I really didn''t worry about myself because
we sort of travelled in the background and
I think of the time you were a target if
you were a military convoy.
So as we had been there for a series of
months and the Canadian Army started
arriving en masse, it became obvious
that we were becoming a target.
But militants at that point
were sort of happy to attack military
convoys and they had just started;
we had become a target halfway
through my tour when the 3rd battalion of
the RCR were attacked in Camp Julian.
One of their patrols had run over a
landmine that was deliberately set,
an IED, and a couple of their guys
had been killed and one or two others
had been seriously wounded.
People that I knew when I was in the
infantry or that I definitely knew of
when I was in the infantry and
strangely enough people that
I worked with a decade later, one of
them had been part of the explosion.
So at that point we realized we
weren't there peacekeeping.
This is not peacekeeping and
even though we had moved from
Kandahar to Kabul, you know,
we were a target.
It started off small but it became very
clear that the days of blue helmets and
peacekeeping were over and that we
were being targeted by militants who would
do whatever they could to get information
on our movements including that of
our senior military staff, General Leslie,
our politicians and our soldiers.
So it was something that ran
through your mind quite often.