"What the Thunder Said"...to me

Back at the beginning of June, I was invited to see LCol John Conrad, a decorated Canadian army officer, speak about a book he'd written called "What the Thunder Said: Reflections of a Canadian Officer in Kandahar." My curiosity was peaked by the fact that it was a book about combat logistics, a topic about which I am almost wholly ignorant. But even more than that, I wanted to attend because it's extremely rare - Haley's Comet rare - to see someone still wearing the uniform write a book about their military experience.

Conrad's presentation was fascinating. So, further encouraged by a resounding endorsement from Christie Blatchford in the foreward, I picked up a copy of the book. I'm so very glad I did. I wasn't forty pages into the book before I realized I should start using a highlighter as my bookmark, so that it was never far from hand. Not only is John Conrad a professional leader of men, he's also a damned fine writer.

A few weeks ago, I was also privileged to speak at length with LCol Conrad about this project, as he's now serving at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. As we sat over coffee at the Armour Heights mess, I was able to glean a bit more about his motives for writing the book, as well as some of the challenges inherent in such an unusual undertaking.

For example, I was surprised to learn that Conrad won't make any money from all his hard work as an author, since the book is "published by The Dundurn Group and Canadian Defence Academy Press in cooperation with the Department of National Defence, and Public Works and Government Services Canada." Regardless of what one thinks of the content of the book, its writer's motives couldn't be more pure: to tell the story of his soldiers and their under-resourced unit in Kandahar in early 2006, and to provide a catalyst to begin a much needed and long overdue discussion about professional logistics in the CF. I certainly wouldn't begrudge John a bit of personal catharsis in the exercise, either.

The book isn't intended to serve as a history lesson, nor is it an academic text. But the paucity of his intended audience's knowledge of military affairs in Canada and about the specialized field of combat logistics requires a healthy dollop of context. Accordingly, Conrad devotes a couple of chapters to the history of logistics in the Canadian army and another to the history of the Canadian deployment to Afghanistan. His engaging, conversational writing style leavens what could have been a dreary and numbingly boring subject in any other author's hands. It sweeps the reader into the narrative flow of the book and prepares him or her for the lessons Conrad really wants his audience to understand.

Some of those lessons were painfully learned. At times, the wounds were bloody ones, and at times they were invisible to all but those experiencing them. As I mentioned earlier, the pages of my copy of What the Thunder Said are thoroughly defaced with notes scribbled in the margins and vast tracts of orange highlighted lines. But one passage in particular lays out the essential problem for the logistics soldier:

The battlefield of the logistics soldier lies so heavily entrenched in the realm of the mind - the psychological plane. Unlike our brothers in the combat arms we rarely go on the offensive. There is no cathartic release for the logistician that an attack can permit the infantryman. The logistic soldier in Kandahar rides with passive optimism that he or she will come up swinging after the attack. But whether you live or die, whether you get to come up fighting, depends not on your physical fitness, your intellect, or you prowess with the rifle. Instead, your survival hangs on such random factors as vehicle armour, proximity to the blast, and pure luck. Providence. That is hard to accept. The first move in a convoy fight belongs to the enemy and that is terrifically unsettling. Soon every Toyota that strays too close to your truck resembles a bomb, every colourful kite is a semaphore signal, and every smile from an Afghan pedestrian betrays a sinister secret. Ground convoys extract a continuous toll on the psychological reserves of a logistics unit.

This brutal operating environment was made even more difficult by the decision to populate Conrad's National Support Element (NSE) unit with about half the personnel he should have had:

Task Force Orion would actually tip the scales in February 2006 at 1,500 soldiers instead of its original planned number of just under 700. The NSE by comparison stayed nearly the same as recommended by the original model, not growing in size at all. My list of personnel dated 21 February 2006, some two weeks into our deployment reflects only 281 names. This was nearly the same strength of the Kabul Model NSE, which had been mostly static on Camp Julien. RC South was some 225,000 square kilometres of axle-snapping terrain by way of comparison.

What struck me most about both the book and my conversation with LCol Conrad was how unexpectedly candid he was. Military officers in Canada are a very frank bunch, but they're constrained by both custom and law in their criticism of the CF and the government. When it comes to talking about their own clan, they tend to follow every mother's advice: when they can't say something nice, they don't say anything at all. Conrad maintains his professionalism throughout his work, but he isn't shy expressing his disappointment in some of the cultural and organizational flaws in the CF when it comes to the logistics branch. He gives us some real gems:

• No professional soldier would ever dispute the primacy that the combat arms must command in an army. The logistics arm's sole raison d'être is to serve the needs of the combat forces. However, can you fight without bullets, without water? As trite as it sounds, logistics are ignored a the commander's peril.


• The army has not been greatly interested in improving logistics support to the combat arms because it has not really been in the line of work where logistics was a life and death necessity. The focus of army leadership was on protecting the combat arms in a long series of budget cuts.


• Today it is rare indeed to find leaders in the Canadian Army who understand the sustainment capacity of their commands. How much diesel fuel does their formation carry; how much more can be amassed in a given period? This is not to suggest that the commander must know every last detail about logistics. He or she must however know the limitations of his or her force and where the edges of possibility lie.


• Logistics is not hard in the academic sense of the word, but it is hard in the volume of detail, synchronicity, preparation, and planning that is essential for success.


• ...logistics has to become part of combat operations when there are no such words as front and rear anymore.


• Undoubtedly, the biggest factor in the erosion of logistics strength in the Canadian Forces was ourselves - the leadership of the logistics community. Specifically, the Canadian Forces Logistics Branch seemed to be either uninterested or unable to fight for their corps and provide the generals with a sound direction or vision for the future of the Canadian logistics soldier. Instead, the logistics people...flirted with the notion of handing responsibility for the military supply chain over to civilian companies...The logistics branch failed their soldiers the moment they stopped caring about the last 300 metres of the supply chain - the part of the chain that echoes with thunder. [my emphasis]


• The army decided to pass on the requirement for a LAV III recovery variant, a machine with the muscle to pull a damaged LAV III off the battlefield when it has been blown apart and none of its tires can move. A cheque written a decade before by army planners was cashed in during our tour.


• At its best, logistics is the well-planned, logical offspring of a fertile imagination harnessed early to the demands of the tactical plan. At its worst, logistics is a crudely rendered afterthought stapled to a military disaster.

While this criticism of the politicians, of the CF, and of his Logistics Branch is decidedly blunt, the only soldier he criticizes by name is himself, going so far as to recount a dressing-down he received - justifiably, he admits - by BGen Fraser towards the end of his tour. He says it still stings to remember it, and I can well believe that, because I cringed just reading it. Conrad's honesty in this, at his own expense, makes it far easier for the reader to trust his assessments throughout the rest of the book.

Some of the more personal observations he shares are quite raw:

I noticed among all of my leaders that they tended to blame themselves when their soldiers got hurt. I was just as bad as my subordinates in this arena and right up to the end of the tour. It took me the entire seven months and most of the next year in Canada to realize that these wounds of war, the human toll on your unit, are not your fault. This is far easier to write and say than it is to practice.

The passage is too long to reprint here, but when Conrad recounted one of his weekly conversations with his son at home, the lines on the page got a little blurry for me. He summed it up a bit further on: "I may be a good officer or a good father, but surely I can't be both at the same time over here." The things we ask our soldiers, sailors, and airmen to endure in our names are enough to break your heart sometimes.

Even with all the personal sacrifices, all the mistakes made, all the lessons so painfully learned, all the shortfalls in manning and planning, all the make-do solutions he and his staff had to come up with, at the end of the day, they did it:

The Canadian Task Force eventually logged some 1,750,000 kilometres, fought in over 100 enemy engagements, and sustained battle damage to over 50 vehicles during our time in country. This necessitated nearly 6,400 repairs to equipment and the battlefield recovery of some 126 broken vehicles.

That's quite the record, and Conrad and his soldiers should be proud of it.

Above and beyond that, Lieutenant Colonel John David Conrad, M.S.M., C.D. should be proud of the service he has done his soldiers, his Logistics Branch, his army, and his country in the writing of this important book. I cannot recommend it to you highly enough.