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Canada lost the war in Afghanistan: Top diplomat Ben Rowswell speaks out

An item from the Legion Magazine that may be of interest to members.

Canadian Master Bombardier Clint Godsoe (right) of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team patrols the province on Aug. 26, 2008, on the way to deliver donated school supplies to a local school. [ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office/Wikipedia]

Canada lost the war in Afghanistan: Top diplomat Ben Rowswell speaks out

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

Ben Rowswell remembers the sinking feeling he had flying out of Kandahar in the summer of 2010. As the brown earth of southern Afghanistan receded below him, the despair inside him grew.

Rowswell had spent the previous two years serving at the highest civilian levels of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, first as deputy ambassador in Kabul, then as the Representative of Canada in Kandahar (known as the RoCK), overseeing a NATO Provincial Reconstruction Team, from 2009 onward.

He led a team of about 80 civilians building infrastructure, such as schools and irrigation projects, and providing other support, including training for security and governance, to the people and local authorities of Kandahar province. Their work, alongside the combat and security efforts of the Canadian battle group, was the cornerstone of Canada’s mission to “stabilize” the Kandahar region and win the counter-insurgency war there.

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Naval Commander James Campbell Clouston. [Courtesy Clouston family via Brian Jeffery Street]

Biographer Brian Jeffrey Street on the Canadian hero of Dunkirk, Part 1

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“He’s been with me for a long time,” said biographer Brian Jeffrey Street of the largely forgotten Canadian war hero he has chronicled for decades. Naval Commander James Campbell Clouston’s efforts during the Dunkirk evacuations were vital to its success.

From May 26 to June 4, 1940, as German forces closed in on the French port and dominated the skies above, the British Royal Navy, alongside a fleet of civilian vessels, ferried more than 338,000 beleaguered Allied troops across the English Channel. The retreat from continental Europe was an undeniable defeat that precipitated the fall of France, but the evacuation itself—code-named Operation Dynamo—would epitomize British pluck and determination to many at home, despite the debacle.

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Danger Tree: A cherished symbol of sacrifice gets a new lease on life

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An item from the Legion Magazine that may be of interest to members.

A photograph of the original Danger Tree at the Beaumont-Hamel battle site, taken circa 1920 by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Nangle, chaplain of the Newfoundland Regiment. [Memorial University Archives]

Danger Tree: A cherished symbol of sacrifice gets a new lease on life

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

It is perhaps Newfoundland and Labrador’s most famous wartime icon. Certainly, it’s a symbol of profound sorrow among a people well-acquainted with loss and hardship.

For more than a century, the Danger Tree, or a version of it, has stood amid the green expanse of the Beaumont-Hamel battlefield in northern France as a stark reminder of precisely where so many Newfoundlanders died.

Next month, on the eve of the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel, a new version of the Danger Tree will be unveiled at the site. This one, crafted with attention to historical detail at Memorial University in St. John’s, is intended to provide a permanent battlefield replica of the original tree.

Documentarian Eric Brunt interviews Second World War veteran Eugene McKinnon. [Courtesy Eric Brunt]

Documentarian Eric Brunt captures the last voices of Canada’s Second World War generation

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Documentarian Eric Brunt isn’t in the business of irrefutable historical record. He has long understood that memories fade, that dates get lost to time and that details can be misremembered in recalling events from more than 80 years ago.

Such is the nature of interviewing the last Canadian veterans of the Second World War, a task that Brunt has undertaken for nearly a decade. Still, the 33-year-old Montreal resident affirms that his work goes deeper than facts and figures.

“For me,” he told Legion Magazine, “it’s about capturing the way these people tell their stories. Where is their emotion? Where is their lack of emotion? Where do they skim over parts? Where do they spend over an hour talking about their best friends? This is the aspect I find most fascinating.”