Canada is currently facing a crisis in its recruitment drives as not enough people are signing up to serve their country—and among those who do, too many are opting to walk away after they have completed their initial training. The forces who are remaining in uniform are facing serious morale issues.
Small surprise, considering how our military personnel are treated compared to other nations.
Case in point. Of the four Commonwealth countries that fought in Afghanistan, only Canada has not awarded a single Victoria Cross, our nation’s highest award for gallantry in combat. The United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have all awarded Victoria Crosses for bravery in Afghanistan—why not Canada?
It is not like there were not Canadian service personnel who deserved one. True, these service members laid their lives on the line for their country in a conflict overseas. True, people were shooting at our servicemen and women. True, people were bombing and shelling our service members. True, Canadian military members provided acts of courage that reached and surpassed the bar when it comes to the level of sacrifice deserving of such recognition.
The stumbling block is apparently that the Canadian military does not recognize the war in Afghanistan as a “war.” What madness this? The “Canadian” Victoria Cross (we no longer use the British Victoria Cross as our highest medal) is awarded by either the Canadian monarch or his vice regal representative, the Governor General of Canada, to any member of the Canadian Armed Forces or allies serving under or with Canadian military command for extraordinary valour and devotion to duty while facing hostile forces.
Case in point, Private Jess Larochelle was serving October 14, 2006, when an ambush hit his post in the mid-afternoon. The Taliban (aka hostile forces) fired two rockets simultaneously on a Canadian platoon of three Light Armoured Vehicles (LAV) at a remote strongpoint in southern Afghanistan. One of the rockets hit one of the LAVs, while the other hit Pte. Larochelle’s observation post. Sgt. Darcy Tedford and Pte. Blake Williamson were killed in the LAV.
The one that hit the observation post just sent Pte. Larochelle flying along with dirt and debris. Pte. Larochelle, in a video interview released more than 15 years later, recalled his machine gun pushed into him, making him fly back and hitting his head on the other side of the trench.
Stunned and wounded, Pte. Larochelle crawled back to his C6 machine gun and started firing on the Taliban. For this action and the events that followed, Pte. Larochelle won the Stars of Military Valour, a high mark of honour, but also one that should have earned him the VC for bravery under fire, acts that saved others and held his company’s ground in the face of fierce opposition.
A campaign has been launched to rectify the injustice of his being denied the VC because the action was not “officially” a war. Well, it certainly was a de facto war in anyone’s logical definition—even if that armed conflict didn’t meet a bureaucratic definition of such, people were getting shot at, people died, in fact, 158 Canadian Armed Forces members, one Canadian diplomat, four aid workers, a government contractor and a journalist died during our nation’s involvement in that conflict.
Here are a few guiding principles from the common store of knowledge that those bureaucrats might want to consider going forward, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” and “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…” and, especially if you have to duck, you might want to reconsider the decision to not award VCs to those who deserve one.
In a couple of days, we will be recalling the June 6 D-Day landings and lauding the sacrifices laid down by those who did not return. Respect goes a long way toward improving morale—it’s time our nation put its medals where its mouth is.
Those service personnel who deserve our highest honour should get it—and semantics be damned.
Lest we forget.
