6 weeks in the field.

I went to bed last Saturday around 4 am after a night out with the guys, I woke up around noon on Sunday and ran some last minute errands. I didn't go to sleep again until Friday, at 2am. And I wonder why I can't sleep anymore. Canada Day long weekend 2008, Halifax, CFB Halifax to be more precise. The Navy knows how to roll, they rebuilt their entire officers quarters as a hotel and a large percentage of my course is currently shacked up here, partying like hell to shake off the last 6 weeks of bullshit.

We're done our hard field time and not a minute too soon. This week was when people started to crack. You could feel it coming, from day one. A tour might be 6 months and a war might be years, but nothing is longer than a course, because every day of your life on course is an attempt by the staff to break you down. And to this end, the defensive is about the best tool you could ever hope for to beat whatever is left out of a group of soldiers.

You recce a position, site your trenches, move the troops, occupy the position, then you dig in. Carry your shovel and your pick on your back, and dig like hell until you're standing in the ground, you're head sticking out looking down towards the kill zone where your enemy will eventually appear, right in the trap you're rushing to set. Except, not on course. On course, you dig in, and before you have a chance to even finish, let alone change your socks, or drink some water, or eat, you're attacked and you withdraw, under contact, and run, and march, and find a new position and start it all over again. And at night, you don't sleep, you dig. And if you eat, you're hammering down a cold rat pack while your fire team partner watches the arcs of your trench, and you listen painfully to each slow scrape of the rat pack as your buddy gets every last scrap of that useless 240 calories that the army swears you can live on x 3 a day.

But what the defensive teaches you is the bare minimum of what you require to live. You live out of your rucksack, like we always do, but you're carrying it everywhere and often. In the dismounted role, who knows if you're going to have transport to get you out, especially in a withdrawl under contact. So we prepare to carry, and run with, and hit the ground with, and conduct fire and movement with our rucks on our back. Between your fighting order - your weapon, your frag and tac vest, your gas mask, 48 hours of rations, 2x first line ammo and 3 litres of water, any extra weight is just going to cause trouble. Anything you pack has to be essential, like, down to nothing but socks and extra food.

So this is where you learn the importance of hold out kit. Snivel kit is slang for all the extra bits of junk you carry with you to make your life a little nicer - fleece jackets, guicci rain gear, hell, a pillow. Hold out kit on the other hand is that last little savior of equipment or clothing that you will not bring out until you are truly fucked. I was once saved from hypothermia but one last old t-shirt I found jammed in the bottom of my ruck, grabbed and put on a few minutes after I had stopped shivering and a few minutes before I was really in some trouble.

And on the defensive, for most people, is the bivy bag. The weather is an unpredictable and dangerous beast. We had a day so hot that at 11pm my friend went down on a patrol vomiting with heat exhaustion and I had to drag him out 300m through thick brush to the road in complete darkness. And that same night by 2am we were shivering uncontrollably in our trenches saved only the clear skies above. But you don't always get so lucky. We abandoned our position on Thursday at 4 in the morning and set out on a 13km withdrawal with full platoon weapons and equipment. By the time we reached our new position everyone to the man was soaked with sweat - so we spent all afternoon and evening withdrawing and reoccupying the same ground until night set in and around 1 am we had finally finished our trenches and prepared to finally get some rest, our last night in the field, after 6 weeks.

And that's when the rain started.

It played out in our trench the same way it must have in every other - no one wants to admit that they are slowly going hypothermic, so they accuse their trench partner. Mine started nagging quickly that he could hear my teeth chattering and that I should do something quick. So we relented and abandoned proper battle discipline, pulled out out bivy bags, and crawled in fully kitted up. A bivy bag is a waterproof - hopefully - sack that you usually keep your sleeping bag in to keep dry, but in a pinch will make an emergency one man tent against the elements.

And around 3am is when I realized that the bivy bag is not completely waterproof.

And around 3pm that afternoon, when I was still shivering and barely awake, I found out that one of my best friends had failed off the course.

I knew he had been pulled to the hospital for twisting his knee in a tank rut, but didn't realize that doing so he lost his chance to re-test his practical and was by default out.

And there is nothing harder than being exhausted but elated for having finally finished the worst, and turning to your friend who was there for all but one day of all the hell and bullshit, and wanting to be excited with him and hop in your car and hit the road to Halifax for the long weekend, but having nothing at all to say to a guy who was always there for you but now is struggling to keep his career from slipping through his fingers.

So he gave up his reservation and his spot in the car, and when I get back he won't be there. The army moves people out pretty quickly to teach us a lesson, that the only people who exist are those still on course, still on tour, still on the mission - still alive. Because people will die and we will lose troops and we can't sit around and dwell on the losses because we lose people in order to accomplish missions, and if we don't carry on then they died for nothing. Which is great, in war, but bad when you already miss your buddy and have to add him to the list of good, good friends who were unlucky, or unhealthy, or just plain incompetent - who are now very gone, and unlikely to ever look up their old life or the old friends their status within it used to grant.

And walking back to the naval barracks, after bailing from the bar early because the guys were hammered and I just didn't feel like dancing anymore, I thumb my NDI 20, my military ID in my pocket, making sure everything is in line to cross through the guard shack. The guard demands and I present and he inspects it and reads my status and tells me, "sir, have a good night." and I can't help but think who am I fooling as an officer in the military, maybe a year away from commanding my country's soldiers in combat in a foreign country, sulking around in a random city feeling bad for friends and missing women and wishing I had someone to share the comfy bed in my room with. I want to be hard, I want to be one of those guys who can take any punch without missing a beat, and I'm not soft by any means, I can survive anything you can throw at me - I just don't want to feel bad anymore about things I can't control.

I guess really, I want to be able to visit random cities without needing to wander around alone in the fog, and to be able to sleep in big comfy beds without lying staring at the walls until 4am, and I want to have friends who won't be posted out or recoursed or med-catted, and to be able to just think about what needs to be done, without having to feel anything, and really, I don't want to have to write anything anymore.

Black Bears

Nothing in life is ever a pure positive it seems. Having done all my military training up to this point in the winter, summer brings a new set of challenges to the table. Hypothermia is off the table at least, though I have seen people go down with heat stroke in February as well as August. Bugs are a new one though. The sheer number of mosquitoes out in the training area is mind blowing, and for a few weeks right after they start hatching they are maddening. I'm covered in the scars from scratching hopelessly at over 300 bites acquired in the last few weeks. Thankfully as summer heats up, the 'skeets die off, but of course, new challenges emerge...Bears.

Bears are jerks. Bears are annoying, dangerous, and hate you. You'd love to shoot bears, but we're not allowed, some environmental protection thing. SO instead, we're resorted to scaring them away. By throwing dynamite at them.That's right, I spent last week throwing dynamite at bears. Bears who stole $20,000 worth of equipment. Bears who stole rucksacks so soldiers came back from patrols, tired, wet, and cold, and found they had no sleeping bags or dry clothes or anything. Bears who woke me up sniffing at my feet, until thankfully the sentry threw dynamite between us, or rather, next to me.

And that's where I am in my career right now, where I roll over and pull my sleeping bag off from over my head and look up at the bear at my feet, and then a third of a stick of dynamite goes off at my feet, and the bear runs away, and I immediately fall back asleep without so much as a shrug. The insane becomes the ordinary far too easily. But then curiously, the ordinary becomes the most amazing thing in exchange.

Friday afternoons have become the most surreal thing. There is no feeling in the world like it. Deploying to the field sunday night, driving the body all week long, smashing yourself against the ground and getting up again and running across broken terrain carrying a hundred pounds of equipment over and over again without sleep or food, in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, in the bugs, passing and failing assessments - it's all worth the feeling of showering and putting on some civies and getting in the car with some of the closer guys and hitting the town, windows open, to get some good food in you before the exhaustion catches up and you are down for the count.

And every sky is beautiful, and every woman is fantastic, and every meal is incredible. And the time slips by and soon it is dark and it is over and all you can think of is the next friday night. Because friday night is the only night with any promise, because saturday ends too quickly and sunday night you start again - but friday, friday is the furthest point between you and everything - putting on a uniform, drawing a weapon, being a soldier. And if I am thankfull for anything about joining the army, it is for knowing that no one else has experienced a friday night as full and incredible and important as we have.

Patrol Week Ex

Nothing builds team work like a mass hallucination. 3 am in thick woods, 38% illumination, canopy too thick to see the moon anyways. 8 km patrol, 4 days without any sleep. I have a dozen dreams before I realize I'm marching, my hand wrapped tight in the tac vast of the man in front of me, holding my friend Alex's hand, pulling him along as he falls asleep at every pause, waking with a shudder and marching full speed right into me. I dream of friends, and places, and memories and hopeful futures that will never pan out. Branches cut and slice at my neck and hands, sticks and leaves whip at my eyes, thankfully protected by my ballistic eyewear, or officially, eyewear, ballistic, for protection of vision, known more accurately at night as eyewear, ballistic, for prevention of vision. At long halts we lie in rain soaked swamps, waiting for some poor candidate who is completely lost to find himself with the flakey army GPS unit and get us back on track, and pass his assessment, and be one step closer to not failing off this most important of courses. I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm not fucked up enough to have to fear an actual patrol - my written assessments have set me aside as successfully meeting the standard, balancing both planning and tactical abilities. If I'm that good I shouldn't fear a live patrol, but I do, because when you're that tired, nothing is scarier than responsibility.

So, I lug my light machine gun and follow the man in front and guide the man in back through the impossible darkness and let my thoughts drift, knowing full well I am shit-pumping, but I don't care, the imaginary enemy of this ridiculous scenario are not going to find us, we don't even know where we are. I can take a few minutes to drift off, and try to think, try to put almost 2 years together into some cohesive story of what the hell is going on, and sure as anything, it won't work.

Riviere-de-loup is the symbolic half way point on the 11 hour drive between Camp Gagetown and Ottawa. I've made this drive a handful of times. 3 provinces and each feels very different. I'm an ardent opponent of New Brunswick. If it wasn't too late, I'd be voting against it. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because half the province is the Gagetown Training Area, but I don't think so. It's just a strange place, I can't justify it, but it's too far from home and I feel nothing for the place. Quebec on the other hand, that's a whole other story.

I had been to Montreal a handful of times while I was living in Ottawa, and really, it never struck me as anywhere special. The city of my birth, where my parents lived their entire married relationship, until I was born, then they split and my prospects of growing up bilingual and stylish died along with the family unit. Cut to 22 years later, the part where I make a wrong turn while checking out some pretty girl walking alongside the highway of life, and join the army. I am sent to do my basic training in Saint-Jean-sur-Richlieu, a little bedroom community 30 minutes from Montreal. I visit a few times during basic, but rarely, I'm still trying to get back to Ottawa every chance I can get to wake up next to a girl I can't forget every time I'm there, but forget far too easily whenever I leave. Basic training ends and I prepare to be sent to Gagetown, but a surprise is in store, and I'm posted to the Canadian Forces Language School for 8 months to learn French. At the time, I'm not happy, but I as time goes on and I learn more and more French, it begins to grow on me. The town is pretty, if small, the people interesting. Maybe it's the lifestyle, the stores, the locales, the food, the products, everything is the same but the culture is still foreign. It's like leaving home one day and coming back to find a family of immigrants living in your house, wasting all your croutons in steaming bowls of beef and onion soup. And frankly it's kind of neat.

So this is where things get a little sketchy. While at the French school, I meet a young aspirant officer who is working on the campus of the prep school for young aspiring-aspirant francophone officers. And it starts completely un-innocently, with a lot of flirting in uniform and abuse of rank and continues right along the same path, with fraternisation and violating barracks orders and sneaking out of buildings and running from security guards and completely forgetting condoms. But it only last 3 weeks before she is off back to the military university and I'm stuck there like a sucker. But after she leaves, before she goes back to school, I come to Quebec City to visit her at her parents house. And Quebec City, I don't know what to say, it's fantastic. Meeting parents, after 3 weeks, in a language you barely command is terrifying, but they are warm and put up with me and make me feel at ease, and I pass by on what little French I know at this point, and make them dinner and win them over with Pad Thai and we try to quickly have sex while they walk the dog and it doesn't quite work, though we don't know if they know and pretend not to. And the girl takes me downtown to the old city, and its beautiful and romantic and I'm in love with all of it, and the history and the streets and the culture and her. And we kiss on the back of the Citadel, allowed permission to the military side of the tourist attraction by our status as serving officers, though we are briefly mistaken as errant young tourists. So she tells me she loves me and I know she doesn't because she is young, and I tell her I love her even though I don't, because I'm old enough to know I wish I did.

And this is the lasting memory I will have forever of Quebec City, looking over the high walls of the Citadel, on a beautiful day, across the river, down on the city, at 400 years of history and a fascinating people, and a beautiful girl.

And the next time I'm in Quebec City it's once I've been posted to Gagetown, 3 weeks before Christmas. 3 of us have packed my car literally to its maximum capacity, and we joined the convoy of recently bilingual-fied (to various degrees of success) young officers and stop to party for one night in far too fancy hotels paid for by the government. We eat a delicious meal and wander the old city in the biting cold before finally finding a popular club. We dance a bit, standing out like English army interlopers, with an army base literally 3 blocks away, still starkly in contrast with the local populace. I meet a girl, and I want her to be the last girl I kissed in Quebec City, but she's not, so she doesn't become the 2nd but we talk and exchange information and I make what turn out to be hollow promises to visit her on the way back.

Then again, on the way back. This time, alone. Another trendy hotel, this time paid for by my own credit card, thankful for a generous military discount. And I walk the old city, wrapped up against the January cold, uncharacteristically bearded after a month of leave. I eat dinner alone and playfully catch the eye of the cashier at the pay by weight vegetarian cafe. I head to the Citadel, and walk the same walls, and sit in the same spot, but everything is different now, 4 months later. The memories encompass so many things. Quebec City, Saint-Jean, Kingston, the home of my dear friends where they let me a room so I could come visit the girl on weekends while she was at school, anxiously driving 4 hours through Montreal traffic every Friday to come see her. Passionate sex and waking up wrapped around her tiny frame, and dressing up for my friends wedding, and talking about getting married ourselves one day, and shopping for a ring, and everything turning sour, and sitting on a cold park bench with the waves crashing up on the shore with my arm around her but my heart hardening against what she's just told me, and then the end.

And to this day I love the French, because they remind me of Quebec City. And to this day, I still can't go back to Quebec City. But I want to. I want to blast through Riviere-de-Loup, through the shortcut we learned when the police escorted us through the first time we got lost on the move to Gagetown, then scream 3 hours down the highway, across the bridge, back to the old city, and I want to live weeks there, then head back to Montreal, and eat delicious omelettes in the Jewish quarter with my good friends then head back to another week of learning French, then go back further to the first weekend of leave from basic training, and partying and just trying to be a person again with 40 strangers who were suddenly my entire world, then keep going back, to before it all started, to Ottawa, and taking things for granted, and going home with girls from Thursday night at Barrymore’s, and back to dating dozens of girls in a few months, but never for more than few weeks, then to the big ex, to 2 years of mediocrity I will forever remember as the best years of my life, to her beautiful pale body and her soft pink bra in the bright lights of my bedroom the first time we had sex, the first time I had sex, on top of the sheets, as she smiled at me and looked into my eyes...

And when I open my eyes I'm still there, lying, legs locked in a circle with my 39 fellow soldiers, my machine gun pointed out towards an imaginary enemy, still on patrol.