BT Calgary Blogs

  July 2009 has been a grim month for Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan.  This morning we got word that Private Sebastian Courcy, with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment  –  generally known as the Van Doos   –  died about ten miles southwest of Kandahar City.  He was 26 years old, was the fifth Canadian soldier killed this month alone, and the country’s 125th combat fatality overall. 

  It’s become a nasty little war, this Afghanistan business, and there isn’t a ranking military officer anywhere who’ll predict the thing is “winnable,” in the conventional sense of that word.  By the time Canadian forces withdraw in 2011 they’ll have spent eight years fighting an intractable mob of Taliban guerillas who have one essential advantage the Canadians do not:  lots of time.  Sort of like the Americans in Viet Nam when you think about it and we all know what came of that. 

  Once they’re out and back home, a significant percentage of the Afghan war veterans, as they’ll then be known, will offer symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, which used to be called battle fatigue and before that was described as shell shock.  But if the descriptive phrasing has progressed, or regressed actually from straightforward to high-flown rigmarole, the mannerisms, the indicators will remain as they’ve always been:  nervous tension, irritability, unexpected bouts of crying, outbursts of temper against families and friends, and let’s be candid here, descent into alcoholism for some of them, drug abuse for others, and occasionally, suicide. 

  As a country, as a populace, we’ll need to help our Afghan veterans who end up losing their way with generosity and compassion, all the professional help we can provide, understanding, and above all, patience.  But I fret about how we may look upon, and where necessary treat the men and women who come back from Afghanistan because historically we’ve tended to be not very good at caring for emotionally damaged troops once they’ve returned to civilian life. 

  All of this brings me to an issue firmly stuck in my craw, annoying me to the point of real anger, and as much as anything I’ver ever encountered, representative of the disdain successive federal governments and bureaucracies have laid upon our veterans.  In December 1941 a tiny garrison of Canadian troops defending Hong Kong against the Japanese was overrun.  The soldiers, 1975 of them, were drawn primarily from the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada:  they were green and inexperienced, but fought with surpassing courage for 17 days before surrendering.  The casualty rate, killed and wounded, was more than 50 percent, which was the highest toll inflicted on any Canadian force in World War II. 

  That was just the start.  The survivors bore four years of unspeakable barbarity in Japanese prisoner of war camps.  Another 250 or so men (the exact number will never be verified) died in captivity, and the rest of them, when at last they got home, were emotionally and in some cases physically scarred for the remainder of their lives. 

  Today, a mere handful of Hong Kong vets in their late eighties and on into their nineties remains with us, and they want to construct a small memorial wall in Ottawa to honour their companions who died in the battle and in the years following.  On their own, this little band of brothers and their families raised $150 thousand dollars for the project. 

  That’s the background against which one Marie Lemay is now mounted on what can only be described as her own wall……of shame.  She’s the chief executive officer of the National Capital Commission, which has decided  the Hong Kong memorial, as proposed, will be just ever so ordinary and won’t fit in, simply won’t be compatible with its location in the prestigious sector of Ottawa near 24 Sussex Drive (the Prime Minister’s residence) and Rideau Hall (the Governor General’s residence.)

  Never mind that 24 Sussex is a creaking pile of wreckage needing millions of dollars in repairs, and never mind that Rideau Hall is irrelevant to the vast majority of Canadians for whom the monarchy is a pointless anachronism.  Oh no, my goodness, tsk tsk, you Hong Kong veterans must do better, so they’re now striving to find another  $150 thousand dollars in order that their memorial wall will find favour with the stiff-necked snobs at the National Capital Commission. 

  As Commission CEO, Marie Lemay allowed this happen, perhaps even instructed that it happen.  The NCC might as well have declared the men themselves are not good enough for the pristine, elegant environs of Ottawa.  Not good enough for the nation’s capital.  (This sorry tale brings to mind George Bernard Shaw, who wrote in The Devil’s Disciple  “The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.”  So it seems with our Hong Kong veterans and the elitist twerps at the NCC). 

  But here’s the worst of it:  not one single politician, not a cabinet minister, not a backbench MP has spoken out and said to Ms. Lemay and her swarm of highbrow minions for God’s sake leave these men alone and let them have their memorial and furthermore let us  –  the Government of Canada  –  pay for it.  Not a word and so the Hong Kong veterans struggle yet again, determined to find the additional money even if by nickels and dimes and quarters. 

  But, I suppose this wretched condescension to some of the bravest men the country has known isn’t really surprising.  After all, the battle of Hong Kong was almost 70 years ago, so who cares? 

  Apparently, nobody.  Nobody at all.  This is a dark odium on Canada.