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6. The Grind (2007–2010) · The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan

• ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: [Music begins].I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, and this is The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan. In September 2006, Canadians led Operation Medusa. It was the largest combat engagement Canada had fought since the Korean War. Twelve Canadian soldiers died. And hundreds of Taliban were killed. It was a tactical victory, and while it didn’t end the war, it did change it. Taliban forces were still outmatched in open battle with coalition forces. So, their tactics shifted. They concentrated on guerilla insurgency, which was intended to put constant yet unpredictable pressure on NATO troops and Afghan civilians. [Music ends]. DAVID FRASER: Medusa was that turning point in how the mission was going to be run. TREMONTI: Then Brigadier-General David Fraser was NATO commander in southern Afghanistan during Operation Medusa. FRASER: It was a shift. The Taliban after that didn’t attack us like they did before, which was in direct gunfire. They went to the insurgency — IEDs. That was the big change. It became more dangerous for all of us. ANDREW BURTCH:  It wasn’t like you were operating in a region where most people were happy to have you there and, just, there was the occasional spoiler who might go and put a landmine out in the road. These were in hostile territory with an embedded enemy that was cleverly devising new ways to get at and kill Canadians. TREMONTI: Andrew Burtch, the Post-1945 Historian at the Canadian War Museum, is our guide this season. BURTCH: Every time you left the base, you had to be watchful. If there was a route, for example, that the Taliban knew that you would use, they would seed it with IEDs knowing that the patrol would have to stop to dismantle it — and then they might plant a secondary one that would go off when they went to address the first one. TREMONTI: The escalating deadliness of IEDs struck home April 8, Easter Sunday, 2007. Hotel Company, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment, was escorting massive NATO convoys into Helmand province as part of Operation Achilles. They were due to rotate back to Kandahar Airfield to rest. Navigating the terrain meant crossing a karez — an ancient underground irrigation system that looks like a series of deep holes in the desert floor. The patrol found a four-metre gap between two of the holes and made the decision to cross it. They had used that passage before. What they didn’t know was that the Taliban had placed a pressure-plate bomb in the gap, likely within the previous few days. When the LAV crossed it, the blast struck directly under the troop compartment. Six soldiers were killed instantly: Sergeant Donald Lucas, Corporal Aaron Williams, Private Kevin Kennedy, Private David Greenslade, Corporal Christopher Stannix, and Corporal Brent Poland. Two others were wounded. DENNIS LEBLANC:  They went back the same route and we took another route and it, it happened. And I mean, there’s nothing you can do and I know that now. TREMONTI: Master Corporal Dennis LeBlanc was a Crew Commander with that same battalion that day. He was lucky. His own group had taken a different route. LEBLANC: You know, it’s just the nature of war. I lost a good friend. Callsign was 22 Bravo, Hotel Company. We lost six guys in one day. And it, that, that really hit home. You know, one who was a mentor to me, Sergeant Donny Lucas. I had worked with him back in the Battalion before we deployed. And then when we had the ramp ceremony and, you know, loading all those, our brothers on the plane, it was, you know, it changed something in me. And then after that, it wasn’t just one ramp ceremony. It seemed like every other week we were loading someone on the plane. And, you know, that’s tough. And I still can remember that. It hurts. TREMONTI: IEDs had been killing Canadians since 2003. And this model of LAV had been an improvement on the soft-skinned Iltis jeeps and G-wagons used earlier in the mission. Soldiers trusted it with their lives. BURTCH: The improvised explosive device — or IED — is shorthand for a whole variety of different sorts of materials. They are called IEDs because they are not what you would typically encounter in previous battles where you’d be fighting. You might be attacked with rockets or mortars, aerial bombs, land mines, anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines. Basically the work of the insurgency is taking whatever they have to hand — be it conventional munitions or something that they cook up themselves — and wiring it in such a way as to detonate and destroy whatever the target is. TREMONTI: The Taliban often used common household items you’d find in any Afghan home, like pressure cookers or yellow cooking oil jugs. They would fill them with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, or other explosives, and bury them in the road. The result was a massive explosion that could damage or destroy an armoured vehicle. And these IEDs were relatively small, portable, easy to hide. Examples of IED components are on display at the Canadian War Museum. BURTCH: So that meant that if you were going out on foot patrol, you had to watch for things like piles of rubbish. You had to watch for things like disrupted pieces of earth or anything that could be used. People had to have their head on a swivel all the time. CHUCK COTE: Well we were monitoring that whole operation through the OMLT and it was quite high times at that point. TREMONTI: Warrant Officer Chuck Cote spoke on the phone to the Canadian War Museum in 2021. He was on his third tour of Afghanistan in 2008, with the OMLT — the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team. The OMLT’s job was to train and mentor Afghan National Army soldiers, living and patrolling alongside them. It was some of the most dangerous work of the whole mission. June 1, Cote’s group and their Afghan partners moved to secure a suspected Taliban compound. They received word that a sergeant from a neighbouring platoon was wounded by small arms fire. COTE: Every day. Every day there was something. And, you know, like every time we went out. There were very few missions that we didn’t go out and we didn’t make contact with the enemy. TREMONTI: Cote’s team was asked to provide a blocking position so the other unit could evacuate their wounded soldier. Major Mark Campbell was with Cote. So was Private Anthony Price. They took positions spaced out along a wall. They didn’t know that they were standing near an IED. COTE: And I can see Mark shift his weight. And after that I was 10 feet in the air. The blast went through my side and up through my face and blinded me and went underneath my ballistics. I basically, you know, woke up blind against a wall, a far wall, just in front. And after that, Jake Patton provided first aid for me and then we began the evac out of there. TREMONTI: The IED had been buried near the wall. Shrapnel tore through the side of Cote’s face and into his eyes. He was temporarily blinded. Major Campbell’s legs were destroyed. When Cote came to, he was blind and disoriented. Private Price was also wounded. COTE: My Afghan Sergeant Major was holding my hand crying. I was trying to take my water bottle out of my gear but he wouldn’t let me because he didn’t know what my wounds were. And he was crying, and Jake came up and bandaged me up. I can hear Anthony screaming — he was going into shock — and I was asking Jake what was going on. He said, “I need someone to help.” I said, “Listen, I can walk. He can’t. He will be my eyes and I’ll take him.” TREMONTI: Together, while still under fire, they moved toward the evacuation point. Everyone survived. After almost two weeks of recovery, Cote returned to his unit at Masum Ghar. He’d barely settled back into operations when the Taliban launched one of their most audacious attacks yet. [Music begins]. June 13, 2008, a Taliban fighter drove a fuel tanker packed with explosives to the gates of the Sarpoza Prison in the west end of Kandahar City. [Music ends]. It was detonated, creating a massive breach that freed about 1,000 prisoners, hundreds of them Taliban fighters. Cote was with his OMLT team in Panjwaii, about 30 kilometres from the Prison. COTE: We got the news of the prison break. And suddenly we went on to high alert. Our Deputy Commander of the OMLT basically told us to ramp up an ad hoc force of Canadians and head down to the Arghandab to chase them down and sort that situation out. TREMONTI: Within days of the prison break, hundreds of the escaped fighters had moved north into the Arghandab district, 15 kilometres from Kandahar City. On June 18, Canadian and Afghan forces launched an attack on the district that lasted less than two days. The area was cleared, and no Canadians were killed — but everyone knew the Taliban would be back. BURTCH: The insurgency is gaining some momentum and conducting itself in a way that was undermining the broader objectives of the coalition, which is to say, you know, sowing chaos and undermining confidence in the ability of NATO and its partners to deliver security in that area. The end result is a greater number of killed and wounded, and a steady drumbeat of bad news coming out of Afghanistan. TREMONTI: By the middle of 2008, the routes into Kandahar City were some of the most dangerous stretches of ground in the districts. In particular, Route Fosters, which connected Canadian bases and combat outposts to Kandahar City and the villages in between. Master Corporal Ryan Flavelle, a Signaller with the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, spent the early months of his tour trying to keep that route open. RYAN FLAVELLE: It wasn’t really a road in the sense that we think of roads in Canada there. I mean, there were paths and there were roads and there was like ways that you could drive and get a donkey through. Absolutely, that was a thing. But they weren’t like, Highway 2, the 401. There wasn’t like a straight line that was, road-y, you know. Anywhere. Every road turned. TREMONTI: For the first two months of his rotation, Flavelle’s combat team ran what they called “ping-pong operations,” going back and forth over the route trying to deny the Taliban the chance to plant IEDs. But the winding nature of the road itself created blind spots at every turn. FLAVELLE: It was literally an impossibility. Because sure, you could drive up and down that road till the cows come home. But as soon as you made a turn, you lost your ability to control that section of road. So the Taliban just chilled out — “oh, there they go.” Pop out. They need two minutes to emplace an IED, if that. Bingo-Bango, right? And I mean, with a capital Bango. That was our tour for basically the whole thing. TREMONTI: The route had become a deadly labyrinth filled with IEDs. Travel anywhere in the districts was onerous and time consuming. BURTCH: It’s an enormous physical load because the terrain was so demanding, but also an enormous psychological load that was placed on the Canadians. And it also meant that what should be a fairly short trip from point A to point B often required zigging and zagging and going over and breaking through a wall or climbing over here or wading through a wadi — and all the unpleasantness that that would involve — just to get to a fight, and then you’d have to come back from that. So, I can’t imagine the load that this would have placed on people over a period of months. But also, I can’t help but admire that people, notwithstanding all these risks, continue to go out beyond the wire and take on these risks. TREMONTI: Some soldiers didn’t even have to leave their compound to run the risk of getting killed by an IED. On October 22, 2009, Corporal Hilliard Kahpeaysewat celebrated his birthday with a call home to his mother in Saskatchewan. He was stationed in Spin Boldak, near the Pakistan border. HILLIARD KAHPEAYSEWAT: So, I had the satellite phone, 5 a.m. in the morning, but it’s the next day over here in Canada, like it’s 5 in the evening here. So, I phoned my mom and I’m telling her, you know, “I’m sad. I’m outside in the dark here and overlooking the villages.” But at the same time, below, the guy comes crawling — and he had an IED. He was coming to the gate. And it went off while I’m talking to my mom. Hell breaks loose. Everybody opened up in that area. I could hear my mom: “Come home now. What was that? Oh my God.” I put her through a lot of trauma just by making that phone call. ELEANOR TAYLOR:  What I didn’t really appreciate was how stark the transition is from the farming season to the fighting season, which happened almost immediately upon our arrival. TREMONTI: Major Eleanor Taylor was an Infantry Officer with Charles Company, 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment. In 2010, she deployed to Panjwaii district, commanding troops at patrol base Sperwan Ghar. She thought she had arrived fully trained to cope with the grinding threat of IEDs. TAYLOR: The training that we received before going into Afghanistan was remarkable. It was the best training I’d ever received in my whole army career. And there were times during that training experience that I felt, this is way overdone. There’s no way these kinds of things are all going to happen in this kind of rapid succession. And so, I’m glad we’re doing them, it’s great to over-prepare, it’s good drills for the company. But these things will not happen in this way. And what I experienced was that they happened not only in that way, but with more complexity and often in a more rapid pace. TREMONTI: Charles Company was barely on the ground when an IED struck within a kilometre of their patrol base. Petty Officer Douglas Blake was killed, and intermittent attacks continued. TAYLOR: And we had a series of ambushes, all happening in a synchronized way across the battle group. I mean, we managed it. The troops performed admirably. Our battle group headquarters performed exceptionally well, but it was a difficult transition period. TREMONTI: Major Taylor had served in places like Kosovo and Bosnia. She knew what a challenging, but conventional, deployment looked like. But nothing had prepared her for the pace of Panjwaii. TAYLOR: There were days when we were dispersed as a company in multiple different positions. And all of those positions were in some kind of combat or engagement at the same time. One of our checkpoints would be managing a mortar strike. Another one would be managing an IED strike. Another one would be in the middle of an ambush while somebody else or I was in a key leader engagement. And all of these things were happening at the same time. TREMONTI: By now, the nature of the war had shifted. The large set-piece battles of previous years, like Operation Anaconda and Operation Medusa, had given way to a relentless, grinding campaign of dodging IEDs and avoiding ambushes. TAYLOR: We were just living it. I didn’t feel constantly stressed. We always knew there was a possibility of an ambush. Whenever we were dealing with an IED, we knew that there was a high likelihood that there was going to be an ambush. We had overwhelming firepower, so we knew we could win the fight if we could engage in the fight. But the fear was always that we were not going to have the opportunity to really engage — that they would strike and run, and we would be dealing with the consequences. So for me, the greatest anxiety I had was that I wasn’t going to do my job well. Like, it was far greater than the possibility of dying in that environment. It was that I would let down these people who I cared for deeply. That was my biggest fear, is that I was going to screw it up. TREMONTI: Near the end of her tour, Major Taylor was in the command post with an embedded journalist. After months of IEDs, ambushes, pressure plates hidden in the dirt, she was threatened by one of the oldest weapons in any arsenal. A mortar round landed directly on top of their command post. Luckily, it didn’t detonate. TAYLOR: It was just a brush with death. We should have been dead. And we weren’t. But that was what a lot of the experience of Afghanistan was. There were a lot of remarkably close calls. I don’t think anyone deployed outside the wire there and didn’t have some kind of remarkably close call. But yes, that did happen. And once again, it happened, we kind of all made eye contact acknowledging how lucky we all were, and then just moved on. TREMONTI: But some of the Taliban’s most effective weapons never made a sound. They were called night letters, an intimidation tactic to discourage civilians from cooperating with foreign forces. BURTCH: So if there was evidence of progress in a community where things were kind of going the coalition’s way, all of a sudden people of prominence or locals might get a letter delivered to their door at night that would say: “Stop what you’re doing or we’ll kill you. We know where you live. We know where your families live.” TREMONTI: Because many villagers could not read, these threats were read aloud by local mullahs or elders at mosques. They were designed to spread fear across entire villages. School attendance would drop. Contractors would quit. Community leaders would go silent. BURTCH: Which would curtail some of that progress that was being made, or intimidate, or drive people out of the region who were perhaps in a position to improve things like security and governance on the ground level and build credible partnerships with the international forces. So there’s a whole variety of tactics that were being employed with the aim of undermining or destroying the NATO presence in Afghanistan in these years. While at the same time, the Taliban is targeting not just coalition forces but increasingly targeting the people with whom the coalition would work. So that extends to just every community that was along the route, but as well as people who were allies of the Karzai government, people who were opponents of the Taliban, that were increasingly targeted for assassination. LEBLANC: Every time there would be an IED strike, well there’s civilians everywhere. So they’re not only attacking us — which we’re the intended target — but the regular people that are just trying to live their lives. TREMONTI: As Crew Commander, Master Corporal Dennis LeBlanc spent his tour moving through some of the most dangerous terrain in Kandahar province, driving senior leadership into the field. He saw how the war affected civilians. LEBLANC: The shop owners, children playing on the road, like, you know, they get caught up. And that really, it sticks with me, and that’s one of the things, one of the traumas that I’ve had to process over the years. To this day, it does hurt me to see an injured kid or anything like that. TREMONTI: At the end of 2009, President Barack Obama had approved a surge of 30,000 American forces. And Kandahar, Canada’s area of operations, was the focus of their deployment. BURTCH: Essentially, there is the daily challenge of security that starts off bad and gradually becomes worse by the time you get to 2010. As more American troops flood into Kandahar, there’s also a greater number of Taliban and other allies who are involved in countering that presence, because they also want to continue their campaign and succeed in their campaign in Kandahar. TREMONTI: On the ground, the surge also meant more roads to clear and walk, therefore more risks in general. When the worst happened, nearby troops provided emergency medical care in the field. Many were brought to the Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit at Kandahar Airfield. Canada commanded this NATO facility from February 2006 to October 2009, then provided personnel under U.S. Navy command until 2011. More than 850 Canadian medical personnel rotated through the facility. By the time Canada handed over command, it had evolved into one of the world’s busiest trauma centres, achieving what’s believed to be the highest survival rate ever recorded for victims of war. NICOLE MAHONEY: We have a CAT scan, we have diagnostic imaging, so we do have ultrasound, X-ray, we have Ors, we have ICU, the critical care unit, we have the ward for patients to go to, we have dental — everything’s there. TREMONTI: Captain Nicole Mahoney was a physiotherapist at the Role 3 hospital from October 2009 to May 2010. She was interviewed by phone in August 2010. MAHONEY: We see a lot of head traumas. Blast injuries, depending if they were in a vehicle or if they were on foot and if they lost a limb. There’s always that chance obviously, but if they are in a vehicle, or if they were far enough away from when they were on foot from the landmine or whatever that exploded, and they were just thrown — either head injuries, a lot of neck, back and headaches. That’s what you see the most of. TREMONTI: Some of the most devastating injuries were from IED strikes. Limbs severed by the blast, soft tissue shredded by the explosion, soldiers peppered with hundreds of pieces of shrapnel, dirt and debris. BURTCH: The standard of care there was such that essentially if you got to the Role 3 hospital, no matter how bad your injuries were, the likelihood would be that you would then survive. Not in every case. There are people who arrived and there was just, nothing could be done for them. But the idea was that if you could stabilize someone in the field, get them to the Role 3 hospital within a certain amount of time — where they hadn’t lost enough blood, they were going into shock, they could breathe, these sorts of things — they could then get surgery and other care that would stabilize them and then get them treated further on. TREMONTI: The Role 3 hospital also treated everyone. Canadian soldiers, coalition forces, Afghan National Army, and Afghan police. They also treated Afghan civilians — men, women and children — and, at times, Taliban fighters. CECILIA HO: The shortest Canadians get evac-ed out is less than six hours. They’re stable, off they go. So, the NATO soldiers don’t stay in the hospital very long, because we can’t evacuate the Afghan members, so we have to take care of them. TREMONTI: Captain Cecilia Ho was a critical care Nursing Officer from September 2008 to May 2009. But treating Afghan civilians added another layer of difficulty. HO: The first week I had to withdraw care for three Afghan locals due to their severe traumatic injuries that there isn’t a whole lot of quality of life for them. And with the healthcare system in Afghanistan, there is no way these three individuals can survive with no care whatsoever. TREMONTI: Medical work at the Role 3 was unrelenting. Personnel often wore many hats. HO:  So here in Canada, if you are ICU nurse, you are always the ICU nurse. If you’re emergency nurse, you are always in the trauma bay or emergency. If you’re a recovery nurse, you’re a recovery nurse. So there’s no mix and match. But over there, you’re it. You could be the recovery nurse, you can be a ward nurse if they’re overwhelmed with like 25 patients. You go out and help them. So you could be all in one day. LEE-ANNE QUINN: So, 16-hour days, seven days a week, no days off. And you just look after one after the other after the other after the other. TREMONTI: Major Lee-Anne Quinn was a Nurse Practitioner for the 5th Field Ambulance. QUINN: Mass casualties would come in, there’d be 45. We’d have 13 emergency bays. The top surgeon or the surgeon on call for that day that was in charge of triage would go outside the tent, triage all the patients. Those that were going to expire did not make it into our tent. They made it to the tent to the left with their comrades. And those that had a chance of surviving came into the emergency bay. Absolute chaos at its finest. TREMONTI: For the ones who didn’t make it, the fallen Canadian soldiers, there was a solemn ritual at the Kandahar Airfield. Their flag-draped coffins would be loaded onto a plane during a ramp ceremony. Their fellow soldiers would see them off, and then it was back to the grind. BURTCH: It is something that I have a hard time conceiving of — and I think most people have a hard time conceiving of — that you would be expected to keep doing it. But one of the principles on which Canadian military personnel serve is this idea of unlimited liability: That you, up to the point of death, are expected to do your job and carry out the orders that are done. And everyone I think keeps that in mind. But it means that just because someone has died or been injured, it doesn’t change the mission that you’ve been set out to do. TREMONTI: By 2010, the Canadian mission in Afghanistan had entered its final phase. After years of intense combat, the focus was shifting towards training Afghan security forces to take over. BURTCH: Although work was continuing and moving towards those benchmarks, I don’t think it ever got to the point where Canadians were able to say, like, “Okay well, this is in good enough condition that we can hand it off.” [Music begins]. It was eventually the decision, “Okay, we’ve done our part.” And by 2011, “Okay, now we’re going to move into a different role, notwithstanding the hopes of allies that we would continue on indefinitely in that very challenging position in Kandahar.” TREMONTI: Then came May 2, 2011. U.S. Navy SEALs entered a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden. Abbottabad was a military town and training hub for the Pakistan army. Bin Laden had been hiding there for years. Finally, the man whose actions had sent Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan in the first place was dead. A little over two months later, the last Canadian combat troops would leave Kandahar. But others would stay behind, for a different mission, in a different city. This time, back to Kabul. DEAN MILNER: I just had a sense that the Afghan National Army was not yet ready. It’s a generational fight. That takes a long time. And so, I just felt like there was so much work to be done. TREMONTI: The transition to training Afghan forces and what it means to hand over a war that might not be finished. That’s next time on The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan. The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan was produced by Lisa Gabriele and Neil Morrison. Our associate producer is Hailey Choi. The series was mixed by Cameron McIver. Executive producers from the Canadian War Museum are Jenny Ellison and Steve McCullough. Andrew Burtch is our historian throughout this series. Some of the veterans who you heard in this episode were interviewed for the Museum’s oral history project called In Their Own Voices. To learn more, visit warmuseum.ca or see the links in the show notes. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening. [Music ends].