‘IN LIVING MEMORY’
War museum update covers Gulf to Afghanistan
It’s history told by the living in their own words and mementos — a camera shattered by an IED blast, an Olympic torch passed by grateful victims of war, the antidote to a deadly nerve gas attack — brought home from war.
The Canadian War Museum unveiled an update Thursday to the final section of its gallery covering the Cold War to the present with new artifacts and eyewitness testimony on Canada’s role in conflicts, from the Gulf War to Afghanistan.
New World Disorder, which opens Friday, also includes sections on missions to Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and explores genocide, child soldiers and the impact of landmines and improvised explosive devices.
Unlike other exhibits, this one covers events that are “within living memory” for both museum visitors and the surviving men and women who “faced some of the world’s most difficult problems” head-on, said Stephen Quick, the museum’s director general.
The artifacts include signs from Camp “Canada Dry,” where Canadian fighter squadrons were based during the Gulf War, an Iltis patrol vehicle that was riddled with bullets during the peacekeeping mission in Croatia and boots worn by a soldier who earned the Star of Military Valour in the battle for the “White School” in Afghanistan.
In many cases, museum staff were able to gather first-hand accounts from people who “lived and breathed it,” said historian Andrew Burtch, long before the archival material is available as it would be for earlier conflicts.
They’ve been open in sharing their stories as the museum recounts the past “respectfully but honestly,” blending personal experience with a broader understanding of the “context and consequences” of the missions, with the controversial Canadian mission to Somalia as an example.
“It underlines the fact that involvement in these missions overseas is incredibly complex and more complex than perhaps is appreciated at the time they were launched,” Burtch said. “So we try to put the focus as much as possible on the individual on the ground and what their experiences were and how they on the personal level tried to cope with what were in some cases impossible situations.”
Three artifacts from the newlyupdated Gallery 4 at the Canadian War Museum:
GULF WAR, 1990-1991
When Canadian troops were deployed to the Persian Gulf, they were ready for a terrifying threat — a chemical weapon attack.
That never happened, but Capt. Kevin Yamashita transported the vials of atropine that soldiers would inject themselves with to counteract the effects of nerve gas overseas, then carried them during his tour.
Now retired and living in Var, he recalled the sheer terror captured in photographs of his colleagues running for shelter after a Scud missile attack on Canada Dry while his wife and parents waited, in fear for his fate, at home in Canada.
“It brings back very strong memories,” he said Thursday as he looked at the vials fitted with four-inch needles in a display case.
“This was our best defence . ... You have literally seconds to pull this out of the bag and inject yourself immediately.”
FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, 1992-2004
An Olympic torch seems an unlikely artifact of war, but it was a gift from one Olympic city to a soldier from another in a place where “peacekeepers found no peace to keep.”
Retired Maj. John Russell smuggled 298 “desperate” people out a besieged Sarajevo, through checkpoints and amid shelling, while serving as military assistant to the Special Representative to the UN secretary general.
The evacuees included the city’s archbishop and doctors who wanted to learn how to repair bullet wounds, but one was the daughter of one of the organizers of the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. The woman’s parents learned that Russell had been stationed in Calgary, which hosted the 1988 Winter Games, and presented him with the torch.
Russell, 68, later donated the torch, which is on loan to the museum from Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, amid criticism of the military during the Somalia mission.
“I gave that torch to them to remind them that a lot of people do more good than bad in the service of peace for our country — that’s what it means to me,” said Russell, who retired after 34 years and now lives in Kingston.
AFGHANISTAN, 2001-2014
The shattered camera that Cpl. Andrew Knisley carried in his pocket shows the power of the IED that detonated near him in Kandahar in 2009. He’d later compare the blast to taking a heavy hit with your head down in hockey. One leg was so badly injured it was later amputated.
Nearby is a G-Wagen that was destroyed, its engine flying nearly seven metres, when insurgents detonated another IED in 2005. Three soldiers and a journalist survived but a display of household objects used to assemble bombs — an oil jug, a pressure cooker — is a chilling reminder that more Canadian soldiers died from IEDs than from any other cause during the war.
Still, 33-year-old Knisley said his time in Afghanistan — where he helped protect the population of a busy market town so people could buy food, earn a living and send kids to school — was rewarding. He treasures the hundreds of photographs he took documenting his experience with that ruined camera.
“As strange as it sounds, I really enjoyed my time over there,” Knisley said. “I was proud to do the job that we were doing. We had a tangible effect. We were able to get a sense of our impact in the area providing security for the local population.
“We did Canada proud.”
We try to put the focus as much as possible on the individual on the ground and what their experiences were.