Memorial to fallen Canadian soldiers buried at front line Afghan base
The Canadian PressBy Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – Wed, 8 Jun, 2011
MA'SUM GHAR, Afghanistan - A symbol of Canadian blood and sacrifice, etched into the crusted hillside of a forward operating base in Kandahar for nearly four-and-a-half years, is being buried and left behind in Afghanistan as the end of Canada's combat mission draws ever nearer.
The Maple Leaf rock mural at Ma'sum Ghar started as a tribute to five soldiers killed during the landmark battle of Pashmul, known as Operation Medusa.
But throughout the years, the memorial has grown as more and more marker stones were placed to honour additional casualties.
A total of 59 stones, representing 72 soldiers who operated out of Ma'sum Ghar, were buried in a trench at the base of the memorial Wednesday in a moving sunset ceremony staged by members of the Royal 22e Regiment battle group.
Capt. Joshua Robbins, the commander of 1 Platoon, Para Company, knew three of the soldiers and the family of a fourth.
"It's just evidence of how close our army is; how small it is," said Robbins, who is on his first tour of the war-torn country. "The degrees of separation between us are few and far between."
He and other soldiers said they found it entirely appropriate to bury the memorial stones in Afghanistan, rather than bring them back to Canada.
As each stone was carried to the trench, where the sides were draped in black cloth, the names of the dead soldiers were read out.
Some of the markers were personalized with drawings and even tiny regimental and Canadian flags. A few of them had plates drilled into the rock, but the names had been scorched or bleached off by the brutal Afghan sun.
"They represent Canada for us," Maj. Graham Thompson, the task force chaplain, said of the stones. "They represent great Canadians for us. They represent honour and honourable service for us."
After the moving, unusual ceremony, soldiers — some of them teary-eyed — filed past the trench and tossed poppies and handfuls of Afghan sand atop the markers.
The U.S. is about to take over the base, which has been a linchpin in the Canadian army's war in western Kandahar.
The memorial was originally built in the winter of 2007 by Americans and South Africans whose bomb-sniffing dogs accompanied troops into the field.
Van Thames, of AM-K9 Protection said at the time that he built the tribute in his spare time as a way to say thank you to the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, who kept him and his team safe and comfortable.
Although touched, some troops were upset that it took someone other than a Canadian to think of the gesture, which has become iconic for anyone who has spent any amount of time in either Panjwaii or Zhari districts, west of the provincial capital.
"I had one guy that come up and first of all I thought he was mad with me," Thames said when the memorial was built.
"I said, 'What's wrong? What did I do wrong?' He said: 'I'm mad 'cause it took an American to think about it and do it instead of one of us doing it."
Thames and his fellow dog handlers, Hollis Crawford and Rogelio Meza, laid out all of the rocks and then proceeded to paint them red and white before they were joined by two South African colleagues to finish the job.
It is hard to understate the historic significance of Ma'sum Ghar, an ugly, J-shaped mountain that seems to thunder unexpectedly from the desert floor and overshadow the town of Bazaar-e-Panjwaii.
Early in the war, its slopes were soaked in Canadian blood. It was the launching point for Operation Medusa, the first NATO-led offensive in Afghanistan.
Most Canadian combat operations throughout the war have been staged out here.
The army's contingent of Leopard 2A6M battle tanks have called it home — one that has sustained frequent pounding by Taliban rockets.
As a heavily fortified position, the base was a beacon of safety for the untold number of patrols that stepped off — or launched — from its gates into the surrounding nest of insurgent vipers.
Lt.-Col. Michael Wright, who was a major in August 2006, won the Medal of Military Valour, along with three of his men, when he fought to hold on to Ma'sum Ghar after the Taliban had encircled it.
Insurgents recognized the value of its bluffs soon after Canadians moved into Panjwaii in force that summer.
Wright, in an interview with The Canadian Press, said he recalled watching from nearby Patrol Base Wilson as firefights increased and tracers flew around the mountain at night.
The Taliban had been using cracks and folds of Ma'sum Ghar to mortar Canadian positions and Wright was told to take and hold the area on Aug. 19, 2006 with a platoon of soldiers.
The troops linked up with Afghan police who had been holding the nearby district centre.
"I could hear some machine gun fire to the south," Wright recalled. "I sat down to do some confirmatory orders and I heard a pop and saw a (rocket-propelled grenade). It landed about eight feet away, but luckily it didn't explode or things would have been very different."
The shot had come from a position that was supposed to have been manned by Afghan police, but had been quietly overrun.
"It was very difficult to figure out where the enemy was coming from," said Wright. "The fact they were coming from the south was not what we were expecting at all."
Waves of Taliban tried to storm up the mountain and Wright's light armoured vehicle opened up with its 25-millimetre chain gun. Soon other LAVs were firing both to the south and east and an American Predator drone joined in with a few well-placed Hellfire missiles.
Wright's platoon hung on, suffered no casualties, but eventually withdrew.
A couple of weeks later, as the first act of Operation Medusa, the Canadians took the hill and have never left — until now.
Although it will remain a Canadian base for a few weeks, Wednesday's ceremony signals the beginning of the end.
The U.S. has already moved in and greatly expanded the rugged outpost.
