Read Bonnie Toews

                                                                                                                                                                                                It is wonderful that we celebrate the lives and courage of fallen soldiers when they are repatriated to CFB Trenton and paraded down the Highway of Heroes, but the question that is never answered: who looks out for the returning vets? Especially those whose minds, bodies and spirits have been shattered on a continual rotation of tours through the past eight years.

It is disgusting and absolutely unacceptable to hear that Canada's Veterans Affairs is cutting back on social workers because WWI and WWII vets are dying off.

Excuse me, but Canada has a whole new generation of vets who have served in Afghanistan for eight years. By next year it will be nine years. The war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than either world war in the 20th Century and soldiers have been repeatedly rotated through three and four tours because our forces aren't large enough to handle a deployment this long and this demanding. These vets and their families need help to mend their lives back together.

Kevin Dougherty in Montreal's newspaper, The Gazette, writes that soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can wait up to four months before seeing a social worker, a necessary step to integrate them back into society and return them to the labor market.

Why? Because federal social workers each have a caseload of 40 clients to their provincial counterparts, who carry a caseload of 20 clients each. There are not enough social workers to contend with the need, and under such strained resources, these caregivers burn out, depleting veterans' social services even further.

People forget that soldiers returning home are not the only victims of the wars they've fought. So are their loved ones, families and friends. They need as much social assistance as the soldiers themselves. Those coming home are forever changed. They have experienced things the rest of us can't imagine. They carry this psychological burden for the rest of their lives.

In 1994, in Rwanda, I was briefly introduced to that world of theirs. I was one of the few North American journalists covering the massive humanitarian effort following the genocide against the Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. One peacekeeper after another told me what they saw, incomprehensible mass slaughter with no human respect whatsoever and they were forced to observe because the UN didn't give them the mandate or size of force to quell the madness. Soldiers trained to fight and defend forced to stand down. Can you imagine the helpless rage they experienced? Yet, when I came home, I faced the same apathy from friends, co-workers and the public as they did. My husband proudly explained that I had been in Rwanda and time and time again I was asked, "Did you go there on holiday?"

People didn't even know what was going on, and were indifferent when I chose to explain. I, like so many soldiers, learned not to talk about it because no one really cared to listen.

This time the public must get behind their vets and demand the social services they deserve and need. This is the most important tribute we can give our returning vets for the sacrifices they've made on behalf of our country.

Read more: Caregiver Burnout Adds to  Veterans' Woes

We can no longer turn a blind eye. Something is seriously wrong. In just six months, our rising military stars have fallen on their swords and killed hard-earned careers. Why?

We have the top dog of top dogs, a highly decorated and respected commander-in-chief of American, Canadian and other NATO forces in Afghanistan getting drunk and trashing the president of the United States. U.S. General Stanley McChrystal is relieved and recalled home in disgrace.

In Canada, the most respected military commander of the largest and busiest air base is accused of being a serial killer and rapist after he's connected to the murders of two women, one under his command. Col. Russ Williams awaits trial. More than once he has required suicide watch.

The commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, selected because of his tactical brilliance, is stripped of his command and sent home in disgrace because of an "inappropriate relationship." Before this happened, Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard was on a fast track to one day becoming the chief of staff for all Canadian forces.

And now we learn Canada has relieved its senior ranking commander in Haiti of command. Col. Bernard Ouellette, who also doubles as the chief of staff for the UN's Haiti rescue mission following the earthquake that devastated the Caribbean country, faces allegations of an "inappropriate relationship" and an investigation on his return home, BUT he's also the same commander who was highly praised for his cool handling of Canada's relief effort under almost impossible conditions to bring aid to the Haitian people and children when they so desperately needed it.

If the morale of the commanders is self-destructing, what can we say about the troops depending on them for leadership?

Paul Watson, a Pulitzer-winning war correspondent for The Toronto Star, is presently embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan and he reports it's the boots on the ground looking out for each other that sustain the troops' morale and determination to get the job done right. He writes: "During an especially tough spate of attacks last month, soldiers at one of the company's most exposed bases say their commander offered to transfer any soldier who wanted to leave for a safer place. None stepped forward. All wanted to stay in the fight."

Watson is finding that the solidarity amongst troops is indivisible. He probes the heart and soul of each soldier and he can't find a break in their commitment to each other. He sites the example of Sgt. Jeff Veinot, on his third overseas tour starting in Bosnia in 2003. He was part of Operation Medusa, when Canadian Forces first battled large groups of well dug-in Taliban in the Kandahar province. He explains: "His [Veinot's] strongest loyalty is not to an idea or a cause, but to the men and women who may go home in a box because he [the sergeant] has had a bad day at work."

Watson quotes Veinot: "It's not about the pay cheques. It's not about saving Afghanistan or doing what the politicians think. It's about making sure that the guys, the sappers and the corporals below us are the guys that get to go and have as safe a trip as they can over here."

And here's another aspect of the soldier serving under war conditions that civilians fail to understand and cannot empathize with: the bonding of facing and overcoming danger together, every day. Watson captures this spiritual hold when he questions a corporal on leave back home who tells him, "the only thing harder than being Afghanistan is being somewhere else when your buddies are here."

This buddy system is a soldier's safety valve.

What safety valve to commanders have?

Leadership by definition is isolated and lonely. Field commanders make the toughest decisions of life and death, whatever the rules of engagement or the purpose of the mission, from peacekeeping to actual battleground, and they have to live with them alone. They write the heartache letters home to the families of the fallen. We put our best and most innovative leaders in the hottest pressure cookers and wonder why they implode. How stupid is that? Instead of sending them home in disgrace because they snapped under unrelenting pressure, isn't it time we showed them the compassion and understanding they have earned and wholly deserve for all the things they did right to make us proud to be Canadians or Americans, whichever our stripe?

It's not enough to say something is wrong. It's time to find out why.

Earlier this week, The Toronto Star's Mitch Potter reported how Canadian soldiers and police are risking their lives to visit villages in the cradle of the Taliban to make sure their trainees have benefited from their police training andare applying what they have learned properly to the villages where they live. He described how troops are very conscious of the pull-out date and they don't want the sacrifices made by those before them to be in vain. They want the villagers left to feel more protected and freer, and they want to ensure this after they are withdrawn, so patrols are taking more chances as they visit and mix personally with Afghan villagers. It's typically noble of troops on the ground to believe in their mission because they see the need, while others at home watch the number of deaths and wounded escalate and wonder at the reality.

In today's Toronto Star, Rosie Dimanno laments in her nearly full-page column that, while Parliament debates and investigates the detainee issue, in Afghanistan, Canadian troops continue to die and schoolgirls are being gassed. "Spare some outrage for them," she concludes.

I'd like to add that the federal government's new policy not to address those wounded on the front line makes no sense. Surely the Taliban know the casualties accumulated on their own doorstep, so press announcements are not breaching security. Instead, this policy smacks of a cover-up, which the Toronto Star's investigative reporter David Bruser began to expose in his series "War at Home." The Canadian Association of Journalists has nominated Bruser for an award for this series in the "open newspaper" category. In his articles, Bruser describes the disturbing cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among returning Afghanistan war veterans and the growing problem of post-tour violence.

We never learn do we? This generation's Afghanistan war vets are getting the same lousy treatment Viet Nam vets suffered. And how does this affect the morale of troops still in country? They need to know that what they are doing makes a difference to the folks at home as well as for the locals in Afghanistan to make their conscientious efforts worth the physical and mental price they pay.

Now the Canadian Press reports Private Kevin McKay has become the the sixth Canadian military member to die in Afghanistan this year and the 144th killed as part of the Afghan mission since it began in 2002. McKay was scheduled to conclude his deployment in southern Afghanistan in a few days.

Instead, on May 13th, Pte. Kevin McKay from the Edmonton-based 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was killed by a Taliban homemade blast about 15 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city. The 24-year-old native of Richmond Hill, Ont., was on a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district village of Nakhonay at 8 p.m. local time Thursday at the time of the explosion.

McKay's death comes as hundreds of people prepare to gather in Halifax to remember the first Canadian sailor to be killed in the Afghanistan conflict. A memorial service will be held for 37-year-old Petty Officer (second class) Craig Blake, who was killed by an IED on May 3, also in the Panjwaii district.

Col. Simon Hetherington, the deputy commander of Task Force Kandahar, said McKay embodied the gritty spirit of the typical Canadian soldier. "He was the type of soldier that Canadians must think of when they think of their army in Afghanistan -- the tough, courageous infantryman, living in austere conditions and doing incredibly difficult work," Hetherington said.

"His platoon brothers and friends will remember Kevin, better known as 'Mickey' to his buddies, as a generous man, dependable, with a quick wit and a great sense of humour that was exemplified by his awesome moustache." He was also height-deprived but had no trouble "poking fun and taunting those less vertically challenged platoon mates," Hetherington added.

Just a Reminder …

He was getting old and paunchy

And his hair was falling fast,

And he sat around the Legion,

Telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he once fought in

And the deeds that he had done,

In his exploits with his buddies;

They were heroes, every one.

And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors

His tales became a joke,

All his buddies listened quietly

For they knew where of he spoke.

But we'll hear his tales no longer,

For ol' Bob has passed away,

And the world's a little poorer

For a Soldier died today.

He won't be mourned by many,

Just his children and his wife.

For he lived an ordinary,

Very quiet sort of life.

He held a job and raised a family,

Going quietly on his way;

And the world won't note his passing,

'Tho a Soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth,

Their bodies lie in state,

While thousands note their passing,

And proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell of their life stories

From the time that they were young

But the passing of a Soldier

Goes unnoticed, and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution

To the welfare of our land,

Some jerk who breaks his promise

And cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow

Who in times of war and strife,

Goes off to serve his country

And offers up his life?

The politician's stipend

And the style in which he lives,

Are often disproportionate,

To the service that he gives.

While the ordinary Soldier,

Who offered up his all,

Is paid off with a medal

And perhaps a pension, small.

It is not the politicians

With their compromise and ploys,

Who won for us the freedom

That our country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger,

With your enemies at hand,

Would you really want some cop-out,

With his ever waffling stand?

Or would you want a Soldier--

His home, his country, his kin,

Just a common Soldier,

Who would fight until the end.

He was just a common Soldier,

And his ranks are growing thin,

But his presence should remind us

We may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict,

We find the Soldier's part

Is to clean up all the troubles

That the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor

While he's here to hear the praise,

Then at least let's give him homage

At the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simply headline

In the paper that might say:

“OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING,

A SOLDIER DIED TODAY.”

        Courtesy of A. Lawrence Vaincourt © 1987

             http://www.kmike.com/wantuck1.htm

On December 30, 2009, the same day when eight CIA operatives were killed in a suicide attack near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Canada faced the loss of its first journalist in Afghanistan along with another four Canadian soldiers. A massive improvised explosive device (IED) ripped through their steel-plated vehicle, tossing it aside to leave a massive crater in the dusty road, a thoroughfare often travelled by Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan near Kabul. 

     Journalists embedded with our troops know and understand the risks they take. Some relish the adrenalin rush of danger, but most are afraid. They learn to face their fear and live with it because they believe in the need to report what happens on the battlefield to those back home, not just to help families understand what their loved ones live through and do as part of their duty for their country but also to provide public insight. Most still hope that by helping readers better understand the war, it will bring about more realistic decision making on the home front for our armed forces are thinly stretched to meet their worldwide and national commitments. 

     Michelle Lang believed in and lived by the traditional values of journalism. She wrote with factual integrity, and had in fact already won a National Newspaper Award in 2008 for coverage of health and medical issues for the Calgary Herald. According to James Murray, a CBC reporter who had already served six months in Afghanistan, "She was the kind of journalist you would want to have here. She was kind and decent, and curious."      

      The acting commander of Task Force Kandahar said the military wanted to honor Lang in much the same way it has fallen soldiers. Col. Simon Hetherington said, "After Michelle's death, it became natural for us to think that given her personality, her dedication and her professionalism, that she should be granted some similar form of recognition," in which forward-operating bases, patrol bases and camps are named after fallen soldiers.

     In a simple but significant tribute, the military affixed a plaque to a wooden post braced with small sandbags. The memorial stands between the two media tents in the Canadian compound of Kandahar Airfield. Beneath a photo of Lang is the inscription, "In memory of Michelle Lang, journalist, Calgary Herald & Canwest, KIA 4:00 p.m. 30 Dec 2009, Kandahar city."  

     This memorial stands as a reminder to journalists covering the war of the perils that come with reporting from the front lines.

Last year, when I saw a TV documentary about Captain Trevor Green's miraculous rehabilitation, I cried. He is the Terry Fox of the Canadian Forces today but is so humble he doesn't realize it.

Back in public view, Capt. Greene, 44, was the honored guest speaker at a fundraiser founded two years ago by Canada's former chief of defence staff, Rick Hillier. Greene is the Afghan hero who best represents the families whose members have died and those caring for wounded Canadian soldiers who need assistance from the Military Families Fund so named the True Patriot Love Foundation to support their recovery.

Three years ago, Trevor Greene led his platoon into an Afghan village to negotiate with community elders about ways the Canadian military could help them develop their economy and build schools for their children. He and a colleague removed their helmets as they sat cross-legged within the circle. It was their gesture of respect. They were determined to win the elders' trust, but a young boy suddenly came up from behind and struck Greene with an axe. The brutal slash cut down through his head and effectively split his brain in two.

No one expected him to live, but with dogged tenacity he clung to life. Green calls his rehabilitation "a marathon of baby steps." Through it, his fiancée, Debbie Lepore, has been as brave, steadfast and determined as he has been. She has never lost her faith in him or in God's power to heal him, even when the doctors could not promise he would ever speak again, and then when he was told he would never walk again. Though he gave his speech from his wheelchair, he can now stand on his own.

Next July, he intends to walk down the aisle to marry Debbie. They have a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Grace, who has waited from birth to see the "impossible" feat of her daddy on his feet and hear her parents say, "mission accomplished."

On November 9, 2009, Governor General Michaelle Jean presented him with a new medal recognizing Canadian soldiers' service and bravery today. On Tuesday night, November 10, 2009, he spoke in soft, halting sentences to high-powered dignitaries including Prince Charles and raised $2 million for the True Patriot Love Foundation. The folks who heard Capt. Greene's speech will never forget him. Neither do the soldiers who have served with him. And neither will I.

Rita Gerlach is what Vladimir Nabokov calls an enchanter. But, the author moves beyond the classic novels of Charles Dickens and Gustav Flaubert with her unique voice, electric pacing and concise plotting. Riveting suspense hovers through every twist and cranny in the events that unfold as the reader feels the villain lurking behind every scene, waiting, conniving, ready to pounce with meanness and passion, as he eventually does.

Exceptional editing of Abingdon Press Editor Barbara Scott empowers the author to mesmerize her readers as she transposes them to the post-revolutionary period between England and the United States. A structural counterpoint of VIRTUE and VICE permeates. Often words associated with love are used to describe despair. For instance, the play of dualism on the word “embrace,” with the opposite perception of entrapment intended, is repeated: “High in the heavens the moon broke free from the embrace of clouds.” And later: “The sea crashed against the hull, lifted the ship and brought it down again into the sea’s dark embrace.” This is no mere gift of language. This is literary genius.

Like Dickens and Flaubert, Rita’s minor characters stand out. Literary devices abound throughout her magical imagery. Numerous passages of the novel can be printed as free verse and read in exactly the same way. But most of all, the historical love story of Juleah and Seth set against the terrible retribution of Darden’s unrequited love joins the greatest love stories of all time.

When American patriot Seth Braxton travels to Devonshire, England, to claim Ten Width, the estate his grandfather left him, he falls in love with his sister's best friend, the beautiful and independent spirited Juleah, but terrible happenings interfere with their happy-ever-after ending. Can Seth and Juleah survive Darden’s sinister plotting? The stage is set, and SURRENDER THE WIND is everything the author promises it will be.

In 1994, I was sent on a magazine assignment to report on the logistics of the largest humanitarian relief effort ever organized following the Rwandan genocide. The West finally felt guilty about ignoring this modern Holocaust. Because the gruesome slaughter occurred in Central Africa, it was largely ignored by the Clinton Administration. Only the Canadian UN force commander, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, brought attention by disobeying UN orders, along with his Canadian and African contingency of UN peacekeepers, to abandon the victims.

In my interview notes, I rediscovered one of my first introductions to what happened. After Canadian air traffic controllers discovered an orphanage where the Hutus had hacked off the feet and hands of Tutsi children so they could not grow up to retaliate against them, they asked me, "How can we teach peace to children like these, who have every reason to grow up to hate those who crippled them?"

I did not physically go into the refugee camps set up in Goma, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), which bordered the north part of Rwanda on Lake Kivu. But I ended up listening to the horrors many of our Canadian peacekeepers witnessed. Sometimes I hugged them as they cried and wept with them for their pain. I saw the elegance, innocence and resilience of spirit that engaged Dallaire and those who refused to leave the victims to their fate. I also saw incredible leadership in the rebel leader, Paul Kagame, who drove the extremist Hutus out of Rwanda with minimal fighters and, in fact, saved the UN mission from total defeat and decimation. His rebel forces recaptured the Kigali International Airport so that UN reinforcements and humanitarian relief could be flown into the country. Today he has achieved the unthinkable. He has stitched together the country between those who inflicted death and the survivors and relatives of those who were murdered by issuing a proclamation that puts them side by side farming the land. In the aftermath, he has guided the Rwandans to independence and self-sufficiency. He has taught them to embrace forgiveness so they can live as a free nation. That is a feat the world needs to recognize.

Because of my experience in Rwanda, the plight of children in war circumstances will always play a part in my intrigue and suspense novels. Children are the powerless victims of an adult world gone mad. There is no justification for the slaughter and maiming of children. They are not responsible for the deeds of their parents or governments.

I hope you will bookmark my web sites below and follow along as each novel finds a publisher who believes in the story and me:
http://www.bonnietoews.com
http://bonnie-toews.blogspot.com

Someone mentioned that once President Obama is faced with the real politics of the hill, he will become disillusioned with his idealism. I don't believe this. I can see him getting frustrated, yes, many times, but he has incredible faith and a very stubborn woman by his side. Also he has converted Vice President Biden, who mentioned in an interview yesterday on "Oprah" that he has learned so much FROM Obama as well as about him since they became campaign partners. Biden says President Obama is truly remarkable and has what it takes to carry everyone, even the cynics. The 44th U.S. president has the support of grassroots people and they far outnumber the greedy and corrupt. They will rise up if he needs them in the difficult times ahead. I truly believe this. Kennedy was popular but he wasn't one of the people. He was a rich man with empathy, but he never knew what it was like to be truly poor, even if he emulated it for a short time--like Prince William. A good experience, but when it's over, they return to their rich lives. Not so with Obama. He IS one of ALL the people, not just Black Americans. He worked very hard to realize his dream. Faith and hard work can make mincemeat of the lazy rich, and it's the lazy, or the rich addicted to money and power, who have crippled our economies worldwide with a greedy manipulation of the stock market and abuse of slave labor. I don't think he is offering false hope. I believe we are seeing real hope at work for the first time.