We shall remember

New elements to the 3 Aug 2006. Published Nov 2015

This exert is from an article in the newspaper that was released on the week of the 11 Nov 2015.

Sgt Pat Tower, seen leading his section  in Afghanistan in May 2006, earned the Star of Military Valor -- second only to the Victoria Cross in the Canadian military honour system -- for his actions during a firefight  on August 3, 2006.  Four of his compatriots were  killed in the battle. 

"To go through those experiences , it can't not change you. "Tower says. 

" But I like to think that it changed me in a good way".  Patrick Tower

Aug. 3, 2006: 'Right then and there, it became about survival'

Sgt Tower kept telling his legs to run.  Faster, Taliban bullets were cracking overhead, and the Canadian could see his objective.  The White School in Pashmul, Afghanistan.

Fourteen other Canadian soldiers, including Tower's best army buddy, Sgt Vaughan (Iggy) Ingram, a handsome Newfoundlander with a big laugh and an even bigger personality, were holed up in a couple of outhouses at the southern end of the school complex, in a fight for their lives.

They were badly outnumbered.  Some were already dead.  Tower had heard their call for help over the radio.  The message was succinct: 

"If you don't get us out of here, we're all going to die."  

And so, he started to run, with about 70 pounds of gear on his back, sprinting across a 150-meter stretch of open desert that seemed to him to be about as wide and vast as an ocean.

"The whole time I was running, I just kept wishing that my legs would go faster," Tower says.

"We were hot. We were tired, and there were a couple hundred Taliban shooting at us. "

Most Canadians, know their dates.

April 9, 1917: Vimy Ridge,

June 6, 1944: D-Day,

November 11: Remembrance Day.

But there are other dates, marking battles big and small, seared  into the memories of those who were there and live to tell the story, lest we forget.

For a handful of Canadian veterans, Aug. 3, 2006, is one of those dates.

Tower and Sgt Willy MacDonald would be awarded the Star of Military Valour -- second only to the Victoria Cross in the Canadian military honour system -- for their actions at the white school.  There were other heroes.   And there were four men who didn't come home.

Tower and Ingram  and the rest of Charlie Company were down to their final two weeks of a seven months deployment in Afghanistan when orders came in that they were heading back to the school, a hotly contested bit of turf that had come to symbolize the struggle between the Canadian and the Taliban in the Panjwaii District.

Built by American combat engineers as part of a reconstruction project, the school was intended to win over Afghan hearts and minds.

Instead, it became de-facto Taliban motel, a well-constructed defensible position and a way station for groups of bad guys filtering across the Pakistani border to strike at Canadian troops.

Taliban fighters would occupy the school.  Canadians would push them out.  Charlie Company's mission on Aug. 3 was in keeping  with the cycle.  Tower and the other Canadians were told there were perhaps a dozen Taliban in the area, if that (although there may have been flawed intelligence).  

"The anticipated threat was from IED's buried in the road -- that's what we saw as the real danger going in,"  Tower says.  

"We didn't expect a big contact with the enemy.  We definitely weren't expecting what we got."

The plan was to approach the village from the south.  That plan started going sideways at 4:13 a.m., when a Canadian Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV-3) was blown up by a remote-controlled roadside bomb.  Cpl. Chris Reid  was mortally wounded in the blast.  Warrant Officer Shaun Petterson was badly concussed.  Then a second (LAV-3) went down in a second IED strike.  No one was killed but three more soldiers were battered about.  The road was too dangerous.  The advance would continue on foot. The school was 400 meters away.

So began a slow creep forward, with the Canadians using a ditch, a mud wall and a dry creek bed for cover.  Hours ticked by.  By noon, one gauge showed it was 63C.  Heat was becoming a problem.  So were the bad guys.  Tower was tending to a heat-stroke comrade when he heard a crack, and then another.  "You know when you are being shot at," he says.  "This guy was in the ditch in front of me, maybe 20 meters ahead of me, and so I throw a grenade -- but it does not go off.  

"We'd been having problems with dud grenades for our whole tour.  And so I got up again, and every time I get up --you throw a grenade like a baseball  -- but every time I get up I have to expose myself to this guy, and so I'd get up and he'd shoot.

"I throw a second grenade, and it's another dud.  And, it was kind of funny, and our heat casualty was chuckling at me.

Fallen comrade 'was everything you would want a soldier to be'

Finally, the third grenade: I get up and the guy shoots and the grenade explodes -- and the guy stops shooting.

Ingram and Capt. Jon (Hammy) Hamilton had pushed forward with 11 men.  Laying down covering fire, moving, shooting, moving, and eventually reaching reaching the school outbuildings.  Willy MacDonald had lagged behind with machine gunners Cpl. Bryce Keller and Cpl. Mark Bedard.  Both were suffering badly from the heat.  MacDonald a great persuader, gave them a choice: stay put, or come with him.

So they went.

"I was really surprise none of us got shot,"  MacDonald says.

"There were bullets whizzing past our bodies."

There were rocket-propelled grenades being fired over our heads.  I was sprinting full out with 80 pounds of gear on my back and Bryce Keller, who was carrying the machine gun -- actually passed me.  

"We knew we had to get there, and get there quick."

The volume of gunfire being directed at the two outhouses, 20-by-20-foot structures MacDonald likens to "two giant white targets" painted on the Canadians backs, was intensifying.  Men were flopping over from the heat.

Pte. Kevin Dallaire had been shot through the gut.  Time, says MacDonald, was disjointed, and the noise deafening.

This was no small gathering of Taliban fighters in Pashmul, but a full-fledged encampment -- with 14 Canadians now in their midst.  MacDonald was working with his map, looking for a way out of this mess when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into one of the outhouses, blowing him back against a wall.

"What the f--- was that?" He said.

Then another rocket hit, tossing MacDonald against another wall.  Wounded men were screaming.  Uninjured men stared, wide-eyed, in disbelief.  There was Smoke, Dust, Blood.

"It was mayhem," MacDonald says.  "And I could see it wasn't going to get much easier for us from that point on. " 

Sgt. Ingram was sitting against a wall in the breezeway separating the outbuildings.  One of his leg was bent to hell, his stomach was ripped open and he was fumbling with a field dressing, trying to bandage Keller, who was already dead.  MacDonald put his hand on Ingram's shoulder and asked how he was doing.  Ingram replied that he was 'fading'.  Then his head fell to his side. Gone. Kevin Dallaire was gone, too.

Kevin's decorations

Top Left – 
Commander-in-Chief Unit Commendation -(By the Governor General of Canada)

1 PPCLI were recognized by this award “For exceptional determination and courage during relentless combat in Afghanistan, from January to August 2006.”

Top Right – 
1PPCLI badge.

Bottom Left –
Kevin’s medals.

(a)Afghanistan,

(b)International Security Assistance Force.

Bottom Right –  

Mentioned in Dispatches (oak leaf) are national honours awarded for valiant conduct, devotion to duty.

The events of 3 August 2006 are described in the following links:


The Battle for Panjwai

Operation Medusa

The Seventh Book of Remembrance (Page 220)

Dedicated to Kevin for his love for the Mountains. (Canmore, Alberta, Canada)

"Click here for" Royal visit to the Portrait of Honour Mural (In Calgary 8 July 2011)

The three-metre wide, 15-metre long oil painted mural, created by Cambridge artist Dave Sopha, features the faces of the first 154 Canadian soldiers, sailors and aircrew who lost their lives in Afghanistan.

Prince William and Catherine during their visit in Canada (Calgary, 8 July 2011)

Notice Kevin's portrait over the Prince's right shoulder..