CALGARY—Rob McCue’s pictures of Nicola Goddard and Jason Warren, two friends killed in Afghanistan, aren’t grainy black-and-white photographs from a distant war. They’re in colour, and still very fresh in his memory.Sgt. McCue was there in May 2006 when shrapnel from a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade killed Capt. Goddard, the first female Canadian soldier to die in combat, during an ambush. Cpl. Warren survived, but two months later, told McCue he “had a bad feeling” the night before a convoy mission. On their way back to Kandahar the next day, a suicide bomber detonated beside their armoured personnel carrier, killing Warren along with driver Frank Gomez and wounding the rest of McCue’s team.McCue was among the pallbearers who carried Warren’s remains to a Hercules aircraft. More than a decade later, the memories of what transpired during his time in Afghanistan and a 2002 tour of Bosnia still weigh on him — and Remembrance Day is one of the hardest times of the year.“There’s years where I haven’t gone to Remembrance Day ceremonies,” he said. “I just can’t go. The memories start piling up the week before and then, by the day of, I’m just a wreck.”Since 1914, Canadian soldiers have deployed in hundreds of operations around the world. While Canadian military efforts in the First and Second World Wars and Korea are widely celebrated, others range from the well-known (Afghanistan) to the lesser known (Bosnia and Herzegovina) to the obscure (a 1975 evacuation mission in Vietnam).These included conventional warfare, along with peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks. Many soldiers never left Canada during their time in the military. Yet some veterans feel those who handled more recent conflicts, peacekeeping, or training missions aren’t acknowledged in the same manner as those who served during the First or Second World Wars.“To me, that is something that is ...
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