Politic?

The Realities of Conflict

"In those instances around the dead, they looked like insecure little kids. Their voices changed, their hands were -- some of them -- shaking."
"They're not like our kids [Afghan Taliban fighters]. They're not strong, well-nourished people ... They're teeny. When you see them laying there, it's surreal. They're little, frail drug addicts."
"The intimacy was always there. There was very much a connection, listening to them change magazines, listening to them talk while you're sneaking up on them. Listening to the prayers. It's not a target at that point, it's not a paper target."
"I don't think you can make someone soft. Who you are, you bring to the battlefield. Modern warfare is not about being a Neanderthal. Modern warfare is being smarter than the enemy."
Dave Quick, former major commanding a Royal Canadian Regiment company in Afghanistan

"It was very chaotic, especially when there's bullets flying at you. You're almost numb. An act of killing while you're doing that, you don't really think about it until you come back and wind down."
Major Eddie Jun, former platoon commander, Royal Canadian Regiment

Ethan Baron/Postmedia News/Files Canadian soldiers respond to incoming insurgent fire in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in July 2006.

No longer with the military, Mr. Quick is writing his thesis: "Armies succeed in tricking soldiers into killing with modern training methods. [But] I realized that I had failed to prepare my soldiers properly when I watched them react to the realization that they had killed a man for the very first time." Recalling his six-month stint in 2007 to ferret out Taliban from Zhari District west of Kandahar City, he and his men had 24 planned operations, along with others unplanned with "lethal effect".

Ultimately, then-major Quick earned the Star of Military Valour in recognition of the fact that all 400 of his soldiers returned home alive from their Afghanistan mission, a not-inconsiderable feat of command success. On the other hand, Mr. Quick, now resigned from the military and working toward a degree in investment banking, remains troubled by the reality that a quarter of his men suffered psychological and physical injury, unprepared, as he saw it, for the realities of conflict.

They faced the realities of improvised explosive devices, of the injuries and deaths resulting from the IEDs planted by the Taliban. It is the impact on the minds and sensibilities of his men in retrospect in the realization that in the pursuit of their military duties they had to kill other human beings that now disturbs Mr. Quick. There was little choice, however, when coming into contact with the Taliban fighters. It wasn't only foreign military killed and injured by IEDs but civilians terrorized by the harsh brand of Islam the Taliban imposed.

And then the other reality struck them all, that so many of those whom they were fighting were only in their teens, often not past 17, and often enough high on stimulants, and soon enough, dead on the battlefield. In the wake of their first deadly firefight, Major Quick ensured that the soldiers who were responsible for the kills would not be tasked to "process" the bodies; to remove material that potentially rendered intelligence, and to place the dead in body bags.

He recalled one episode when the discovery was made that a Taliban commander found dead had been recording himself just as the Canadians converged on his position: "He was speaking as a commander and at the same time giving thanks to Allah and finding peace. Until there was no more talking", explained Mr. Quick, speaking of some of his men who were "very freaked out" after combat. Others questioned their faith and "really wrestled" with having to kill in the line of duty.

He may perhaps take comfort in the fact that the Canadian military is speaking to some of his concerns in its mental-readiness training. A 30-minute "psychological preparation" module has been worked up to include "understanding the complications of combat and killing", as well as covering "common reactions to killing and adverse situations", along with eight other topics falling into related categories of psychological stress in close combat conditions.