In the Line of Fire

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Afghanistan may also prove to be a test for the Canadian military on the home front. After a decade of fighting for more funds and better equipment, Canada's top commanders hope they can win public support for the military's gradual shift from "peacekeeping" missions to a more active combat role. While the politicians waffle, the military has launched its own p.r. campaign, making soldiers and their families--in a rare break with tradition--available to the media. At the same time, Canadian Forces have bought 50 Nyala armored patrol vehicles for added protection against land mines--signaling that commanders expect to be involved in unconventional combat environments like Afghanistan for a long time to come. "We've been engaged in many complex missions for the last 15 years," says Brigadier General Mike Ward, who commanded the Canadian task force in Kosovo in 1999 and is a top aide at the Canadian Expeditionary Command Force headquarters in Ottawa. "We know these missions are dangerous. We'll take the time to mourn, but we'll carry on."

The true-grit approach is echoed by rank-and-file soldiers. Sergeant Gerry Repesse, 38, a military-police officer from Edmonton who served in Afghanistan in 2002, says he would gladly go again. "It's my career," says Repesse. "When I joined the military, I knew at some point it would put me in harm's way." More poignantly, the sentiment is shared by relatives of the injured, like Trevor Greene's family, which was at his bedside in Germany last week. "I know a lot of Canadians don't want us to be in Afghanistan," says Greene's father Richard, a retired R.C.M.P. officer. "But they don't really understand what those soldiers are trying to do over there." Trevor, father of a 1-year-old daughter, worked as an author and a journalist from his boat at Fisherman's Wharf on Vancouver's Granville Island before shipping out with his reserve company this year. He was promoted to captain after his injury.

For Greene's comrades in Afghanistan, life has got starker since the Shinkay attack. "You don't know who the bad guy is here," says Sergeant Daryl Schuch, who works in the computer-technology department at Kabul Airfield. "They don't have big tags on their heads saying 'I'm going to shoot you.'" Schuch recently took part in a parade in Kabul honoring Corporal Paul Davis--one of the two soldiers killed in the vehicle accident this month--before his body was returned to Canada. More than 2,000 soldiers, including Canadians, British and Americans, served as the honor guard. "The Americans have got this process down to an art," says Schuch. "I hope to hell I don't get that good at it."