Posted on 05/18/2006 5:36:57 AM PDT by Clive
TORONTO (CP) - A female Canadian soldier killed in combat Wednesday in Afghanistan described missing her daily Tim Hortons coffee and feeling the pride of wearing the uniform in a lengthy e-mail posted on her sister's Internet blog.
In an e-mail dated early March to her younger sister Kate, Capt. Nichola Goddard recounted carrying a 45-kilogram pack uphill on a two-kilometre march, as well as other daily challenges of her role in the Afghan mission. "I feel like a poster child for why people should join the military," Goddard wrote. "It was an amazing 15 days."
In her e-mail, Goddard described moving into isolated areas, either by foot or with vehicles, to conduct shirras - the Pashtu word for meeting - with local elders.
She wrote she was honoured to participate directly in two of the meetings, despite her initial concerns over being the only woman.
"I really thought that the whole female thing would be a huge issue," Goddard wrote. "It was, but not in the way that I thought it would be."
She described how the subject of the meeting quickly centred on her marital status.
"The big shock was not that I was in the army, but that I was married and in the army. The fact that my husband was not also a soldier was even more disturbing (don't worry, Jay, I said that if you were strong enough to handle me, you didn't need to be a soldier, too)."
The remainder of the discussion, she wrote, revolved around her "inexplicable" lack of children.
"The elder offered to go inside and get me some milk and bread, as diet was probably the issue. He was 67 and had two wives and several children under the age of 10 ... I said that my husband would definitely say that one wife was enough. He thought that was hysterical, and I was a hit."
During the second shirra, she wrote the issue was her availability.
"My boss was apparently asked if I was available to marry one of the elder's sons who looked to be about 15. After we'd established that I was already married, the issue turned to the all-important one of baking bread."
In another village, her unit's interpreter approached her after having a conversation with five men who were watching her.
"Then he turned to me and said, 'Please excuse their staring. They are just very surprised that you are a woman working with all of these men. I have told them that you climbed over the mountain with us with your heavy bag and that you had no problems. They think that you must be very strong. I explained to them that you are just like the men, and that you can do everything that they can do the same as them.' "
Goddard added: "It was perhaps the greatest statement of equality that I have ever heard - and it was given by a Pakistani-raised, Afghan male in the middle of an Afghan village that is only accessible by a five km walk up a mountain. It just goes to show that anything is possible and that stereotypes are often completely wrong."
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Ping re your question in another other thread.
This is a photo provided by the Canadian Armed Forces of Capt. Nichola Goddard, Canada's first female combat death in Afghanistan. She was killed during fighting with Taliban insurgents late Wednesday, May 17, 2006 a military spokesman said. Capt. Goddard, of 1st Royal Canadian Horse Artillery based in Shiloh, Manitoba, Canada, was killed in action at 6:55 p.m., 24 kilometers (14.1 miles) west of Kandahar city, the spokesman said. (AP PHOTO/CP/ho-Canadian Armed Forces
Wed May 17, 10:50 PM EST
A female soldier from Canada was killed while fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan on Wednesday, said military officials.
Capt. Nichola Goddard, 26, had been serving in Afghanistan with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. She was a member of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, based in Shilo, Manitoba.
She is the first Canadian female combat soldier to be killed in action since the Second World War.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/17052006/3/world-canadian-female-16th-soldier-killed-afghanistan.html
Forty-three females in the Canadian military died in the First World War - 29 in enemy action on the Western Front.
- Seventy-one female members of the Canadian Forces died in the Second World War, including five combat-related deaths - four during the bombing of London and one when a German U-boat sunk the SS Caribou.
- There were no women military casualties in the Korean War
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/17052006/3/world-canadian-female-16th-soldier-killed-afghanistan.html
She was an incredible woman and I know her family and her unit will miss her terribly.
Her blog posting reminds me of when my son was in Zabul Province in 04/05. He was an Infantry Platoon Leader with the 25th ID and recounted similar stories about village life there.
Thank you for the ping.
Thank you for your service Capt. Nichola Goddard, to your Country, and in fighting the enemy.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/binyon.htm
Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), the poet and art critic, was born in Lancaster in 1869. He worked at the British Museum before going to war, having studied at Trinity College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate poetry prize. Whilst on the staff of the British Museum he developed an expertise in Chinese and Japanese art.
Aside from his best known poem For The Fallen (1914), most notably the fourth stanza which adorns numerous war memorials, Binyon published work on Botticelli and Blake among others. He returned to the British Museum following the war. His Collected Poems was published in 1931
For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
The Soldier
by Rupert Brooke
IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
After the Hospital ship Landovery Castle
was sunk by U-86, on the 27th. of June 1918,
and 146 died, this poster, issued later in 1918,
used the tragedy to sell War Bonds.
(click image for more details on the U-boat
war crime which included the murders
of 14 Canadian Nursing Sisters)
Note: my paternal grandmother pictured below was on
board Canada's "HMHS Araguaya" which recovered
the remains of her fallen comrades for their return to Halifax.
Your Paternal Grandmother was a beautiful woman. What a neat picture that is.
Here is an interesting letter from Earl Balfour to U.S. President Wilson commending the Harvard Unit in general and specifically, on the letter's second page, its contributions at "... General Hospital 22, the largest Hospital unit serving with the British Army ..." an apparent reference to the numeral "22" at the top of the face of my grandmother's Harvard Unit service pin above.
For more info, try Googling up "Harvard Surgical Unit", "Harvard Medical Unit" or simply "Harvard Unit" - all in parenthesis. It may further interest you that, given my grandmother was a Canadian citizen who subsequently (mid-1916) transferred over to the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), Nursing Sisters were also among the 1st of our women permitted to vote.
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