Hockey Night in Kandahar

If the Stanley Cup is headed to Edmonton for a victory parade this week, could one of the storied trophy's next stops be 10,500 kilometres away in this baking dust bowl in the Afghan desert?

The universal wish of the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry battle group is that their Oilers win Lord Stanley of Preston's silver chalice when they play Game 7 against the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, N.C., tonight. If the Oilers are victorious, the troops are optimistic the team will add another chapter to the Cup's colourful 113-year history by bringing it - and a few of their favourite players - to their heavily defended base on the outskirts of Kandahar.

"It would be huge to have the Cup here," said Sgt. Mark Pharoah, who normally works at the garrison in Edmonton. "It would be darn good for morale."

During the Oilers' 4-0 triumph in Game 6 of the final - shown here live before dawn yesterday - Pharoah said, the cheering was so loud from fans watching in Canada House that "there wasn't a sleeping soldier in the entire Canadian tent lines."

And why not despatch the Stanley Cup to Afghanistan? After all, the venerable trophy has been thrown on to the frozen Rideau Canal in Ottawa and into the swimming pools of Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy, has visited a strip club with Mark Messier, spent time in an igloo in the High Arctic and been to the White House to meet three U.S. presidents. It has even been to Moscow's Red Square several times, and only two months ago it was returned to its original home in England, where it was hoisted by Lord Stanley's great-great grandson, the 19th earl of Derby.

"It should come to Kandahar because there are no bigger hockey fans in the world than there are here," said Tammy Howard, who works as a civilian cashier for the Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency.

Bombardier Bill Hill, a 26-year-old reservist from the Kenora, Ont.-based 116th Independent Field Battery, not only wants the Cup to come to Kandahar, he wants it to be escorted here by Chris Pronger, the Oilers towering defenceman who is from Hill's hometown, Dryden, Ont. He also wants the NHLers to play a ball-hockey tournament with some of the troops.

"With so many of the guys being from Edmonton, the Oilers have tons of support here," Hill said. "But we are all cheering for the Oilers because they are a Canadian team."

The NHL already has an Afghan connection. Former Toronto Maple Leaf and Vancouver Canuck Tiger Williams visited the old Canadian base in Kabul two years ago, and Canadiens great Guy Lafleur played ball hockey at Canada's Provincial Reconstruction base in Kandahar last year.

Thinking about hockey in a windblown moonscape where daytime temperatures can touch 50 degrees Celsius is not so easy. One of the difficulties is that the games from North America are usually shown before breakfast. Another complication is that many of the front-line warriors are in the middle of spearheading the biggest coalition offensive against the Taliban since it was ousted from power not long after terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September 2001.

Game 7 of the Stanley Cup series will be telecast live in Afghanistan at Canada House tomorrow morning at 4:30 local time (it's on at 8 p.m. tonight in Montreal).

But Canada House, which is a relatively small, tube-shaped army tent with some flags and hockey memorabilia on the walls, can accommodate only about 100 soldiers at a time. Officials were looking for a way more of the 2,200 troops deployed here could catch the game.

With the base being dry, the beverage of choice for watching hockey is bottled water.

Back in Edmonton, though, those who chose to worship their beloved team with alcohol and rowdy behaviour on the Alberta capital's trendy Whyte Ave. kept police busy.

Officers arrested 394 of the more than 30,000 triumphant fans who congregated in the area Saturday night, high-fiving and chanting "We want the Cup!"

Most of the arrests were for liquor-related offences. Of those, only six people were charged - for assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, mischief under $5,000 and outstanding warrants.

Edmonton police have launched an internal investigation into one altercation, where an officer slapped a handcuffed woman in the head, then threw her to the ground, leaving her bloodied.

Edmonton Journal photographer Jimmy Jeong witnessed the incident. The woman was among a group of people who were arrested then shipped off to spend the night in jail.

A police officer came to walk the woman to the bus. Her hands were secured behind her back with plastic cuffs.

At one point the woman turned to say something to the officer. The officer then cranked his arm to strike, Jeong says.

"It seemed unprovoked," Jeong says. "She was in handcuffs. There was no way she was doing anything."

I always liked this one , just a bit of forgotten history , unless you care.

HMCS Cayuga, commanded by Captain Jeffry Brock, and sister ships in the Pacific Destroyer Command, HMCS Athabaskan and Sioux, quickly responded to the war alert and set sail for Korea.

Initially, the threesome was dispatched to prowl waters and islands off the west coast of Korea to search junks and sampans that might be carrying munitions or North Korean marines. Early in December 1950, however, the situation on the mainland redirected the Canadian flotilla's attention.

Facing more than 300,000 Chinese Communist soldiers (who entered the war in November 1950), UN troops in advanced positions near the Yalu River in North Korea began retreating south. The withdrawal was known as the Big Bug-Out. Overnight, Brock received new orders to lead a task force and to assist by all means in his power the evacuation of the Eighth U.S. Army from Chinnampo, the port for the North Korean capital of P'yongyang.

The RCN destroyers Cayuga, Athabaskan and Sioux steamed toward the enemy port preparing to provide cover for a fleet of U.S. transport ships exiting the harbour, to give gunfire support to the retreating army and to make sure that the large stores of fuel and munitions in Chinnampo did not fall into Chinese hands.

The mission faced seemingly insurmountable problems.

Chinnampo was situated 30 kilometres up the Daido-Ko River, well beyond the range of RCN naval guns. In addition, Daido-Ko estuary was cluttered with a maze of low islands and shifting mud flats. The tides would be difficult to navigate, as would the floating mines planted by the North Koreans. Complicating matters was the winter weather, which had closed in with freezing drizzle and north winds that effectively reduced the temperature with sub-zero wind chills. On Dec. 4, 1950, as Brock assembled his relief armada, he received word that Chinnampo was bulging with soldiers, civilians and equipment and that the situation had reached emergency proportions. The Canadian captain would now have to launch his Dunkirk-like rescue mission in the dead of night.

"It was as black as the inside of a cow," Brock later wrote in his log.

Nevertheless, the RCN ships led the way. First minesweepers attempted to clear a channel 500 yards wide with unlit dan buoys, but the strong winds ripped most of them loose. That forced Cayuga's asdic (sonar) operators to guide the flotilla away from semi-submerged mines all the way up the estuary.

Meanwhile, the tide ebbed to its shallowest depth. At times the ships' keels had less than 20 inches of water beneath them, so the naval squadron was forced to advance "dead slow ahead." Then, the drizzle became a blizzard and visibility was diminished so badly that double the number of lookouts were positioned on bows. As another precaution, shells were stockpiled on deck to reduce the number of steps should the shooting start suddenly.

Below decks, the watch became a nightmare for the ships' navigators as they dashed from radar screens to chart tables and back. In Cayuga's plot room, Andrew Collier made 132 navigational fixes that night, described by one officer as "a masterful piece of work."

By daybreak, Cayuga had led the armada safely into Chinnampo harbour. Throughout the morning, Brock supervised the evacuation of troops and materiel onto the U.S. transports. Meanwhile, as a steady stream of sampans carried refugees out of the city, Athabaskan scrutinized each vessel for mines and weapons. Simultaneously, UN navy demolition and fire parties were dispatched to destroy what equipment couldn't be saved. And as reports of a Chinese breakthrough north of the city reached the port, Brock ordered the transport vessels to weigh anchor, leaving the last three destroyers alone in the harbour to complete the job.

At 5:35 p.m., Brock ordered all guns to open fire. Within minutes, explosions rocked the railway marshalling yards, the city's cement factory, its shipyards and gasoline storage tanks. North Korea's key port city, which had once been home to 75,000 people, was now, from its industrial district to its waterfront, an inferno. A day later, when the entire UN flotilla was clear of the Daido-Ko River channel and en route to safety in the south, Chinnampo was still ablaze.

Following what was heralded as "the most important and most dangerous naval mission of the Korean War," Cayuga's skipper was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, its navigator, Andrew Collier, the Distinguished Service Cross, and its coxswain, D.J. Pearson, the British Empire Medal.

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