Sitting In Judgement

"I still love the Forces.  I'm alive and that's the most important thing.  I'm not in jail.  I haven't been ripped away from my family.  It broke my heart to be dismissed from the Forces but ultimately, I'm alive."

Having served in the mountainous, rock-strewn wasteland of Afghanistan where in Kandahar province Canada's contribution to ISAF in combatting the Taliban, former Army Captain Robert Semrau - like all those others who served and returned to Canada grateful to still be alive, though many now live with mental issues and physical infirmities - reminisced in a newly-published book about the difficulties of that service.

Adjusting professionally in a war zone is an expectation of every military man or woman who enlists in the forces of their country.  As an Army Captain Robert Semrau was held in high regard, held an exemplary performance record and was assigned difficult and sensitive duties in his work alongside members of the Afghan Military.  He is no longer with the Canadian military, since demoted and dismissed from the forces.

An episode that rated little mention in his memoir The Taliban Don't Wave, saw him charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder and negligent performance of a military duty.  He was acquitted of those charges and found guilty and convicted on a lesser charge of disgraceful conduct.  For shooting dead an unarmed, severely injured Taliban fighter.  A man who had experienced the misfortune of being hit by an Apache helicopter.

There wasn't actually much left of the man or his swiftly expiring life when Mr. Semrau and those whom he was with came across the Taliban in a cornfield in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, in October 2008.  "My eye caught something dangling from a tree branch and my brain said, 'Cannot compute, cannot compute'.  I thought to myself 'What the hell are sausage links doing in a tree?'  Then I realized they were human intestines."

The Taliban fighter was cited by witnesses to have been on the verge of death.  Then-Captain Semrau responded in empathy to the man's plight, shooting him as he would himself preferred to have been done with if he was beyond medical assistance as this man obviously was.  Responding to an unspoken code of conduct on the battlefield.

The situation that faced Mr. Semrau was the choice between saving a dying Afghan soldier with his legs ripped apart, shin bones jutting from trousers, blood frothing from his mouth.  Or to tend to an injured Afghan interpreter, integral to the mission at hand.  A split-second judgement call in a theatre of war. 

The court at trial heard several versions of what transpired on that day.  One military witness stated unequivocally that the Taliban insurgent was 98% dead; two witnesses were in agreement that Mr. Semrau had shot the man twice.  National Investigation Services officers had arrested Captain Semrau for murder; he was not questioned nor encouraged to offer his version of what had occurred. 

The U.S. airman who shot the insurgent out of the tree from the helicopter with the 30 mm high-explosive rounds has obviously not been charged with attempted murder.  The man whom he had mortally maimed and who was dying was left for disposal by others.  Who had compassion for the man's state and his presumed pain.

"My mind raced as soldiers yelled in the background.  This guy's in a bad way, but if I lose Hassan (the wounded interpreter), I'm screwed.  We can't speak Dari.  Then it him me - I had to decide whom to save."  Presumably, when he uses he word "save", he means attempting to transport the individual under grimly difficult circumstances, to medical care.

No one in the four-person army panel who sat in judgement on this combat veteran had any background in combat operations themselves.  They were, nonetheless, according to retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie (writing in the book's forward) tasked with fully understanding what had occurred that fateful day in Lashkar Gah.