Rockets Serve As Wake-Up Call

The Telegraph-Journal ^ | 29 January 2007 | MARTY KLINKENBERG

[buccaneer81]

Rockets serve as wake-up call

MARTY KLINKENBERG TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL Published Monday January 29th, 2007 Appeared on page A1

For most of six months, Kelly Taylor slept on a cot in a six- by eight-foot room in a tent at the Kandahar Air Field. She decorated her small space with family photos and hung a scarf, a gift her husband brought back from Bosnia. The mice running amok took a little getting used to, and so did the rockets, fired by insurgents, that whizzed overhead.

"We had 22 air raids in the first month and a half I was there," Taylor says. "For a while, it seemed like we were having them almost every night. It's spooky. You hear the rockets launch, hear them whistle overhead and then you brace yourself and wait to hear them land.

"It's in God's hands."

The wife of a soldier stationed at CFB Gagetown, Taylor left her husband and two teenage sons in Oromocto last summer to work at the NATO base in Afghanistan. As an employee of the Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency for six months, she waited on customers at a Tim Hortons counter, blended milk shakes in an ice cream parlour and endured sand storms, temperatures that nearly reached 60 C and dehydration so severe that she had to be hospitalized.

Along the way, she missed her 19th wedding anniversary, celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's 10,000 kilometres from her family, and saw 28 soldiers sent home in caskets.

"When my plane touched down in Toronto, I almost kissed the ground," Taylor, who returned from Kandahar on Jan. 9, says over a cup of Tim Hortons coffee in Fredericton. "Home suddenly had a whole new meaning to me.

"Before I went to Afghanistan, I was naive. I thought the world was pink and fluffy. But being there makes you appreciate what you have here. It hits you like a ton of bricks. We're very lucky. I can send my kids to school or let them walk to the bus without worrying that they are going to be blown up.

"The world is not pink and fluffy."

Three times in the past two decades, Kelly Taylor was left behind to raise the children and buy and sell houses while her husband, Leigh, a member of a tank unit, travelled to hostile nations as part of Canada's peacekeeping efforts. He went to Kosovo and Bosnia twice, and each time he left she grappled with why.

"It was always hard for me to accept," Taylor, 42, and a part-time employee at a camp store at CFB Gagetown, says. "I remember throwing a spoon at him when he told me he was going to Kosovo. I guess I developed a bit of resentment toward the military. I had given up friends and jobs and homes and missed out on a lot, and was having a midlife crisis.

"Going to Kandahar was my way of seeing what he did it for, and now I can say it was 100 per cent worth it. I think every military spouse should go. I have learned that soldiering isn't what he does, it is who he is. I fully understand it.

"I have always supported the military because I was married to a military man. But the pride I feel now, God help anybody who slams the military in front of me."

A native of Plaster Rock, Leigh Taylor was posted in Oromocto for the second time two and a half years ago. His unit is headed to Edmonton for training this summer, and to Kandahar in February of 2008. Kelly Taylor wants to return there and will be eligible by then, but she won't go at the same time as her husband.

"There is no way I could do it if Leigh was there," Kelly Taylor says. "I would be frozen with fear."

A native of Calgary, Kelly Taylor saw job opportunities in Kandahar posted at the camp store last spring and e-mailed a resume to Ottawa.

"I felt sick when I hit the 'send' button," she says.

Soon, she was receiving training in how to recognize improvised explosive devices, and was then shipped to Afghanistan, leaving sons Travis, 18, and Dustin, 16, in the care of their father.

"I saw how much she wanted to do it, and told her that I thought it would be good for her, even though I hoped she would put this foolish thought out of her head," Leigh Taylor says. "I knew what it was like. I knew they launch rockets into the base.

"And while I knew she would be relatively safe, I was scared."

Kelly Taylor had only two days off in six months after she landed at the Kandahar Air Field. A vast majority of the time she was on the base, with the exception of a brief transfer to the provincial reconstruction centre at Camp Nathan Smith, named for a soldier killed in a highly publicized friendly fire incident in 2002.

Camp Nathan Smith is in Kandahar City, a 45-minute journey over dangerous roads. Taylor was escorted there by a military convoy, and rode in a Bison armoured vehicle with seven soldiers riding shotgun.

"It was the longest 45 minutes of my life," she says. "I was scared snotless. I couldn't see anything, and every time the convoy slowed down, the soldiers that were inside with me would grip their rifles and look at one another. It was terrifying. You didn't know what was going on."

Taylor returned to Fredericton on Jan. 9, and within a few hours was enjoying a belated Christmas with her family. Her husband greeted her at the airport with a bouquet of flowers; she gave him a new wedding band.

Now, she is slowly adjusting to life back in New Brunswick - and is considering joining the reserves.

"I would go back to Kandahar again in a second," she says. "Before I went there, I really wasn't sure how I felt about it, if we were supposed to be there or not. But now I believe we absolutely should be there. It's our responsibility to help take care of people who can't take care of themselves.

"I've just walked in somebody else's footsteps for six months, and can tell you that the men and women in the Canadian military are amazing people. It sounds corny, but I truly understand the meaning of honour and integrity now after having heard those words thrown around for 20 years."

Marty Klinkenberg is contributing editor of The Telegraph-Journal. He can be reached at mklinkenberg@rogers.com.

[buccaneer81]

Great story.

[buccaneer81]

Ping!

[Jet Jaguar]

"Going to Kandahar was my way of seeing what he did it for, and now I can say it was 100 per cent worth it. I think every military spouse should go. I have learned that soldiering isn't what he does, it is who he is. I fully understand it."


I agree.

Thanks for posting it.

[mystery-ak]

Thanks for the ping.....what a great article.

[GMMAC]

PING!

[StarCMC]

Thanks JJ!! What a GREAT article!

Pinging a few friends.

[Clive]

"The world is not pink and fluffy."

Well said.

[BIGLOOK]

A very world wise military Wife.......scratch that.....Vet!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[alfa6]

Thanks for the posting buccaner81

Thanks for the ping Clive

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[alfa6]

Y'all might want to check this out

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Valin]

BUMP

[PhilDragoo]

The world is not pink and fluffy.

[starzed_]

Thanks for the story.

I wonder how many more people will be wearing red on Friday's to honour soldiers this week. It should go up after that article.

[NorthOf45]

Wonderful story b81 ... just wonderful. Dang, I gotta update my FR home page.

[Professional Engineer]

bttt