Photo credits: Stephen J. Thorne

Wounded Afghanistan veteran chronicles long road back

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Surviving a Taliban bomb that robbed him of both legs and his military career was one thing, but it was Mark Campbell’s long road back through post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, government red tape, depression and alcoholism that transfixed a rapt audience on May 2.

Speaking to the Annual Sam Sharpe Breakfast for mental health in uniformed service, the retired major described the life-saving measures his fellow Patricias took in mid-firefight after he was targeted by a remotely detonated bomb in 2008, only for him to die and be resuscitated on an operating table in Kandahar.

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The Prince of “In Flanders Fields”

STORY BY PAIGE GILMAR

“His girl’s picture had a hole right through it—and we buried it with him… A soldier’s death!” wrote the great poet-surgeon John McCrae.

McCrae, also a major and second in command of the 1st Canadian Brigade during the First World War, would go on to write “In Flanders Fields,” a poem that transfixed a nation and transformed the poppy into a symbol of remembrance.

While many forget McCrae’s lifelong excellence as a clinician and veteran, even less is known about the soldier whose funeral inspired his iconic poem. That solider was Alexis Hannum Helmer, a 22-year-old lieutenant of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, who died on May 2, 1915.

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• The Great Gorkha
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Until May 30,2023 Royal Canadian Legion Members will receive $50.00 CAD Onboard Credit for any 2023 – 2024 Azamara Voyage.

In addition, Members will receive a Bottle of Champagne as a Welcome Aboard Gift.*

Call 1 800 561 4275 / bstvacations.ca

*Please note offers are not combinable.

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Wikimedia

A war by any other name

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Some 40 million people died in the First World War; at least 70 million in the Second. By the time Soviet-backed North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea on June 25, 1950, folks didn’t want to hear any more about “war.”

And, so, when a U.S.-led United Nations coalition stepped in on the Korean peninsula, President Harry S. Truman and Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent called it a “police action,” an “intervention.”

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The Great Gorkha

STORY BY PAIGE GILMAR

“I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect,” Lieutenant-Commander Kelly Williamson told CBC.

“…things were very devastated.”

Williamson, a senior public affairs officer with the Canadian Armed Forces’ Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), was referring to the Gorkha earthquake that struck Kathmandu, Nepal, in 2015.

On April 25, a 7.8 magnitude tremor hit the country’s central and eastern regions, its epicentre 34 kilometres east-southeast of the Lamjung municipality and 77 kilometres northwest of the captial. A series of aftershocks hit too, the two largest measuring 6.7 and 6.6 in magnitude.

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