Our people in Sierra Leone

Good on the Toronto Star for noticing CF members in one of their lesser-known foreign missions:

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone–"Bo! Bo! Bo!" the soldiers shout. They sprint a few metres, drop into the tall grass and aim. Their enemy is an enormous baobab tree. Their bullets are their voices. "Bo! Bo! Bo!"

"They don't always have money for blanks," Warrant Officer Kevin Junor says, then turns to the Sierra Leonean soldiers who are scurrying for cover. "Don't bunch up! You're firing at the men right in front of you!"

Junor, who lives in Bolton, Ont., is one of 11 Canadians taking part in Operation Sculpture, Canada's contribution to the British-led international military training team in Sierra Leone. Their mission: to help the government rebuild its army following the country's brutal civil war in which government troops committed almost as many atrocities as the rebels.

"We've got lots of experience in a training role," says Lt.-Col. John Feller, commander of the Canadian Forces in Sierra Leone. "Maybe not so much in the jungles of Africa, but the tactics, the leadership skills required are the same around the world."

Not everyone would jump at the chance to live in a country deemed by the United Nations as the poorest on the planet. But for Junor, a reservist who grew up in Jamaica and Scarborough, it was a chance to connect with his family's history. In the 18th century, hundreds of runaway slaves known as Maroons were deported from Jamaica to Canada. Many of them later resettled in Sierra Leone.

"My wife is a descendant of the Maroons, so this is like home," says Junor, who is with the Toronto Scottish Regiment. But it didn't take long for Junor and the other Canadians – many of whom are in Africa for the first time – to realize that the nearest Timbit was thousands of kilometres away...

Most, including the Canadian commander, are reservists. Junor, for example, normally works as a change management consultant at Ontario's transportation ministry. Because of Canada's commitment of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, other missions like Operation Sculpture are forced to call on reservists. Some soldiers say Canada's military is more overstretched now than it was during the war in Bosnia.

"It kicked the living crap out of us then, and now they're doing it again in Afghanistan," says reservist Tom France. "We're here because the regulars, the guys in the battalions, are all in Afghanistan. ... It's hard. It burns guys out."

However, some insist that while the reservists might be the second-string, they're hardly rookies.

"Some of them have 23 years of regular force experience, they've just switched over to the reserves," says Lochhead, one of the five regulars. "They bring a vast amount of knowledge to the Sierra Leone armed forces."

"We're so grateful," says Alfred Kpalayieh, a [Sierra Leonean] warrant officer. "For the past decade we've lost our initiative. Now the Canadians have taken us back to the old days before the war. In the near future we will get a very good army."..