Former Afghanistan soldiers meet with veterans of Veteran’s Place

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

As he visited with aging veterans at Veterans Place last Friday, Hebron native Bruce Rose – who served a six-month tour in Afghanistan in 2005 – was asked what it feels like to meet veterans who served in past wars and conflicts.

“The stories are all the same,” he said. “It’s just the dates and the places that are different.”

Except, he suggests, that Afghanistan isn’t the same type of “stand up war” the veterans in the wing at the Yarmouth hospital complex fought when they were young men.

“It’s not the stand up fight they had in World War II,” the warrant officer says. “It’s not us against them. You really can’t tell who ‘them’ is because they’re dressed the same as the local population.”

Rose – the son of Basil and Freda Rose – said compared to other parts of the region, there wasn’t too much conflict happening in the capital city of Kabul when he was posted there, mainly because the NATO force was able to make it pretty secure.

“The locals knew that so the city went from 600,000 to two million in the run of two years,” he said. “Once they felt safe and secure they were coming out of the refugee camps and back into the city.”

Rose was an armoured recognizance patrol commander when he was in Afghanistan, tasked with going out in armoured cars to make areas secure and safe.

The 40-year-old man who initially joined the Armed Forces because he wanted to travel the world says he came away from Afghanistan with a lot of satisfaction.

“You get to see the difference. You get to see schools open, power come back on, stuff that people take for granted,” he says.

Asked about the ongoing debate on Parliament Hill about whether to extend the military mission in Afghanistan, Rose’s only comment is, “I’m not a politician so I don’t get involved with that.”

These days he’s more concerned with being an instructor in Gagetown, N.B where he and his comrades train “the new soldiers right up to the majors.”

Rose, who tries to make it home to Yarmouth at least once or twice a year, was in town last week as part of a special salute the troops night that was held Friday night at the Mariners Centre prior to the Junior A Mariners game against Truro. Joining him for the trip from Gagetown were other members of the Armed Forces who have also served in Afghanistan – Damon Lynk of Cape Breton, Mark MacMillan of Frederiction and Dave MacLaren of Bridgewater.

On Friday afternoon they accompanied former Legion zone commander Bob Garron, a member of the Wedgeport Legion, to Veteran’s Place to meet with the residents of the wing.

On the television in the corner of his room, Second World War veteran Jean D’eon, formerly of Pubnico, keeps up with current events – like the ongoing Democratic race in U.S. politics, he’s a Hillary Clinton fan, and, of course, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

As the Armed Forces members stood in his room, D’eon had many questions about what their tour was like, and where things stand now. Was it hot? Was there snow? How many people live in the remote areas? Did you have to dig trenches?

“We had to walked 24 kilometres and when you’d get there you had to dig a trench,” laughed D’eon, who turns 90 in September.

“I guess we didn’t have it as hard as you guys did,” said Lynk. “Not too many trenches, its more vehicles and patrolling.”

D’eon also had a lot of questions about Kabul. One thing he was particularly interested in knowing was whether fuel is expensive.

The soldiers didn’t know for sure, they just know whatever fuel was purchased usually ended up in the tank of a Toyota Corolla.

“Everybody drove a Toyota Corolla over there,” said Rose. “You’d see them going up the side of mountains in Toyota Corollas.”

While the visit with the veterans was lighthearted, there is obviously still sadness when Rose talks about Afghanistan.

Asked if he’s known any of the Canadian soldiers who have been killed, he said he has.

“There’s been a number that I’ve known from the regiment and other regiments that have died over there, the army’s small,” he says.

Asked if he’d go back if asked to, he doesn’t hestitate. “I’d go back,” he says.

Perhaps, though, another question not so easy to answer was another one posed by D’eon, who asked the soldiers, “What is there to gain there? Suppose you say we won, what did you win?”

“I don’t think we’re ever going to win, we’ll just ease the people’s minds,” said Lynk. “But the war (on terrorism) is not going to be finished anytime soon.”