismo. It was just a fact.
It wasn't a cold, mechanical fact, though. He knew the men and women, all of them. And he cared for them very much, each and every one. There was no level of acceptable losses in his mind. Every death, every wounding would be a tragedy.
He knew that, too.
Anything and everything he could do to ensure all our troops came home, he would do.
He will be pleased -- in a professional sense -- when he and the rest of Edmonton's Princess Pats come home over the next few weeks that only 15, instead of 50, were killed in Afghanistan. But he will feel no joy. (A Canadian diplomat also died in an attack in January).
Only 15.
Only: What a cruel word.
None of the 15 soldiers killed on the recent mission are "only" a statistic to the parents and spouses they leave behind. None are only an operational estimate to the children who will never again know their strong and comforting embrace, the weekends camping, the spontaneous moments wrestling on grass in the backyard, the reassuring voice at bedtime.
None of the 15 -- including the four killed Thursday -- will be only a footnote in the mission report to the brothers and sisters who will grieve their absence.
About a dozen years ago I interviewed a woman whose brother had died with the Canadian army in Korea. She still set a place in his honour at each family Christmas and Easter meal -- and he had died 40 years before.
Such is the hole the deaths of each of the 15 fallen will leave in hundreds of lives across the country.
The girlfriends and boyfriends who will wonder what might have been. The lifelong friends who will feel a hollowness that will sneak up on them at unexpected times, for years to come.
Maybe, eventually, they will learn to go months or even years between empty feelings. Then at a barbecue or ballgame they will be reminded of their deceased friend by an activity they once enjoyed together.
Or maybe a profile in a crowd will look like their lost comrade, or just the scent in the air will trigger the memory of a shared laugh, and all the emotions will come flooding back.
No more beers after pickup hockey on Friday nights. No more tinkering with an old sports car that is taking up too much space in the garage. No more passionate debates about who was the best rock band of the 1980s.
Each of the 15 deaths suffered on this mission is a tragedy on a human scale.
My friend the senior officer knows that, and that is why when he comes home soon, it will be with a sense of professional pride, but a heavy heart.
His feelings will be common among the returning members of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
They will, and justifiably so, be proud of what they accomplished.
Thanks to their willingness to put their lives on the line, Afghanistan is on its way to becoming a more stable country.
Ordinary Afghans will soon be secure enough to begin rebuilding their nation, which -- thanks to nearly 30 years of civil war, Soviet occupation, terrorist training and extremist government -- has a long way still to go to "normal."
And thanks to the sacrifices of the Princess Pats, Canada is a safer nation. Their willingness to fight terrorists and their supporters on far-off, dangerous and inhospitable battlefields means we are less likely to have to confront those terrorists here.
But it has all come at a heavy cost.
You can read the feelings that will be common among the returning Pats in the words of Angela Reid, the mother of Corporal Christopher Reid of Truro, N.S., one of the soldiers killed Thursday.
From the prim garden of her Truro home, Reid said, "We are shocked, saddened and we are lonely already. We are truly thankful to have had a son such as Christopher. He will be in our hearts forever."
She and her husband then reiterated their support for Canada's Afghan mission.
Edmonton's returning soldiers, too, will be mostly supportive of our mission.
But like the Reids, they will be shocked and saddened and lonely already for the comrades who will not return.
They will be glad to be home. They will marvel at how much their kids have grown while they have been away.
They will remember how much they love the way their spouse's mouth curls up at one end when she (or he) smiles.
They will sleep in their own beds, watch their own TVs and be reminded what a luxury it is to drive the streets without having to watch for roadside bombs or crouching terrorists with grenade launchers.
They will go to the convenience store at 2:00 a.m. just because they can.
But they will enjoy all these small thrills quietly, with reservation, because they know for 15 other families, it will never again be the way it was.
PUBLICATION: The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
DATE: 2006.08.08
COLUMN: Lorne Gunter
BYLINE: Lorne Gunter
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