First-person

I've advocated for quite awhile now for the CF to allow ordinary members to tell their own stories to the Canadian public. I've long believed that the more ordinary Canadians know the men and women who serve them in uniform, the more they will come to like and respect them, and the less the CF will find itself underfunded, misused, or forgotten as it has in the past.

That's why I'm so very glad to see that the CEFCOM website has been upgraded. Under the "Features" tab at the lower end of the page, you'll find first-person stories written by CF members for public consumption. Some of them are a bit stilted, as you might expect from earnest soldiers, sailors, or airmen who aren't used to penning narratives about what they do for a living. Some are more relaxed and comfortable telling their author's story. But regardless of the level of polish, all are worth reading, if only for a glimpse through the window into the everyday life of a deployed CF member.

Like Capt Peter Curtis, a Sea King pilot deployed on Operation ALTAIR with HMCS Iroquois’ air detachment:

It’s always fun to land on another Canadian ship — the flight deck is familiar and we can visit with Air Force friends. Once on Calgary’s deck and plugged into the internal communication system, we exchange greetings, news, rumours and, in this case, engines, which we haul through the Sea King’s cargo door with a hoist and hard work.

Everything gets buttoned up, the communication wire is pulled, and we are off with the new engine occupying the better part of the cargo bay. Immediately starting our next task, we use our sensors as well as guidance from the ship’s radar and intelligence to search for our contact of interest.

Just before we left HMCS Iroquois, Staff Intelligence asked us to check out a large container ship. Making only one pass so the target doesn’t suspect our interest, we find the vessel, confirm its identity and take some close-up photos. We never learn the ship’s history or the reason for our tasking — but we don’t have to. Our photos will go to the ship’s intelligence section and we probably won’t hear about it again.

Or like Captain Curtis Chow, a mentor with the Police Operational Mentoring Liaison Team (POMLT) as part of JTF Afghanistan:

Every day when I wake up and the dusty inside of my tent comes into focus, the same thought crosses my mind: “Man, I have the best job in the world.”

I am a mentor with the Police Operational Mentoring Liaison Team (POMLT) and the commander for my team. We are responsible for training, mentoring and professionalizing the Afghan National Police (ANP) in southern Kandahar Province. Most of us work in small teams made up of a mix of military police and infantry that live with ANP detachments in Police Sub-Stations (PSS). Our job is not only prestigious and highly coveted, it is also a critical no-fail task.

...

Living and sharing experiences and hardships with the ANP in close quarters allows us to mentor to a very high standard, and lead by example in all aspects of their professional life. At my PSS, we often ate evening meals with the ANP officers, conversing through hand gestures, our broken Pashto and their broken English, but often relying on the interpreter for more in-depth conversations. Due to the tribal nature of the culture in Afghanistan, many ANP become fiercely loyal to their mentor teams, to the extent that ANP officers have shielded Canadian soldiers with their own bodies during attacks.

Currently, several reform and restructuring initiatives are under way for the ANP in Kandahar Province. One of the most important is an intensive eight-week professional police training course delivered at the Regional Training Centres in Herat and Kandahar City, which more than 400 Afghan policemen have completed to date.

Read the rest - you'll be glad you did.

BZ to the folks at CEFCOM who put this together. It's always a struggle to get an accurate picture of operations out through the mainstream media filter, and while this initiative doesn't have the reach of CBC News or the Globe & Mail, it does bypass the filter, which is a healthy development. Even more notable, given what a bureaucratic nightmare it is to get any stories out past the political and civil service filters in Ottawa right now, the folks at CEFCOM deserve a hearty pat on the back for this.