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Thread: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

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    Dyslexic agnostic insomniac Senior Member Goofball's Avatar
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    Default "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Following is an article by Christie Blatchford, a reporter for the Globe and Mail. She is without a doubt one of the best war correspondants Canada has ever produced. Her words resonate with me in particular because PPCLI is my former regiment, and it's obvious from her writing that she has taken to time and even put herself into harm's way with the soldiers to truly understand what goes on in the minds of the troops, and why they do what they do.

    She also does a good job of being absolutely, 100% "pro-soldier," without being necessarily pro-war.

    She wrote a book called Fifteen Days that I would highly recommed to anybody.

    At any rate, the article describes what has now become a sad, but heart-warming tradition when Canada's dead are returned home. Ordinary people from all walks of life take the time to show up and show their support for the families by lining the highway overpasses, even in Toronto (our equivalent of NYC) where you wouldn't necessarily expect that sort of display (Toronto actually banned Remembrance Day Celebrations in the 70's).

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...TCH08/TPStory/

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    Standing guard over the return of fallen sons

    From Trenton to Toronto, hundreds of ordinary Canadians turn out to pay their respects to three soldiers killed in a Taliban ambush

    CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
    cblatchford@globeandmail.com
    September 8, 2008

    TRENTON, ONT. -- Killed yesterday by a roadside bomb, Sergeant Prescott Shipway is the 97th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan.
    His name appears in the book I wrote last year about Canadian soldiers, Fifteen Days.
    Like Captain Jon Snyder and Sergeant Jason Boyes, who respectively died June 7 and March 16 this year, Sgt. Shipway was alive when the book was written and first published.
    Though I didn't know any of the three, they made the book either because of something exceptional they did, or because the comrades I did know, and was interviewing, found them exceptional and sang their praises.
    Sgt. Shipway, for instance, was then a member of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the soldiers who were the bomb babies of that 2006 rotation.
    Assigned to a wretched and now-defunct platoon house called Gumbad which was reachable only by two roads, they were sitting ducks and were constantly being blown up. On June 21 that year, a re-supply convoy carrying Captain Martin Larose, a francophone exchange officer from the Vandoos who was the company's second-in-command, and a beloved soldier named Corporal Ryan Elrick, hit a huge bomb.
    Cpt. Larose's ankles were smashed to bits in the blast, but it was Cpl. Elrick who was most seriously wounded.
    Sgt. Shipway, a section commander with 3 Platoon, swung into action. While waiting for a chopper, he got on the satellite phone and spoke to a doctor back at Kandahar Air Field, who talked him and a couple of other soldiers through the difficult task of getting tourniquets on the bloodied remnants of Cpl. Elrick's legs. They saved, if not the young man's legs, his life, and the sergeant was mentioned in dispatches for his stellar and composed conduct that day.
    And now Sgt. Shipway, on his second tour to Afghanistan, is dead himself.
    They are the shadows on my heart, these soldiers. I didn't know them in the flesh (though I remember Capt. Snyder's sunlit face) but I know well some of those who served alongside them, and feel oddly connected to them all. It is part of the enduring hold the Canadian soldier has upon me. I can hardly bear reading or watching any news about the troops, and neither can I stop.
    I want to go back to Kandahar for a fifth time, yet fear going back because it won't be the same. I haven't even been able to read my own book, now out for a year, and it took weeks before I could even look at the pictures.
    Ridiculously, I miss people I hardly know.
    So it was that I drove to Canadian Forces Base Trenton on Saturday for only the second repatriation ceremony I've ever attended, asked to come by a relative of one of the three soldiers killed last week in a Taliban ambush.
    The CF Airbus carrying the bodies of Corporals Andrew Grenon and Mike Seggie and Private Chad Horn touched down at 6:48 p.m.
    The ceremony is always brief, and this was no different.
    The caskets, carefully wrapped in Canadian flags, were brought off the plane one at a time, carried to a waiting hearse, at which point grieving relatives were led on to the tarmac and over the sound of the idling engines, three separate sets of wrenching sobs could be heard.
    First came Cpl. Grenon of Windsor (I might have been in his presence too; in 2006; he was on his second tour), then Cpl. Seggie of Winnipeg and Pte. Horn of Calgary. All were members of the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Shilo, Man.
    Collectively, the three young men - respectively 23, 21 and 21 - lived a grand total of 65 years, what used to be the normal retirement age in this country.
    There were individual mourners older than that on the tarmac, including an old man with a mauve hanky who tried mightily but could not stop weeping or wiping his face. There was a baby in a stroller - I think Mike Seggie's little nephew, Carson, with his soother - and two wheelchairs and at least one pregnant young woman, dozens of crying boy cousins, mothers wearing sunglasses on pale faces, military dads and uncles like Jim and Tom Seggie, former long-serving Patricias themselves, standing ramrod straight and saluting the caskets.
    Unusually, because the battle group led by the 2PPCLI is ending its tour in Afghanistan, also on the plane were 108 returning troops in their desert camos, some of whom would have fought alongside the dead soldiers.
    Greeting the dead and the living were Governor-General Michaëlle Jean, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson, who is now the honorary colonel-in-chief of the Patricias, and Chief of Defence Staff General Walt Natynczyk.
    An hour and 35 minutes later, the official ceremony was over, the hearses and long line of black funeral cars speeding off the tarmac.
    This is when the real repatriation began.
    Lined along the fence ringing the air field were hundreds of ordinary Canadians, who waited quietly, without the ability to see anything of what transpired, to pay their respects to the soldiers.
    The cortege had a 15-minute head start on me, but by driving at breakneck speed, I was able to catch up with it pretty quickly and get close enough to its tail end that I was able to see what the families would have seen.
    Dozens of overpasses along Highway 401 to Toronto were still ablaze with lights and people, Canadian flags and homemade signs.
    In small towns and cities - Port Hope, Cobourg, Newcastle, Newtonville, Courtice, Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax and Pickering - and all the way through to the Don Valley Parkway, where the cortege heads south to the coroner's office downtown, there is now a format for such occasions.
    The local fire departments send out some trucks, which park on the overpasses; at either end, traffic comes to a halt. Side roads - in some places even the sides of the 401 itself - fill with cars as people park and make their way to the bridges so that they will be seen. Well-used banners and flags are hung from the overpasses, so that they too will be seen.
    Everyone understands very well the importance of being visible to the families in the black cars in the speeding cortege.
    On Saturday night, the sun was down but not quite gone, a half-moon in the clear, rosy sky, the people on the overpasses just silhouettes to those of us below, slowing to watch. They were providing a civilian version of what in military jargon is called over-watch, solemnly presiding over the safe return of their sons.

    "What, have Canadians run out of guns to steal from other Canadians and now need to piss all over our glee?"

    - TSM

  2. #2
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
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    Default Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    You know, I respect you but this is the Backroom.

    So, how many of those ordinary Canadians that showed up also fled north from the States calling U.S. soldiers baby killers? It’s OK for Canadians to kill children and not us?

    Edit: OK, feeling a little guilty for that. They do have my sympathies. I'm at work so I don't want to read the article and get all emotional.
    Last edited by Vladimir; 09-08-2008 at 20:13.


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    Arena Senior Member Crazed Rabbit's Avatar
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    Default Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Goofball

    At any rate, the article describes what has now become a sad, but heart-warming tradition when Canada's dead are returned home. Ordinary people from all walks of life take the time to show up and show their support for the families by lining the highway overpasses, even in Toronto (our equivalent of NYC) where you wouldn't necessarily expect that sort of display (Toronto actually banned Remembrance Day Celebrations in the 70's).
    I've read just a bit of the article so far and it seems good. But I think a better comparison for Toronto as you describe it would be San Francisco, not NYC.

    CR
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    Dyslexic agnostic insomniac Senior Member Goofball's Avatar
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    Default Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
    I've read just a bit of the article so far and it seems good. But I think a better comparison for Toronto as you describe it would be San Francisco, not NYC.

    CR
    Actually, Vancouver and San Fran would be a much better comparison. Toronto has too many guns and not enough gays to be compared to San Fran.
    "What, have Canadians run out of guns to steal from other Canadians and now need to piss all over our glee?"

    - TSM

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    Dyslexic agnostic insomniac Senior Member Goofball's Avatar
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    Default Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    You know, I respect you but this is the Backroom.

    So, how many of those ordinary Canadians that showed up also fled north from the States calling U.S. soldiers baby killers? It’s OK for Canadians to kill children and not us?
    Not really sure I understand your point, or your math. If you are suggesting that a statistically significant portion of Canada's population is made up of draft dodgers left over from the Vietnam War, and therefore any group of 100 Canadians or more would automatically include them or their decendants, I would suggest that you are smoking and not sharing. I say this as the estimates are that 20,000 - 30,000 draft eligible American males immigrated to Canada during that period. Coincidentally, that is roughly the same amount of Canadians who are estimated to have volunteered to join the U.S. armed forces and fight in Vietnam.

    So quit your %$*ing whining...

    Have a nice day.
    Last edited by Goofball; 09-08-2008 at 22:12.
    "What, have Canadians run out of guns to steal from other Canadians and now need to piss all over our glee?"

    - TSM

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    TexMec Senior Member Louis VI the Fat's Avatar
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    Default Re : Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    So, how many of those ordinary Canadians that showed up also fled north from the States calling U.S. soldiers baby killers? It’s OK for Canadians to kill children and not us?

    Edit: OK, feeling a little guilty for that. They do have my sympathies. I'm at work so I don't want to read the article and get all emotional.
    I think there has been a shift, globally, in the public treatment of veterans.

    In the sixties, the soldiers took the blame. 'Babykillers', indeed. In Canada, the US, Europe, erm...don't know about elsewhere. Nowadays, a returning soldier is seen as just a guy who did his duty / job / calling. Any blame is laid with the politicians, not the individual soldier. Anti-war does not equal anti-soldier anymore.

    Whatever one may think about that - I, for one, am not willing to give soldiers a free pass - there's little point in singling out any one country for maltreatment of soldiers and veterans. Opinion shifted along the same lines pretty much everywhere.
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    TexMec Senior Member Louis VI the Fat's Avatar
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    Default Re : "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Goofball
    %$*ing whining
    I am still trying to figure out how to parody your writing style for that other thread. At last, some ammunition.
    Anything unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
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    Bt why woulf we uy lsn'y Staraft - Fragony
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  8. #8
    Chieftain of the Pudding Race Member Evil_Maniac From Mars's Avatar
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    Default Re: Re : Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
    In the sixties, the soldiers took the blame. 'Babykillers', indeed. In Canada, the US, Europe, erm...don't know about elsewhere. Nowadays, a returning soldier is seen as just a guy who did his duty / job / calling. Any blame is laid with the politicians, not the individual soldier. Anti-war does not equal anti-soldier anymore.
    There was a British soldier who just recently was refused a room at a hotel when he showed his military ID card.

    I agree with most of your points, except for one. Being anti-war can be anti-soldier, especially in a roundabout fashion. If you take a way the weapons and equipment necessary for a soldier to properly fight a war, then send them to a war, lose an election, change your stance on the war completely and become anti-war, you're anti-soldier. When people die because you haven't provided them with the proper equipment to fight their battles, you are anti-soldier. If a soldier dies because you're trying to save money, you are anti-soldier.

    Yes, I am talking about the Liberal Party of Canada, just for the record.

  9. #9
    Hope guides me Senior Member Hosakawa Tito's Avatar
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    Default Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    I think there has been a shift, globally, in the public treatment of veterans.
    Not so fast Louis. How'd you like these showing up at your loved ones funeral. Sickos
    I don't think my thoughts and actions would be very "Christian" toward these folks.
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    This comment is witty! Senior Member LittleGrizzly's Avatar
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    Default Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    In fairness Hosa i think louis was talking about widespread hatred for solidiers, generally it being mixed in with an anti-war feeling so extending sometimes to a decent % of the population, whereas these days solidiers losses are mourned whether pro or anti war, those guys just seem to be a bunch of nutters whose compliant is nothing to even do with war

    TBH if they demonstrated at a funeral of one of my miltiary relatives i would be tempted to return the favour (though i would probably feel too guilty to go through with it....)
    In remembrance of our great Admin Tosa Inu, A tireless worker with the patience of a saint. As long as I live I will not forget you. Thank you for everything!

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    TexMec Senior Member Louis VI the Fat's Avatar
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    Default Re : Re: "Standing guard over the return of fallen sons"

    Quote Originally Posted by Hosakawa Tito View Post
    Not so fast Louis. How'd you like these showing up at your loved ones funeral. Sickos
    I don't think my thoughts and actions would be very "Christian" toward these folks.
    Daisies indeed. I can't believe that theses Phelps characters get away with all this. I hear they were even allowed to send one member to Beijing.


    Two differences:

    They are a fringe group (or cult, or extended family). Publicly condemned and with little sympathy in mainstream America.
    They are anti-gay and take this out on servicemen, instead of being anti-war and taking that out on servicemen.
    Anything unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
    Texan by birth, woodpecker by the grace of God
    I would be the voice of your conscience if you had one - Brenus
    Bt why woulf we uy lsn'y Staraft - Fragony
    Not everything
    blue and underlined is a link


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