Esprit de Corps

Dear Editor,

 This letter is in reference to the article in the London Free Press “Liberals Under Fire For Offending Soldiers.”

I’m not surprised by the Ignatief Liberals abusing the armed forces. It is a party system therefore the leader had to approve this flyer. I served in a Canadian Infantry Regiment for about 25 years in the Far East, Europe and the Middle East. I retired in 1973. I filed my first claim with VAC about 1977. I have dealt with VAC on and off for over thirty years. There were times when I got frustrated and annoyed by all the paperwork. Most infantrymen are like that. Overall I’m now treated like royalty by the VAC staff. I’ve had some of my WWII buddies in the past tell me that if I work they will reduce any disability pension they give out. I couldn’t believe this story, but it turned out to be true in his case.

When G. Hees became VAC Minister he gave all the pension money he lost back to him. In my experience, Hees under Murloney was the finest VAC Minister the Armed Forces ever had. Over the last 30 years I’ve learned one thing; with the CP in power, your military disability benefits will remain the same or increase, but never decrease. With the Liberals in power they can be reduced at anytime or become non-existent. The Liberal party have always abused our military forces, for votes. You and your friends voting Liberal means placing your service and disability pensions in the hands of a man who has not lived in Canada, or paid taxes for over thirty years.

After having served Canada in war and peace I could never vote for any party that supports a person with Canadian, British and United States citizenship papers, and wants to come back and tell us how he will straighten us out because we’re so inefficient and lost in the wilderness.

We must remember that Canada has a political party system, a vote for the candidate of your choice means you are accepting their leader also. You cannot vote for one without getting the other. And when a leader makes a bad decision it means they all made it. The party, the leader, and the candidate are inseparable.

The facts are that Ignatief doesn’t know Canada’s problems because he wasn’t here, and the Liberal Party put him in as leader with the hopes of fooling the voters into voting for a man who wasn’t here. Therefore Ignatier can never know our problems until he has been here like the rest of us and served his time. When he has done his 30 years here, like me, and many other Canadians, I just may consider voting for the Liberal party again. But that may not happen in this century.

Sorry if I am inconveniencing you in any way, I remain

Respectfully yours,

RJ O’Connor.

Dear Sir,

I have seen many of your stories in the paper. I was interested in the last one, the Lancaster Bomber, please excuse my writing, I am not a young man.

Are you aware of the two twin engine bombers that washed up three miles from Liverpool NS the summer of 1941? The first one ran out of gas and they all bailed out and survived. The second one came looking for them, and seeing some of them at the edge of a big field tried to land to get them, but crashed and all inside were killed. The plane crash landed in what was once an old farm house, and the sudden stop caused three men to be thrown through the wind shield and were thrown all over the field in pieces. The plane caught fire and the one left in the plane burned up with it.

No one could do anything. You couldn’t get a truck within two miles of the crash, there was no water and the nearest phone was three miles. There was nothing to do but mark the spot the last time I was there.

Their names are in a book called They Shall Not Grow Old.

—George Bowers

Sir:

 I read with great interest, the piece in the Legion Magazine about IEDs. I am a veteran of the Korean War 1950 to ’53, and we never had to deal with that sort of horror. Guerrilla activity could sometimes be a bit of a problem. However, the technology had not yet been developed to enable them to blow up a road or a bridge via a remote, nor did we have to deal with the mindless suicide bombers. I say mindless because these superstitious stone-age people believe that when they die X number of virgins will be waiting for them in heaven. Anyone who’ll believe this mindless twaddle will believe anything.

The US Army has developed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These high altitude drones have cameras that are said to give an excellent picture in order to see even through clouds and in darkness. Cannot the feed from feed from these UAVs be sent by satellite down to a signal center in Kandahar? If not, why not? Or direct to Kandahar perhaps.

No doubt it would be expensive, but the killing of our soldiers will over time become extraordinarily costly in terms of human affairs. A new crop of widows are being created, and children are growing up not knowing their fathers and so the huge outlay in pensions aint exactly going to be cheap either. Then too, those wounded by losing a limb, or those damaged psychologically by post traumatic stress disorder – and the heavy duty pensions from this, not to mention the miseries of this malady. I am now drawing a pension partly because of this problem as well as badly damaged hearing. I know at least three men from the Korean War who are drawing pensions because of their PTSD. Now doubt there are many others. I am a survivor of the troop train wreck, and that is mainly the basis for the pension re PTSD.

They would perhaps see with the UAVs those twits digging holes and planting explosives. Couldn’t this information be sent to Kandahar? An air strike or even an artillery shot while this is going on would eliminate those rug riding sons of bitches. And even if the digging etc had been done by the time the air strike was laid on, an air strike could at least blow the explosives could they not? Or send ordinance people there to analyze or blow them.

Yours truly,

Robert W Stirling.

September 4, 2009

Dear Editor,

While I enjoyed reading the September issue of Esprit de Corps, I could not help but notice that the article on the twin fighter pilots mentioned that the Dieppe raid was seen as a practice run for the full D-Day invasion. However, James Leasor and Jack Nissen in their excellent book Green Beach noted decades ago that the Dieppe Raid was used as a cover for a secret British operation that tried to steal a German radar device – codenamed Freya – from a house overlooking Green Beach near Pourville.

Canadian superspy William Stevenson confirmed this ruse in his fascinating book, A Man Called Intrepid. Clearly, it is long since past time that Canada acknowledged that Churchill and his advisers felt that the sacrifice of some 6000 British and Canadian soldiers was insignificant compared to both the greater human carnage that had already occurred around the world by 1942, and the desperate need to understand and master German radar—as horrible as that sounds to the people of Canada.

Sincerely,

Gary Wright

Royal Canadian Air Force

I enjoyed the story “Twins over Dieppe” (Volume 16 Issue 8) very much. I’ve known Duke Warren for a very long time. But there was an error though in the story:

The magazine cover states “Brothers join the RAF” and the story headline caps it with “Canadian Brothers in the RAF.”

They were not in the RAF!  Like 17,111 of we 27,104 RCAF combat aircrew overseas, [the Warren brothers] served with RAF squadrons. Only 9,993 served in RCAF squadrons. (Of the total 14,554 were killed.)

Lt.-Gen. (ret’d) Bill Carr

Kudos & Jeers

Kudos to the Canadian Forces for recognizing and honouring the 100 years of the Cadet Instructor Cadre [Hits and Misses, Volume 16, Issue 7]. Jeers to the Canadian Forces for not telling former members about this.

I was a member of the Cadet Instructors List (CIL) for over 20 years but I had not heard word one about this [event]. Even though I transferred to the Supplemental Reserve 20 years ago, I am still listed in the SUPP RES and there is no reason I couldn’t have received some notification of the celebrations. I would have been please and honoured to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, but that is not possible now.

Capt. (ret’d) Steven Mintz, CD

Satirical whining?

Mr. Nickerson’s commentary in the above referenced issue is hardly satire or at best very bad satire.Is he suggesting that vice is part of the Conservative agenda as far as establishing Canada’s sovereignty in the North or folly when proclaiming said sovereignty? Mr. Nickerson’s continuous rants-satire- against the Conservatives are becoming very tiresome. Perhaps, if he is capable, he should really consider expanding the subject matter of his satirical (?) whining.

Leo Innocente

And the youngest Canadian VC award goes to…

In Volume 16 Issue 7’s “Military Trivia” you have down as the youngest Canadian VC recipient as 2Lt Alan McLeod, Royal Flying Corp. In fact the honour for youngest Canadian goes to Pte Tommy Holmes of 4CMR who was originally recruited into the 147^th Grey Bn in Owen Sound. He was born on October 14, 1898 and received his VC for action just 12 days after turning 19. “On October 26, 1917 near Passchendaele, Belgium, he performed a deed for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross: when the right flank of the Canadian attack was held up by heavy machine-gun fire from a pill-box strong point and heavy casualties were producing a critical situation, Private Holmes, on his own initiative and single-handed, ran forward and threw two bombs, killing and wounding the crews of two machine-guns. He then fetched another bomb and threw this into the entrance of the pill-box, causing the 19 occupants to surrender.”

Wayne Bruce

Regimental quirks

Thanks for the “Military Trivia” questions, but I believe that the 6 [drill commands beginning with the cautionary “RIGHT”] quizmaster Les Peate has have to be moved down to 5. There is no such cautionary for MARKERS. The parade 2IC will only say “markers” before calling on the remainder of the guard. Now I don’t know if other regiments have their little quirks, but officially it is only markers.

Thanks for the questions though, I did enjoy them.

Sgt. A.J. Lowry

Ops Sgt, 1 PPCLI

Is Afghanistan Obama’s war?

Afghans are no direct threat to the West (and never have been). They have basically expelled Osama Bin Laden & Co. to South Waziristan, and they just want to be left alone. Afghans are not terrorists — certainly not outside of their own borders. They would be content merely killing each other as they have done for millenia, and in fact still are. It is not for the West to change how Afghans choose to manage their own internal affairs, and even more especially not for the West to use see-through untenable excuses in the pursuit of this ridiculous objective.

The reasons for the original invasion after 9/11 are long gone, if given a real chance. The only benefactors are Karzai & Co. (including his group of thugs) who are growing poppy, taking a cut out of everything including positions awarded to corrupt officials, and laughing at the West all the way to their banks.

This while we are paying the heavy price in blood and treasure for this treachery, just by keeping Karzai & Co. in business. It is no small wonder why most Afghans want them gone ASAP together with the West, and that Karzai & Co. want the West to remain in order to protect their illicit trade and profits, which they are laundering out to the West for their later retirement there. This is hardly a new story from that part of the world.

Most presidents of the USA need their own war, and this is Obama’s. Through this, he can and likely shall destroy nuclear Pakistan — for what good purpose? And then what? Maybe by that time, his successor will need to clean it up. One of these times, a clean up will not be available. Then what?

David Fieldstone

Afghans need to take a bigger role

I’ve been reading your magazine for a while as part of my professional affiliation (I’m a Lead Process Engineer at a company developing special wear and erosion resistant coating for gun barrels) and in addition I have military experience with IDF (retired lieutenant-colonel from the artillery corps). Some of the discussions on mission in Afghanistan are very close to my heart as I did similar missions in the past in Lebanon trying to eradicate terrorist organizations.

The question raised by Bruce McMinn’s letter to the editor regarding losses by Canadian troops in Afghanistan (Volume 16 Issue 7) are legitimate and have to be technically addressed in addition to its political affiliation.

What is actually the major objective in Afghanistan? Is it to stabilize the current regime (I call it regime, since it is not entirely democratic and is tribal at the best)? Is it to diminish Taliban influence? Is it to destroy the drug industry supplies and reduce or completely prevent financing source of extremists? Is it to prevent logistics and training of extremist contingents in global terror?

Perhaps it is all of the above. However, regardless of the specific objectives the mission is extremely hindered by inability of any army to deal with so called insurgents, unless they take a very methodical, unprecedented and uncompromising approach, similar to Sri Lanka’s military with Tamil Tigers. The only armed forces in Afghanistan who could and should fight insurgents should be Afghanis themselves with some support by Western alliance, including training, weapons, financing and securing international cooperation of the friendly neighboring countries.

The Canadian military will continue to suffer losses since they are considered “invaders” by most of Afghan population while Taliban will be supported by the population either due to their political and religious affiliation or fear, so the balance of battle losses is disproportional and will be seen by the home country as a failure.

There are two solutions – either take a scorched-earth approach and demonstrate an iron fist or get out [attitude]. The first showed unpopularity of the free world and media as it was evident by Israeli campaign in Lebanon to eradicate Hezbollah threat and stop missile attacks by Hamas in Gaza. However, it demonstrated that coming in and striking when necessary without being present continuously and exposing the troops is more effective. Once the foreign troops leave Afghanistan it is still possible to inflict damage to poppy fields and heroin facilities by sudden and surgical invasions or/and tactical air strikes using smart weapons, while acting to stop logistics through the boarders.

Isaac Glick

Thornhill, Ontario