The first real thing that always stands out in
my mind was the ambush in May where
Nichola Goddard was killed.
She was the forward observation officer
for the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery.
She operated a LAV which call sign was
Gulf 1-3 and gulf stands for, it‘s a code
word for artillery that we use in radio
communications so my call sign was
Niner 7 Alpha. Niner is part of headquarters,
7 was PSYOPS and Alfa was the sergeant.
So my call sign was Niner 7 Alpha,
Nichola’s was Gulf 1-3.
So I may use that as a reference so if I do
I thought I better tell you now.
On operations from about February
through to May, we were operating with
Charlie Company which Nichola Goddard
was attached to as their forward
observation officer calling in artillery,
calling in helicopters and different
assets to our assistance.
She was, she stood out amongst the
different officers. She was very friendly,
very outgoing, got to know everybody
within the company and Nichola would
treat you as an equal and that was
really welcoming with her. A lot of times at
night we would spend the last two hours
at night between two and four I was on
radio watch, Nichola was on radio watch as
well so I would sit in her LAV,
Gulf 1-3 the call sign and I would sit in the
gunner’s chair and she would sit in the
commander’s chair and she would
monitor the radios, I would look through the
thermos camera and we would watch our
arcs and you would have two hours every
night to talk to each other so you learn a lot
about someone. A couple hours each night
we would share stories and we’d laugh and,
you know, talk about home and talk about
what we liked and you got to know
someone pretty well. And in May,
we were on operations, one of the companies
had come in contact and Nichola was calling
in artillery strikes and was the first Canadian
officer to call in artillery in combat since the
Korean War and that was May 17th,
that was the day she did that.
So it was a real big first for the Canadian Army
and it had been a long time since we
actually called in fire. So after that initial fire
was called, we were in the village of Panjwai,
it’s a small place west of Kandahar city.
Historically it is a very significant point
for the Afghans. It’s where they defeated the
Russian Army in the ‘80s. The Russians had
gone in and they basically destroyed a
battalion of tanks in that area and that’s the
end of when the Russians said enough
with Afghanistan. So a significant place to be,
and it was a maze, a warren of roads and
high walls and grape fields and huts and
buildings and ten foot walls in some places
where you couldn’t see the other side.
We had been stopped there while she had
called in the artillery and they wanted us to
remain in position and we stayed there for
a long time, a number of hours and we were
all getting itchy to leave.
We all wanted to leave that spot because
we were feeling very vulnerable,
we’d been there too long.
We could see people moving on our flanks
and on our sides and we could see the
locals starting to bug out. And so we finally
got the word to mount up and leave and
just as we were getting onto the vehicles
the Taliban initiated their ambush and they
hit us from three sides.
They were well coordinated, well-armed.
They figured there was about seventy five of
them hit our patrol which was maybe
thirty five guys. I think there was something
like sixteen or seventeen RPG rockets
fired in the first volley from different spots and
only one of those rockets went off. And the
rest hit the armoured vehicles and deflected
because they were fired from so close
the Taliban couldn’t get a standoff distance.
The RPG is designed to be fired from a shoulder
launcher and it has to rotate through the air so
many times in order to arm the warhead.
That way if you fired it at something too
close it wouldn’t explode and injure the firer.
And the Taliban couldn’t get any standoff
from our vehicles so they were firing them
from where they were which was too close
and that kept them from detonating.
And that’s really what I think saved a lot of
us that day was the fact that they were too
close so the terrain worked against them
as well not only us but the side alley is
where the rocket came from, hit the wall and
it detonated and that is the rocket that
the shrapnel struck Nichola and she passed.