Sgt. Craig Paul Gillam and Cpl. Robert Thomas James Mitchell were killed during an attack by insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles outside Kandahar City earlier this week.
They had been providing security for road construction about 20 kilometres west of Kandahar when they came under attack.
"(Gillam) was able to shout and warn the others about this and then in about 30 seconds the other units were also attacked. Craig Gillam was able to shoot back, however he was killed in the firing," CTV's Paul Workman reported from Afghanistan on Thursday.
Gillam was the only soldier who had opportunity to shoot back when insurgents tried to sneak up on the observation post to set up an ambush, Maj. Andrew Lussier, Gillam and Mitchell's commander, told the Canadian Press.
Seconds later, the insurgents attacked two other two posts.
Because of Gillam's heroism, the insurgents were forced to retreat, Lussier said after a ramp ceremony at Kandahar Airfield.
"His actions, I'm certain, saved the lives of the remainder of the patrol," said Lussier, leader of a surveillance and reconnaissance squadron of the Royal Canadian Dragoons.
Five out of eight soldiers in the observation post were wounded in Tuesday's attack.
About 1,500 soldiers, most of them Canadian, lined the runway just after sunrise to bid farewell to the two soldiers Thursday morning. Pallbearers carried the flag-draped caskets to an aircraft for the flight to Canada from the Kandahar base.
With 12 Canadians killed between Sept. 3 and Oct. 3, other attacks this week had set troops' nerves on edge, but those were thwarted without casualties.
The area has seen renewed fighting since an operation to take back the same Panjwaii area in September, which officials say have killed hundreds of insurgents. Seven Canadians have died trying to secure the area.
Gillam, who was from South Branch, N.L., and Mitchell, who grew up in Owen Sound, Ont., were both with the Royal Canadian Dragoons, based in Petawawa, Ont.
Gillam was about a month away from a visit home to Petawawa, where he planned to spend time with his wife Maureen and two teenage children.
His aunt, who with his grandparents helped raise him, told the Canadian Press they spoke last Sunday.
He told her that he wanted to leave the Canadian Forces if he was to be sent back to Afghanistan for a second time, she said.
"He didn't want to go," Rita Gillam said through tears as family members gathered at her home. "He wanted to come home."
Gillam recalled how the 20-year Forces veteran came home to South Branch, N.L. every summer and Christmas with his 13-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son to help the family prepare for the area's sometimes harsh winters.
He would haul wood and do repairs to the house near the farm he worked for his grandparents.
"He was like that all his life, even when he was a kid," she said.
"He was a very hard worker and was really devoted to his family."
Reached at her home in Petawawa, Mitchell's grieving widow Leeanne said she and her three children -- ages five, three and two -- were coping with the tragedy.
"Not so bad," she told CP when asked how she was doing.
But she declined further comment.
"I'll be releasing a statement later on and that will give all the information that I'm ready to give out."
Gillam and Mitchell are the 38th and 39th Canadian soldiers to die in Afghanistan since 2002.
06/10/2006 12:07:30 AM
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