Sorry to rehash an old thread but here is a story about Mars from February '06.
A story about one of my friends that I grew up with who is now in Afghanistan:
SEYYEDJAN KALA, Afghanistan -- Sgt. Marian (Mars) Janek was only a few metres away from the nondescript pile of dirt and pottery shards by the side of the main highway into Kandahar when he suddenly stopped in his tracks.
"Everybody freeze!" the tall Vancouver native said in his booming voice, stooping to take a closer look at the glint of bullet-shaped metal barely visible in the dirt.
"I got wires here. It’s an IED: everyone back away."
The rest of Reconnaissance Platoon quickly backed up, careful to retrace their own footprints, from the large-calibre artillery shell with the silver wires attached while the unflappable Janek calmly examined the device, containing enough explosive to blow him and much of the rest of the platoon to smithereens.
After getting a good enough look at the IED - military shorthand for Improvised Explosive Device or roadside bomb - to describe it to the military engineers who would have to defuse it, he cautiously backpedalled to a safe distance from the powerful explosive.
"Who said it wouldn’t be an exciting day?" he asked with a grin. "Looks like we were lucky though."
The bomb, constructed from an old Soviet howitzer shell, was part of a deadly ambush that Taliban insurgents laid for a Canadian convoy running down the sole highway between the main coalition base at Kandahar Air Field and the city.
One soldier was slightly injured early Sunday when his armoured G-wagon jeep was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fired from a concealed position 50 metres from the highway.
"The attackers fired two RPG rounds at our convoy," said Maj. Nick Grimshaw, of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, the patrol commander. "The first RPG round impacted on the ground between two vehicles and the second round struck a G-wagon."
The impact of the armour-piercing grenade blew a door off the vehicle and sprayed shrapnel inside, hitting Second Lieut. Kelly Catton, 22, of Dundurn, Sask., in both his legs. His wounds were considered minor and miraculously there were no other casualties.
"There was a bright flash and that’s about all I can remember," he said Sunday, after being treated for his wounds. "I didn’t even know where I was hit until they checked me out."
The force of the explosion blew pieces of the G-wagon onto the road and blasted some equipment out of the light vehicle, including a C7 assault rifle, but the driver was able to stay on the road and race clear of the ambush. Two men were seen fleeing the area but the Canadians were unable to pursue them in the brush and rubble-filled ground from where they had launched their attack.
"Because our convoy was moving at a fairly rapid pace, we did not have the opportunity to return fire," Grimshaw said.
The ambushed soldiers didn’t know just how narrow an escape they’d had until a few hours later when Reconnaissance, or Recce Platoon, swept the area looking for the missing weapon and to pick up the trail of the insurgents.
The platoon, something of an elite within the battle group, had been on patrol only a few kilometres away when the attack was radioed in to the headquarters for Task Force Orion, the 950-strong Canadian battle group now deployed in southern Afghanistan, and they raced to the scene.
"One of our vehs got brewed up," Sgt. Will Macdonald, in the lead recce platoon vehicle, told his soldiers after getting the call. "Let’s go get ’em."
The troops arrived in the midst of the pitch black Afghan night after a bone-jarring high-speed ride in darkened vehicles, the drivers navigating with night-vision goggles. But after a few searches of the area determined they could find little, even with the aid of specialized night-vision equipment, the platoon settled in to watch the area through the freezing hours before dawn.
Janek made a sweep of the road just after dawn and found the bomb, hidden close to a smattering of debris from the stricken G-wagon, which he said could have made the ambush much, much worse. But the Slovakian-born soldier, whose family immigrated to Canada when he was five, shrugged off the danger to himself.
"It’s OK," he said with a smile. "I got my safety goggles on."
Recce Platoon blocked off the highway in both directions and kept a close watch on the crowd of curious Afghans which quickly gathered to eye the bomb from a distance.
"These IED guys are like serial arsonists: they like to come watch their handiwork," said Cpl. Rob Hawley, of Bible Hill, N.S., intently scanning the impassive Afghan faces lined up along the side of the highway. "Maybe we’
ll get lucky and catch one of these … guys. "
A local resident eventually turned in the missing Canadian weapon and five hours later, Canadian combat engineers disarmed the bomb and took it away for disposal. The weary Recce Platoon soldiers then headed back to base camp, nearly 18 hours after they left.
"That’s Recce: first ones in, last ones out," Macdonald said as the platoon’s G-wagons pulled away from the scene of the ambush.
