`Valour in the face of the enemy'
CAPT. RICHARD STACEY FENDED OFF HOURS-LONG INTENSE ATTACKS
The National Post has launched Heroes Among Us, a special series on Canadian military valour, celebrating courage in the presence of the enemy. Over the coming weeks, we will propose 10 heroic Canadians who could be the first recipients of the Canadian Victoria Cross, created three decades ago as a homegrown version of the Commonwealth's highest award for valour. In conjunction with the True Patriot Love Foundation, Anthony Wilson-smith of Historica Canada, Gen. (ret'd) Rick Hillier and entrepreneur/benefactor Kevin Reed, we will celebrate them all at a June 26 gala at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Even in the first hour after dawn on Aug. 4, 2009, it was blazing hot under clear skies as “C” Squadron set out from the village of Mushan near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
They had just finished a three-day operation that destroyed a major Taliban weapons cache. American Chinook helicopters had left with American infantry, leaving behind their vehicles and a company of Afghan soldiers with the Canadians and some Americans, who all now needed to retreat over land.
They had various possible routes back to their forward operating base at Ma'sum Ghar, none of them good, either because they were known to be packed with improvised-explosive devices, or they went through Taliban territory, or through desert terrain that would be impassable to the light Afghan vehicles.
The Arghandab River route seemed the least worst.
Reports would later call it an ambush but really it was six ambushes, from both banks of the river and to their rear. What followed was an unexpected eighthour running battle that would elevate Richard Stacey to the rarefied company of Canadian soldiers awarded the Star of Military Valour, for doing what his superior described as the work of three men to co-ordinate this firefight on the fly, shooting insurgents himself and calling in airstrikes while also managing casualties and recovering blasted and disabled vehicles, an important strategic priority.
Capt. Richard Stacey retired in 2021 after 40 years in the military. Originally from Scotland, Stacey first served with the 1st Hussars, a reserve unit in London in 1981, then transferred to the regular force two years later and served with the 8th Canadian Hussars (PL) as well as the Royal Canadian Dragoons, and was later posted to Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) in 1990.
He trained with 403 Operational Training Squadron at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick, later serving with 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron in Edmonton and rose through various positions in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was deployed to Haiti in 1995, Bosnia in 1997, Kosovo in 1999, and twice to Afghanistan, in 2004 with a reconnaissance squadron in Kabul.
Now, on his second Afghan tour, aged 45, he was fighting in the south around Kandahar as sergeant major of “C” Squadron, tasked with managing casualties and resupply operations.
The convoy started out at first light, with many vehicles spread out over almost two kilometres, following the river. There were Canadians, American and Afghan troops.
Less than two hours into the journey, the first explosion from an IED hit the second tank, remotely detonated after the lead tank had already passed over it. The idea, it seemed, was to disable the convoy at the front and then to attack from behind, anticipating disorder and confusion. That is what tends to happen when gunfire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades start raining in from three directions.
“But there was no panic among the Coalition forces,” T. Robert Fowler, an author of books about military history, wrote in his book Combat Mission Kandahar: The Canadian Experience In Afghanistan. “Everyone in the column behaved well, immediately seeking targets on both banks.”
Stacey, who was in an armoured-personnel carrier near the back of the convoy, later recalled that his “gut dropped and a sinking feeling came over him.” A blast that big meant someone probably just died, although in fact, the crew was only wounded.
The blast “was so powerful that it lifted the tank, breached its hull, and dropped it 45 degrees off its axis of advance,” according to Sean Maloney, a professor of history at Royal Military College, who wrote about the Arghandab River battle in his book The Canadian Army in Afghanistan, Volume II,
Part 2: Counter-insurgency in Kandahar.
He wrote that Stacey “sorted through the confusion as tanks and (light-armoured vehicles) engaged the ambush positions and (attack helicopters were) called in. Stacey organized the recovery and extraction of the stricken vehicles” and casualties.
Stacey radioed for the armoured-recovery vehicle (ARV), like a massive towtruck for tanks, and followed behind it toward the front of convoy. But as he did, he took fire from both sides and shot back. An American vehicle near him was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and disabled.
“So he had to stop and deal with that,” Fowler wrote. “Fortunately, no one in the MRAP (“mine-resistant ambush protected” light-tactical vehicle) was injured, but the vehicle had to be recovered. With the ARV moving to the front, the tank nearby would have to do the job, so Richard directed it to hook up and tow the disabled vehicle the rest of the way to the (forward operating base).”
It was a priority to retrieve disabled vehicles. This was a war fought in a global media environment, in which single images took on inordinate power. The Americans still remembered the images of their two Black Hawk helicopters downed by rocket-propelled grenades in Mogadishu in 1993, which led to the deaths of 18 soldiers, and ultimately the American withdrawal from the humanitarian protection mission, and effective abandonment of the Somali capital to warlords.
So no one wanted to see a Canadian tank on fire with Taliban cheering on the flames.
The danger was escalating, with insurgents in a dynamic attack, some acting as what the Canadians called “squirters,” who fired off a few rounds before running away, and others carrying heavy rocket-propelled grenade launchers between agricultural buildings and other types of cover, looking to take out tanks and trucks.
The way forward was also rigged with hidden bombs. A pickup truck of Afghan soldiers hit an IED, killing or wounding all on board.
“Stacey organized the treatment and evacuation of those casualties too,” Maloney
wrote.
Stacey would later recount that “I didn't think twice and it was an easy decision to return through one of the last challenging ambushes to render aid to the young Afghan soldiers who unfortunately died of their injuries after their vehicle was destroyed.”
Stacey was radioing in the attack helicopters, knowing that sometimes the mere sight of them was enough to send Taliban fighters running for cover. As he did, though, he looked to the far riverbank just in time to see a fighter with a grenade launcher take aim at the tank just in front of him. Stacey shot this man down just as two others appeared, and he shot them too.
Then the air support arrived. As the helicopters drew near, Stacey saw eight fighters run into a grape hut, so he threw a smoke grenade as a reference point and radioed instructions to the helicopters, then warned the rest of the convoy that things were about to get loud. A number of gun runs and a Hellfire missile reduced the hut to smoking rubble.
As Fowler wrote, Stacey “knew that controlling air assets was not just a matter of directing them onto a target; he was also responsible for their safety.
He had to control the direction from which the aircraft approached, taking into account the danger to the aircraft from ground troops firing at the riverbanks with ammunition ricocheting into the air.
Richard was already fully occupied, however, with two radios going, a driver he had to direct, another soldier at the back firing a machine-gun, and shooting his own C6 (machine-gun) at targets.”
He was doing too much, and risked making a mistake. So Stacey turned back through insurgent fire to pick up an American and transfer air support co-ordination to him, then returned to the front of the convoy.
Stacey later told reporter Kevin Ma of the St. Albert Gazette that the whole battle felt like it lasted five minutes. “It didn't feel like an entire day,” he said.
Ma reported: “Stacey spent the next eight hours zipping up and down the convoy's 1,800-metre length, treating wounded, fixing vehicles, organizing defences and calling in airstrikes from attack helicopters. `There was too much going on.' It was probably the most intense firefight of his career,” he says.
His superior officer later said he was doing the work of three soldiers at once, and his citation for the Star of Military Valour similarly notes the complexity of the extraction operation he led. It says: “On August 4, 2009, Master Warrant Officer Stacey's valour in the face of the enemy enabled his multinational combat team to fight through multiple ambushes by insurgents in Afghanistan . ... He sorted through the chaos and issued clear direction to Canadian, American and Afghan forces. Throughout eight hours of intense combat, his gallantry, perseverance and selfless dedication to his soldiers were critical to defeating a ferocious and determined enemy.”
In typical military form, he did not dwell on how close he and his fellow soldiers had come to death. He didn't even think about that while it was happening. There was too much more to do.
He later told CBC, on the occasion of receiving his Star of Military Valour: “You know, for someone to receive something like this, it takes a great deal of courage and bravery. But I really, to be honest, I don't look at myself that way. I'm just a soldier that likes to go out and do his job, which I thoroughly enjoy doing.”
The following month after the battle, he was welcoming a new group of soldiers to the Forward Operating Base at Ma'sum Ghar with an amusing lecture about local wildlife, still giving good orders, but this time having a bit of fun.
Don't pet the wild dogs that come into the base in small packs, they'll tear you apart. Mind the scorpions, especially the small ones. Leave the mongoose alone, but be kind to the cats that kill the mice. Do not handle the snakes, and definitely don't try to put them in bottles like some guys do.
“That's stupid. If you get bitten, your arm will turn black in the 35 minutes it takes for the chopper to get here. By the time you get to the (hospital at the Kandahar Airfield), your skin will be splitting,” he said.