Afstan: Sometimes good training and work are rewarded with good luck

Nothing more for me to add:

A colonel brings his men home

60 soldiers in unit nominated for recognition

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Before coming to Afghanistan last August, Col. Nicolas Eldouad made a promise to the families of his 450 troops that everything possible would be done to bring all his soldiers home alive.

Against very high odds, Col. Eldouad has achieved that goal. The Van Doo battle group's National Support Element ["About 300 CF members with the National Support Element (NSE) in Kandahar, primarily from the 5e Bataillon des service du Canada (5 BNS) in Valcartier"] suffered no fatalities during its six months in the province of Kandahar despite having undertaken about 200 combat logistics patrols covering more than 1.2 million kilometres on notoriously dangerous roads seeded with hidden improvised explosives and shared with vehicles sometimes driven by suicide bombers.

"Luck is there, it is foolish to deny that, but we had confidence in each other and in ourselves that came as a result of confidence in our equipment, our training and our leadership," Col. Eldouad said before flying out of Kandahar with many of his troops in the wee hours of Saturday morning. "That was the recipe for success.

"With the extraordinary courage they showed every day, I think my guys were no less than amazing. We did suffer attacks and we had five wounded in action. But we came out of it relatively OK."

To keep the Taliban off balance and the lifeline of food, water and ammunition for frontline troops open, convoys were despatched to austere forward operating bases at all hours of the day and night. Because of breakdowns and the constant need to check for lethal IED's (improvised explosive devices), running the gauntlet in Taliban country often involved missions of 12 hours and more.

To share the risks and give everyone a better understanding of the mission and, in particular, a small taste of what combat troops were experiencing, Col. Eldouad insisted that even the logistics clerks had to be a part of at least six convoys each during their tour of duty. Most of the work of defending the convoys fell to young reservists from across Quebec. They made as many as 70 convoy trips each. The Canadian equivalent would have been a round trip by road from Halifax to Vancouver.

"You are the best soldiers in the world," Col. Eldouad told his troops at a handover ceremony also attended by a group of fresh incoming troops from western Canada, led by Lt. Col. Kerry Horlock. "I thought that before we came here and I think that now."

At the handover Brig-Gen. Guy Laroche promoted Col. Eldouad from lieutenant-colonel to colonel. Exceptionally, for a support unit, 60 of Col. Eldouad's men and women have been nominated for recognition for their bravery and exceptional work.

The 41-year-old mechanical engineer's mantra to his troops, which he repeated Friday for the benefit of troops from the new National Support Element was: "Accept risk, but never take a chance."

The colonel will soon be leaving Valcartier, where many of his soldiers are also based, to take over a unit in Montreal that repairs battle damage to vehicles that have been blown up or have been in accidents in Afghanistan.

He left Kandahar with a much more optimistic take on the war than many recent critics who have said that it had been going very badly for Canada and its NATO allies.

"There is always a big combat (offensive) just before winter but we didn't allow them to do it this year," Col. Eldouad said. "They tried but our intervention was too much because we had the initiative.

"We conducted a lot of little operations that never allowed the Taliban the time to set anything up. All that was left for them to do was to plant IED's and do suicide attacks."