ADVERSUS MALUM PUGNAMUS

"We are fighting evil"

Cpl Brian Sanders was just recently awarded the South-West Asia Service Medal, with bar for service in-theatre. His story at CBC.ca is a darn good read:

The actual medal itself, however, looks pretty cool. It’s silver, with the Queen on the front and something called a Hydra on the back. The Hydra, a many-headed serpent, represents evil in various forms. A Canadian sword transfixes the Hydra, and over the design is the Latin phrase "ADVERSUS MALUM PUGNAMUS" (We are fighting evil).

Each colour of the ribbon represents something as well. Sand colour on the outside represents the challenges in the theatre of operation, while the red represents the blood spilled on Sept. 11, and the ensuing campaign that followed. Black represents the mourning of victims of the terrorist attack, while the white represents the peace that we are all fighting for over here.

Cpl Sanders' account of some of the events he'll remember each time he looks at his medal are worth reading as well - hair-raising, tragic, and sometimes darkly funny in way that's peculiar to the military:

Two more casualties were radioed in, and again we drove to pick up two injured soldiers. "Doc!" one of them screamed, "Are they all right?" Puzzled, we loaded him on a stretcher. "Are they still there?" he yelled again.

"What are you talking about?" Toezer asked, and then the casualty exposed his crotch, where he had a small shrapnel wound, but one that missed his children-maker by millimetres. Toezer ensured him everything was intact.

The laughter from our much-relieved casualty was broken by the deafening crack of a 2,000-pound bomb destroying the enemy bunker. Soldiers cleared the area and found a reinforced tunnel inside the building. We took off to the landing site and transferred our casualties.

The battle finally subsided after 34 hours of fighting. We pulled into a wheat field and set up a small medical station to deal with minor ailments. The companies rolled through our resupply point before they headed off to a staging area to replenish supplies and eat. We saw about 20 patients, most of them just dehydrated or with minor shrapnel wounds requiring a bandage — and a straw. When I asked Creelman what the straw was for, he laughed.

"Suck it up and carry on."

As Brian Sanders says, each medal is unique, since it represents a different story for each soldier who wears it. We need to hear those stories from the soldiers themselves.

So congratulations and well done to the CBC - a phrase you won't often see me type - for allowing soldiers like Cpl Sanders and Sgt Storring to tell their stories directly to the Canadian public, unfiltered and true.