Posted on 02/25/2003 7:31:14 AM PST by aCDNinUSA
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 Warriors' tears The pitiable state of Canuck forces is hard for vets to stomach
By Mike Strobel
Before you decide it's okay to send Johnny Canuck anywhere near Iraq, let's talk to a coupla guys named Tom.
They have some expertise on the subject.
Tom Martineau took a sniper's bullet in Bosnia in '94. He was a warrant officer. He was in his Cougar, a vehicle more suited to training back home.
The AK-47's slug went through his left arm, his ribs, his left lung, knicked his heart, cut a kidney in half and crossed his torso into a vertebra.
That was bad enough. Then the feds kicked him in the nuts.
It took Ottawa's bureaucracy 14 months to get him a wheelchair. By then, he was half-way to relearning to walk.
Sgt. Tom Hoppe came home from Bosnia covered in medals, our most decorated soldier since Korea.
Among other heroics, he rescued three children under fire in a Bosnian cemetery.
Any other country's army and there'd be a TV movie.
But, ever heard of Tom Hoppe?
I meet the two Toms in the Long Bar at the Royal Canadian Military Institute. It's a sort of officers' club/military think tank on University Ave.
The Toms were Lord Strathcona's Horse. The regiment's shield -- lances and crossed picks -- hangs with dozens of others and paintings of Canadian battles. Kap'yong. Hill 355.
We're here for the preview of a sobering series, A Question of Honour. It debuts on ichannel at 9 p.m. tonight through Thursday. Our Peter Worthington wrote about it Sunday.
It chronicles how we let "the best little army in the world" dwindle to one that needs allies' help getting to hot spots.
How we are, according to retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now 34th on the list of "peacekeeping" nations. (Though peacekeeping today looks a helluva lot like war.)
Anyway, we trail such powers as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria. "Gimme a break," snorts MacKenzie as he tells us this at lunch halfway through the screening.
MacKenzie, UN commander in Bosnia, stars in A Question of Honour. So do the Toms and other retired soldiers.
They tell their stories as scenes from the Balkans, Somalia, the Gulf War, Zaire flicker by like bad dreams.
You may be surprised to hear 17 Canadians died on Balkans duty, with more than 100 seriously wounded.
"These guys were supposed to be peacekeeping, but they weren't," says series boss Rob Roy, 48, of Stornoway Productions. "They were getting shot at and blown up."
Politicians and bureaucrats do not smell rosy in the series.
One soldier, disbelief still on his face, tells how he and his mates got a memo from the defence ministry.
They were under fire in Sarajevo at the time.
The memo directed bases to buy only Quebec maple syrup.
Well, we all have priorities.
Tom Martineau once called then-defence minister Art Eggleton a "f---ing a--hole" to his face. He, Hoppe, and others were in Ottawa lobbying for "peacekeeping" vets. "I was pretty sour then," he tells me now.
No wonder. He was denied a wheelchair because some bureaucrat didn't think he had proper ramps at home in Hamilton. "I took a bullet for you, I stuck up to my part of the bargain, and you can't give me a f---ing wheelchair?"
Martineau, 42, is the in-your-face Tom. He doesn't edit his words much, is hugely engaging and moves fast, with a limp.
Hoppe, 38, is the quiet Tom. He quit the army after 20 years and is now working on a Masters, and a corporate career.
But they see their old army the same way: Adrift. Leaderless. Without tools. With little clue what to do for those who come back with holes in their bodies or psyches.
Iraq? "We'd have to take 1,000 guys off the street," laughs Martineau. "Hey, buddy, try on this uniform."
As for backup? "Nothing's changed. The problems I faced in Bosnia in '94 would be the same problems in Iraq in 2003."
He starts to tell me about his worst memory of Bosnia, the village full of kids so sick and hungry they were yellow. But he can't get past the first few words. Hoppe, too, remembers the Bosnia's children. "You just felt so helpless about them."
About our military, too?
"You could dump in $10 billion and it won't solve things. We need to look at the leadership and politicians gotta sit down and decide what we want the military to do," says Hoppe.
Who's gonna make that happen?
"We need a visionary. Someone who sees the problem."
Well, nobody in Ottawa comes to mind.
Maybe we should start with guys like the two Toms. And Lew MacKenzie, who gives a speech at the break and says we need a "light, lethal, strategically mobile, go-anywhere" military that can look after itself and get itself home.
Meanwhile, "we're not taken seriously by our allies."
So, worried about us following Bush to Iraq? Rest easy.
I doubt we could follow him even if we wanted.
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