[SprCForr]

R.I.P.

My condolences to family and friends.

[img]http://www.canadaka.net/modules/My_Uploads/user_folders/SprCForr/sm_salute[1].gif[/img]

[Johnny_Utah]

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

Johnny_Utah Johnny_Utah:

What a sad day for the Canadian Military and Canadians..
Canada Mission, Commitment to the people of Afghanistan will continue as Canada doesn't cut and run..

It's also very sad the small number of condolences this thread has generated.

There was a thread with a link to the Canadian Military's website where you could send a message of thanks or even condolences. That would be a good way to say how sorry one is for the loss of Canada's Heroes..

[Scape]

They are not numbers but their numbers are growing. An enormous sacrifice that humbles. Bless them.

[Gunbunny]

For my friends:

Goodbye my friends, I'll miss the conversations that we held and the times that we fought side by side. The times in the smoke pit exchanging laughs and tears. They will be forever missed.

Rest in Peace.

[DrCaleb]

My condolences if you knew those men GB. My sympathies offered anyhow. They were good men, and died doing the job they loved.

Lest We Forget.

[Wullu]

I know some have mentioned that they knew not what to say in a situation like this. I know that I felt the need to post to it but also knew that whatever I wrote would never be good enough. With that in mind I think that this Lady nailed what a lot of us are feeling.

$1:

Corporal called home only hours before death

One day before his armoured car was struck by a roadside bomb, Cpl. Chris Reid telephoned his parents from Afghanistan. After a dangerous six-month mission, he was only weeks from coming home.
"We were fortunate enough to speak to Christopher just yesterday afternoon," his mother, Angela, said yesterday. "One of our parting words to him yesterday was to continue to be on high alert."
In the pre-dawn hours yesterday, Reid's parents were awakened by a military chaplain at their door, who told them their son had been killed.
"We are shocked, saddened and we are lonely already," said his mother, who stood stoically in her flower garden outside the family's home yesterday, surrounded by her husband, Tom, and a large gathering of friends and relatives, reading a prepared statement to reporters.
"We are truly thankful to have such a son as Christopher," she said. "He will be in our hearts forever."
Reid, 34, grew up in this farming town in central Nova Scotia.
After several years as a militia member in the Nova Scotia Highlanders, he joined the regular army in 1995 and was stationed in Calgary and Edmonton with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. He owned a chestful of medals, from tours in Bosnia, Croatia, and military service in the Arctic.
A bachelor, he loved taking his Toyota four-by-four on off-road adventures with friends from the army. "He enjoyed life to the full, both in recreation and in work," his mother said.
"Chris ... kept us updated as best he could as to what his duties involved.
"The working conditions are terrible. They're working in conditions of 50 degrees-plus Celsius, living in dusty tents, and when on patrol they're sleeping on the ground with snakes and scorpions," she said.
In spite of the hardships, she said her son "truly believed" in Canada's Afghan mission.
"He was doing what he loved, and was doing it with the guys he loved and trusted," his mother said. "We are very proud of our son and the effort he was making to improve the quality of life for Afghans."

The last paragraph says it all for me.

[DrCaleb]

Wullu Wullu:

The last paragraph says it all for me.

Indeed. I don't know if anyone remebers this one, when friendly fire killed 4 good men:

$1:

UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British". The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.

This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main ... /ixop.html