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‘A Hell of a Jolt’
Friday, April 26, 2002
(Time)
By Jerry Kammer
Copley News Service

Flags, flowers and messages have been left at the entrance to the Edmonton Garrison, home base of the four dead Canadians.
Image Credit: Ian Jackson -- The Copley News Service.

"I'm overwhelmed by the support that the public has given us, and I'm very happy that the people are here grieving with us," said Cpl. Kim Hancock, Edmonton Garrison, who knew three of the fallen soldiers. "I am proud that we sent our troops to Afghanistan," she added, noting that in recent decades Canada had limited its forces to peacekeeping roles around the world. "But Sept. 11 changed the world. Now we are more than peacekeepers; we're proving that. And we're very good at what we do."

EDMONTON, Alberta -- CNS
At the MilArm gun shop near the office buildings and hotels overlooking the partially frozen North Saskatchewan River, Gordon McGowan spoke in anguished bewilderment about the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers whose military home was the garrison on the sprawling prairie 12 miles to the north.

"I just don't understand how a pilot who is flying over a known training area can think he was taking hostile fire," said McGowan, shaking his head at the reports about the U.S. F-16 fighter that dropped a 500-pound bomb on Canadian forces conducting a live-fire training exercise near Kandahar.

"For Canada this has been a hell of a jolt," said McGowan, who had sold knives, flashlights and camouflage material to the soldiers they shipped out to Afghanistan in January. "It just seems like this was a tragedy that could have easily been avoided."

Late April is a time when Canadians normally are fixated by the National Hockey League playoffs. They had expected their national hockey mania to be especially vibrant this year, in the lingering euphoria of their team's gold medal at the Olympics.
(More: sj-r.com News Source)
2002 © The Copley News Service.

Dan