For Sergeant Lucie Alain, it was the unrelenting fear of an unseen enemy’s rocket salvos raining down on the Afghanistan camp that kept her from catching even a few hours’ shut-eye.
”Attacks came at night, even as you walk through camp you listen and think, ‘Where can I find some shelter in case rockets start coming down?”’ the 37-year-old mother-of-two from Quebec recounts in the lobby of a Cyprus hotel.
About 1 700 Canadian soldiers are passing through the sun-drenched Mediterranean island this month after rotating out of Afghanistan for a compulsory five-day rest period to reacclimatise them to civilian life.
In military jargon, it’s called ”decompression”. Although officials say this is not standard practice for Canadian forces rotating out of war zones, top brass deemed it necessary this time round because of the harrowing nature of the mission in Afghanistan and the high proportion of casualties.
Master Corporal Donald Clement knows the same fear all too well and has the scars to prove it. He suffered shrapnel wounds to his buttocks from a rocket attack while sitting with comrades in the common room of a camp in Kandahar.
”It’s not knowing what’s going to happen from moment to moment. You lie on the edge of your bed, but you don’t really sleep,” the 36-year-old Quebec City native says.
A soldier sitting nearby caught the worst of that attack, Clement says. He was seriously wounded and had to be med-evaced back to Canada.
Canadian medical officials say the rest-stop is designed to allow soldiers to unwind and readjust to civilian life by shedding battlefield stresses caused by being on alert round-the-clock with virtually no chance to relax.
Some soldiers, keen to rush back to their loved ones, do question what they see as an ”unnecessary delay”.
”I was among those who were saying, ‘Just send me home,’ but the opportunity to unwind is very much worth it because it changes our mindset,” says Alain, who was on a six-month tour in Kandahar as a medical lab technologist.
”I’ve seen all kinds of injuries, dozens of badly wounded — Canadians, Americans, coalition soldiers, some were dead. It’s part of the job,” she says.
Despite initial qualms, 33-year-old Master Bombardier Patrick Moreau said even his wife acknowledged the benefits of a brief interval prior to a return home to help shake off the stress of feared rocket attacks. ”You just don’t know where they’re going to land,” he says.
Cyprus’s sun and sand are a welcome respite from the gruelling Afghan tour for the soldiers, all of whom have served at least five tours of duty in places such as Bosnia, Haiti and Cambodia. About 2 300 Canadian soldiers are based in Kandahar, under Nato command. Since 2002, 26 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.
Over the five-day rest period in Larnaca, troops attend morning briefings by army medical professionals to help them cope with the switch from combat mode to civilian life.
”The briefings give us all the tools that we could use, some tricks, to help us cope. If I heard some loud noise in my sleep, I’d probably hit the ground, and with my training here, I remind myself where I am,” says Clement.
Life at home doesn’t revert to some kind of suspended animation where upon your return, you flip on a switch and carry on as things used to be, he says. ”Life goes on at home. Things aren’t going to be the same as they were.”
Moreau agrees the sessions are invaluable to assist them with the changes they will inevitably face at home. ”They tell us things we already know but they remind us of,” says Moreau, who has a 13-year-old boy and nine-year-old girl waiting for him back in Quebec City.
The wind-down is not only about briefings. Other activities range from nightclub crawls at the local club land of Ayia Napa to sightseeing tours, or simply frolicking on the island’s sun-drenched beaches.
The soldiers say there’s no reprieve from the heat in Kandahar, and the Cypriot coastline is a welcome sight. ”It was good to see water,” says Moreau. ”It’s not that bad here. It was a lot hotter in Kandahar. You sweat, sweat some more, and sweat again.”
Clement says: ”In Kandahar, you think it’s clouds in the distance, but they’re clouds of dust.”
With their stay almost over, Alain says there is only one thing she wants to do when she gets home: ”The first thing I’m going to do is hug my kids.” — AFP
