“…we decided, with pockets full of two dollar bills, to fulfill our dreams of buying as many fireworks our young minds could imagine.”

After they were questioned it turned out that they were 15 years old and had been paid $10 each to plant the IED’s…I wanted to puke.

“Little did I know the solution to my fatigue would suddenly appear, and my ensuing misery would be comical enough for the entire crew to stay awake without issue.”

“This one time there was one room full of some seriously bad inmates. Two or three I believe were in for murder.”

During these 11 days I was involved in something that changed my mentality and preconceptions surrounding mental health, PTSD, and suicide.

"I order you to turn over all of your gear and go get a coffee in the mess tent!". Who was I to argue…

“there is this expectation, an unwritten social contract, that when you enlist (giving away many freedoms) and submit to the Queens Regulations & Orders that you will be taken care of.”

“I’ll never forget the chaos, heartbreak and exhaustion on the faces of those men…I hope that wherever they are now they are doing ok.”

“He stormed off to his office where I and my colleague Major’s could hear him kicking the shit out of his filing cabinet.”

“This isn’t a peer reviewed blog (or even a well edited one) so I feel no shame in saying…”

I count my memories of the Christmases I spent in Afghanistan among my favorite, despite how I may have felt at the time.

Back out at good old Strong Point Ashoque for the past two days. Not nearly as exciting as our last go although the ANA did nearly blow me up today.

The Sgt backed away from the bench with a wild look and began frantically shutting down the power to the radio.

How do we encourage Canadian veterans to share the stories so that in 40, 50 or 60 years we aren’t scrambling to collect the few remaining like we are now with our WW2 and Korea vets?

Think of how many emails or texts you send in the course of a week…a month…a year? Now how many hand written letters have you sent by comparison?

Talk about an ethical dilemma when “do no harm” does just that. I’ve never really squared it in my mind, it’s just one of those things that you wonder about from time to time…there is no right answer.

“..it begins with glacial foot dragging, followed by frantic reaction to something, followed by proactive measures to correct the foot dragging, promptly followed by more foot dragging…”

I could feel myself smiling, and being proud of him, but he seemed out of focus, and I realized that in those few brief seconds I was reliving hundreds of days walking and living on that infamous war torn patch of earth.

It was explained to me later by one of the pilots that the aircraft is in danger of going nose over into a flutter like fall out of the sky.

He said if he didn’t wake up he had witnesses who would get me if he died….pretty sure he was only half kidding.