Army basic training today

The Toronto Star takes an in-depth look:

Silent in their misery and surviving on dangerously little sleep, the troops head out of their green canvas tent and into the blackness of the night.

They've just been screamed at by their commander, who's enraged by what he considers their lethargic response to the generators that have conked out, again, taking the front gate lights with them, leaving the camp blind and compromised.

It's 4:40 a.m. They are so tired that one private's eyes remain closed even as he begins to move. Another downs his wake-up potion: a pack of coffee crystals, a pack of whitener and a swig from his camouflage flask. The brittle cold, minus 15 degrees with the wind chill, hits them like a hard slap. The snow is cascading from the dark sky.

As they tend to the flooded generators, two obscured figures emerge from behind the curtain of snow.

"Go to hell, Canada! Get out of our country!" says the larger of the two with a Middle Eastern accent. He's still but a shadow, yet his billowing thoub and turban are visible to the now wide-eyed troops, who quickly mass at the gate and bring their fully automatic C7 rifles into both hands.

The man and his partner try to get inside the gate, but are blocked. "Stay back, sir!" yells Chase Miller, a 21-year-old private from Ottawa, brandishing his rifle, his eyes glued to the unwanted guest.

"F**k Canada! Allah Akhbar!" the man repeats, Arabic for "God is Great." "Infidels! I have bomb. I will kill you all!" he roars. As he begins to open his colourful cloak, and a bomb pack can be made out behind the fabric, Miller and the others open fire.

But it's not over. While the man lies writhing on the soft snow, the other reaches for the bomb at his friend's waist. He's riddled with bullets as well.

"Pretty intense," Miller says, shaking his head after the gun smoke clears.

If not for the fact that minutes later you see the two suicide bombers driving themselves away, you could mistake the blanks for real bullets, and think the event at the camp gate was occurring along the stark plains of Afghanistan.

But this isn't Kandahar, where Canadian soldiers are currently dying at a rate higher than any other NATO force in the war-torn country. Instead, it's a remote corner of Canadian Forces Base Borden, about 90 kilometres north of Toronto.

And this is the new Canadian boot camp...

Since Canada began its mission in Kandahar, 44 soldiers and one diplomat have been killed. Such a death toll in a single year has not occurred since the Korean War, and it's changing the way Canadians look at the military.

Ironically [?], it hasn't prevented them from joining the ranks. In fact, recruitment is up.

More than 5,800 recruits joined the regular force between April 2005 and March 2006, exceeding the target by 6 per cent [emphasis added]. Heading into 2007, the target is higher as the government tries to expand its 62,000-member regular force by 13,000, and the reserves by 10,000. Recruiting is ahead of where it was this time last year, says Capt. Holly-Anne Brown, spokesperson for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group, headquartered at Borden.

"Don't underestimate the patriotism of young Canadians," Brown says. "Despite the images of the (dead) soldiers returning home, I think they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They see the Canadian Forces as an organization where they can go out and make a difference in the lives of people, not only here at home but around the world."

Of the 54 recruits that began with Bravo Company, only three dozen remain, the rest having dropped out for fitness, medical or personal reasons. Just four are women...

Many of the recruits headed for the infantry are filled with a patriotism that seems undimmed by the risk of death in Kandahar. There is no one for whom this risk is as real as it is for Pte. Levi Williamson, who also goes by the name Ryan.

Williamson's older brother, Blake, was killed in Afghanistan on Oct. 14 alongside Sgt. Darcy Tedford when rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire hit their unit in an ambush west of Kandahar, on a road that Canadians are helping to build. Blake was 23.

The day his brother was killed, Williamson was on a weekend leave. Base officials tracked him down at a hotel room in Barrie and broke the news. He returned to Ottawa immediately to be with his mother, Heather Anderson, and sister Reid, 20, and then to Trenton on the Monday for the repatriation of his brother's body. He returned to Borden that night.

"It was hard coming back," he recalls. "They said I probably shouldn't, but I wanted to. My brother would have wanted me to."..

Photos here--and food.