A Look at Life and Death in Kandahar

Thurs. March. 13 - News Update
Members of Parliament voted today to extend the length of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. The motion passed with 197 yeas (mainly by Tories and Libs), and 77 nays (mainly NDP and BQ). See who voted at: www2.parl.gc.ca/housechamberbusiness.

Opinions are flying these days about Canada’s role in Afghanistan and will likely continue as Canadian troops continue to rotate in and out of one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Yesterday's news of the death of Bombardier Jérémie Ouellet, 22, of Manitoba's Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, brought the number of Canada's dead to 81.

If you want some insight into what that means to those living the life, tune in tonight to Life and Death in Kandahar, Gillian Findlay’s compelling and remarkable report on the fifth estate at 8 PM, or screen it at cbc.ca. It's a 44-minute documentary about the Canadian-run military hospital at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan, the largest NATO facility of its type.

Full disclosure: Though I screen all material with a conscious eye to objectivity, I took particular care to check my own reactions to this piece. A career military man and member of the Canadian army medical corps (above, the late Sergeant-Major Michael J. Cunningham) raised me. I thought all kids grew up with somebody who rushed into the street with an army-issued medical kit anytime a kid scraped his knee or bonked her head.

Life and Death in Kandahar is riveting. Findlay and her four-member crew spent four weeks (in January 2008) filming at the trauma hospital at KAF, as the soldiers call it. The fifth estate crew was afforded full cooperation by the military and 24/7 access to the hospital's emergency and critical care bays, where patients classified as "alphas, bravos and charlies" are triaged and treated for things like blast wounds caused by car bombs and other explosives (called IEDs). IEDs have taken more Canadian lives than combat injuries in Afghanistan.

Findlay's piece offers an unflinching and unprecedented look at what war looks like:

It looks like a bloody, critically wounded 24-year-old soldier from Quebec; like army nurse Captain Rhonda Crew, choppering into the field on an evacuation mission; or like a flag-draped coffin being transported by APC to a farewell ramp ceremony. And tragically, it also looks like the horribly scorched face of an eight-year-old Afghan boy wounded by an explosion.

The cameras capture the team’s life-saving efforts. Civilians, like Vancouver trauma surgeon Dr. Dave Evans, work alongside Canadian military docs and some American specialists simply because, as Findlay points out, Canada’s military is simply too understaffed to meet the mission’s demands.

“This is not easy,” Findlay told me. “It just never really stops. It’s just one injured person, after another, after another.”

Findlay’s report is remarkable for its balance. She’s clearly respectful of the military members and their thoughts about the war. If she formed her own opinion, she kept it to herself. She doesn’t criticize their views, nor does she lionize them.

“I trained my entire life for this and I am a great believer in the fight against terrorism,” Major Neil Pritchard tells the camera and Canadians.

He’s later shown remarking, “I wished we lived in a world where we didn’t have to have armies fighting each other. I wished we lived in a world where we were free of being attacked. And in that case I’d be the first to take off the uniform. War is to be avoided under all circumstances, but, if it is to be fought, it is to be won,” says Pritchard.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that his words rang so familiar, I almost fell off my sofa listening to them. Cut from the same cloth.

The Canadian civilians in theatre also share their thoughts, “The biggest thing in my mind is, “Why are we here?’ To the guys back home in Parliament who debate these things, ‘Do they actually know what it’s like at the sharp end of the stick?' "says Ottawa’s Dr. Rakesh Patel.

Expect to learn the answer to that tomorrow.

Life and Death in Kandahar is just one of many provocative pieces that has been the hallmark of the fifth estate’s current season …Look for my full feature on the fifth estate in an upcoming edition in TV TIMES.