EGAN: PAIN LIVES ON
`Wasting' lives in Afghanistan
Their son was among the first to die in Afghanistan. So they don't watch this news — they live it, deeply, in ways without end.
Richard Leger, 72, was just home from a round of golf when he flipped on the television to see the scenes from the Kabul airport, so many little people clinging, insanely, to a giant, rolling metal saviour.
“I was watching the news tonight and there were people even trying to get on a moving plane and I thought, `My God, those are desperate people.' “Unbelievable.”
Sgt. Marc Leger, 29, a member of the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, died on April 17, 2002, with three other soldiers — the first combat fatalities for this country since the Korean War.
And the manner of their death now seems like a foreshadowing of how wrong-headed the entire plan may have been. Sgt. Leger and others were several hours into a training exercise at an abandoned base near Kandahar when an American F-16 fighter pilot mistook the artillery fire as an enemy attack. The pilot dropped a laser-guided bomb on the target: four dead, eight injured by so-called friendly fire.
The country was stunned. It was only about two months into Canada's long involvement in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 158 military personnel over there, drew the deployment of some 40,000 troops and left post-combat injuries that plague hundreds of soldiers to this day.
Leger has followed the milestones in the saga, including Canada ending its combat role in 2011 (finally pulling out in 2014), NATO's eventual withdrawal and the final American departure before an advancing wave of Taliban took over in the last few days.
And he wonders whether the international military effort ever had a viable plan with an achievable goal. First, he said, we were going after “terrorists” in the wake of 9/11, but an enemy with no uniform, based in places not easy to round up.
Then, after the first phase, what were the allies trying to achieve? (It brings to mind the adage used in this drawn-out conflict: “You have the watches, we have the time,” meaning the insurgents had no deadline; they could simply wait out the foreign intrusion.)
“It's not only the Canadian lives, it's the American lives, it's the soldiers from all the other countries who passed away,” he said with some frustration.
(About 2,500 U.S. soldiers lost their lives during the conflict — to say nothing of the 100,000 dead Afghan civilians, police and military — while the American money spent fighting a 20-year battle is estimated at $2 trillion.)
“It's how things go today,” Leger said. “They start things, they have a goal to reach, but they never accomplish anything. We're just wasting human lives for nothing. We're right back where we were.”
Richard and Claire Leger have done their best to honour the memory of Marc, oldest of three, a tall, mighty-laughing soldier who was much-honoured for his humanitarian leadership during a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
In 2005, Claire was the country's Silver Cross Mother, placing a wreath at the base of the National War Memorial on Remembrance Day on behalf of all mothers who have lost children to military service.
“There's no such a thing as closure,” she has often said of her loss. “What happens is that you learn to live with your grief and sorrow.”
They have taken part in many Remembrance Day ceremonies, told their stories at schools, had dozens of Canadian flags planted on their lawn in commemoration of the country's sacrifice.
“We didn't want people to forget what the Canadian soldiers were doing for them,” he said this week.
“That was the most important thing.”
Whenever they speak to schoolchildren, Leger says they just don't say, “They died serving their country,” but also that they served to defend the freedoms of each little boy or girl in the classroom.
The Legers also discovered that some of the myths about grief are just that. Time, he says, does not heal all wounds. He still has difficulty absorbing bad news involving injury or death to children, for instance.
“The pain is still there. Anything I hear about children just devastates me. I get very emotional about it. You take it in and you're right back to 2002.”
He said the images from the airport, in which dozens of Afghans dangerously clung to a moving aircraft, “just ripped me on an emotional level.”
So, nearly 20 years on, there is still a cost being paid on a quiet Stittsville street, and a question: for what gain?
It's not only the Canadian lives, it's the American livers, it's the soldiers from all the other countries who passed away.
RICHARD LEGER