What the Thunder Said. John Conrad
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WHAT THE
THUNDER SAID
WHAT THE
THUNDER SAID
Reflections of a Canadian Officer in Kandahar
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL
JOHN CONRAD
Foreword by
Christie Blatchford
Copyright © Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2009
Catalogue No. D2-246/2009E
Published by The Dundurn Group and Canadian Defence Academy Press in cooperation with the Department of National Defence, and Public Works and Government Services Canada.
All rights reserved. No part of this information (publication or product) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0S5, or [email protected]. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Michael Carroll
Copy Editor: Nigel Heseltine
Designer: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Transcontinental
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Conrad, John D.
What the thunder said : reflections of a Canadian officer in Kandahar / John Conrad.
Issued also in French under title: Ce que dit le tonnerre.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-55488-408-7
1. Afghan War, 2001- --Logistics--Canada. 2. Afghan War, 2001- --Participation, Canadian. 3. Canada--Armed Forces--Afghanistan. 4. Conrad, John D. 5. Afghan War, 2001- --Personal narratives, Canadian. I. Title.
DS371.413.C66 2009 C813’.54 958.104’7 C813’.54 C2009-900298-1
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada
Canadian Defence Academy Press
PO Box 17000 Station Forces
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
K7K 7B4
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To Master Corporal Raymond Arndt and all the fine young men and women of Task Force Afghanistan who have laid down their lives in Afghanistan since 2002.
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old. — Laurence Binyon, “For the Fallen,” 1914
CONTENTS
Foreword by Christie Blatchford
PART 1
5 Why Have We Come?
PART 2
6 We Three Hundred
7 Transportation Platoon
8 Days of Supply
9 Nothing They Could Not Fix
10 A Hard About Turn
PART 3
11 King of the FOBs
12 Kandahar Overdrive
13 Losing Ray
14 Home on Leave
15 Fighting Friction
Epilogue
Notes
Index
FOREWORD by Christie Blatchford
I still think of John Conrad as a native Newfoundlander, and probably always will. It is my experience that the most passionate and articulate Canadians come from that hard place, and from the first time I interviewed him, and he described the modern battlefield as akin to “water droplets on a walnut table, with the droplets the safe haven,” I nearly fainted with pleasure at his use of the language. What the Thunder Said proves the point: John has brought his passion for logistics and shown how in the war in Afghanistan combat happens anywhere and everywhere, putting virtually every soldier, whether infantry or truck driver, squarely on the front line and smack in the midst of the fight.
Logistics and passion, even to those in the reborn Canadian Army (though not to anyone who served in Kandahar in the spring and summer of 2006), may seem a bit of an oxymoron. Arguably no branch of the Canadian Forces (CF) suffered more than logistics during what former Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier used to call “the decade of darkness,” when slashing budgets and numbers were the order of the day. Certainly, no other arm of the forces went so unappreciated, even by those who ought to have known better.
And no other group was so seriously undervalued for so long and then called upon to do so much when the CF returned to all-out combat that summer.