Princess Pats Embed
Although waged in the tight quarters of the villages of Pashmul — these small villages are in their way every bit as indistinct and alike as North American suburbs, and many have no names — the battle was both so diffuse and shifting that while a CTV crew, reporter Steve Chao and cameraman Tom Michalak, and I were probably never more than 50 metres apart, we never once saw one another, and indeed, emerged with entirely different snapshots of the same fighting.
I was embedded with Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry; Mr. Chao and Mr. Michalak with Bravo Company.
We might as well have been at different wars, though each of ours had elements in common — highly disciplined Canadian soldiers and undisciplined Afghan National Army forces working together (a fabulous piece of tape shot by Combat Camera photographer Master Corporal Ronald Duchesne shows one cowering ANA soldier blindly firing into the air over a mud wall, while beside him Canadian troops stand calmly waiting for a decent shot, and I saw one “N.D.,” or Negligent Discharge, by an ANA soldier) and an incredible amount of gunfire and smoke.
In the first 12 hours of battle, Lt.-Col. Hope said, the Canadians had 17 separate and distinct engagements with the enemy; in the remaining two days, a total of six.
Bravo Company alone had in swift succession its 13th, 14th and 15th all-out fights with the enemy over the weekend, but as Officer Commanding Major Nick Grimshaw said yesterday at Zharei, where the Canadians have established a forward operating base in the region, “It should be known that of those 15 firefights, we haven’t started a single one. We were not on the offensive. We were reacting. If the enemy wants a fight, we give them a fight.”
For all that Major Grimshaw, 35, is proud of how his soldiers have stepped up as the intensity level occasionally ratchets “up to 11,” he is most impressed by those occasions when the soldiers, “in full battle rattle” as they call their body armour and kit, can switch gears on a dime to speak to villagers on medical outreach visits and the like. “We’re not afraid to talk to people,” he said yesterday. “Very genuinely, that’s the Canadian approach. We honestly believe we’re here to help.”
As for Cpl. Mooney, before he was hit in the upper legs and evacuated to the small but sophisticated base hospital at Kandahar Air Field, he was ruminating on the randomness of battle.
“Bullets,” he said, “have no prejudice.”
In one of Charlie Company’s major battles, on June 12, two of his fellows were wounded, and as he checked one to find the wound, he emerged covered with blood. “I thought I was hit,” he told me as we made our way to Pashmul on Friday night. When he realized he wasn’t, he was as furious as if he had been. When a brother goes down, he said, “Everything else, whether you knew the guy, or if you didn’t like this guy — it all goes out the window. It’s all about winning the fucking firefight and killing the enemy. I was so proud to be with my fucking company that day.”
Cpl. Mooney’s turn came Sunday afternoon. I had been following him around like a bad smell — his calm and his bulk made me feel safe and his rich Newfoundland accent falls lovely on the ears — for two days, but during one running skirmish, briefly lost sight of him. Next thing I knew, he was hit.
He felt, he said yesterday, as though someone had whacked him hard across the knees, and looked down in surprise to see blood pouring out the top of his legs. “I started shaking,” he said, “and I was so cold.” He was evacuated out of the immediate danger zone, assessed by medics, who now, knowing Cpl. Mooney will recover, fondly remember him as their most cheerful patient — once he was repeatedly reassured that his private parts were all in place and intact.
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