WITH A FEW GUNS:
The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery in Afghanistan, Volume I 2002-2006
(selected excerpts)
Introduction
…It was that planning and her role on that team that had brought Debbie Gallagher to that door on that cold day. It had started with a request to meet with one of the spouses in the network who needed to talk. The spouse had said to Debbie,
I don’t know what to do with the guilt… You know how we all know that if you get through six o’clock, chances are we’re going to be okay. Well, I woke up early and went to the kitchen and didn’t turn on the light… and I saw the cars pull on the street. I saw a man in uniform and the padre get out and I went over to the phone and I sat in a fetal position on the floor and watched the clock until six thirty and then I realized they weren’t going to ring my doorbell; they rang the neighbour’s.
The fatality had been a member of the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry whose wife and children were new to Shilo and whose own families lived far away…
…Just a few weeks later, on May 17th, A Battery’s own Captain Nichola Goddard, operating as Call Sign Golf 13—a forward observation officer—would be the Regiment’s first ever daughter to die in combat when her light armoured vehicle was hit by several rocket propelled grenades in Pashmul village, Kandahar Province near what would soon gain infamy as the “white school.”…
– Debbie Gallagher, interview by Brian Reid, Wolf Riedel, Kevin Smith May 19, 2021
Chapter 6 – Welcome to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
… In a matter of five days, with all of the equipment gathered, the battery’s gun position was set up in the southwest corner of Camp JULIEN, about 800 metres away from where the battery was quartered. The position covered the battle group’s main area of operation to the south and the west. Both the guns and their command post were situated in the open, protected solely by the Camp’s inadequate low perimeter HESCO wall. Within a short time, the decision was made to dig in.
Digging by hand in the super compacted and dry soil was entirely out of the question. Two days of such efforts produced a two-inch deep pit. Discussions with the multinational engineer group indicated that military engineer support was unavailable so the digging had to be done by local contractors. It was a laborious process that ended up breaking four backhoe buckets. The initial gun pit, dug to a two-foot depth complete with an ammo bunker and a crew bunker, took a month to complete…
Chapter 11 – Enter the Triple Seven
…Prior to deploying to Wainwright, 1 RCHA had conducted extensive live fire training so that its technical procedures were down pat. It was a good thing they had as they would see little firing during the brigade exercise. A Battery would have just four days at the end firing barely 100 rounds.
In Wainwright, the new Canadian Manoeuvre and Training Centre assisted with the brigade’s training event. While the overall brigade exercise focused on conventional war, the battle group ran their exercises differently. The battery itself was broken up and the two gun troops were assigned to work with specific companies. Both the forward observation officer (FOO) and the gun troop’s troop commander would attend the company commander’s orders group. The battle group conducted individual exercises as mobile operations where each troop would follow a bound behind its assigned company. This training would pay dividends once the battery deployed to Afghanistan where it would range widely throughout the area of operations.
One thing that became immediately clear after the strategic reconnaissance (recce) was that with the gun troops dispersed, Parsons, the battery sergeant major would not be walking the gun line. In training, A Troop worked primarily with the 1st Battalion’s mechanized A Company and B Troop primarily with the mechanized C Company. B Company, provided by the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry from Shilo, was mounted in light utility vehicles, wheeled—the lightly armoured Mercedes G-Wagons. The intent was that B Company would provide close protection for the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in and around the City of Kandahar. While B Company would, from time to time, have a FOO, it would have no gun troop assigned to it.
The battery’s quartermaster sergeant, Warrant Officer John Gero, would remain back at Kandahar Airfield (KAF), but there would be no battery echelon. The national support element would handle logistics out of KAF. What they would do was have the battery sergeant major become part of the battery commander’s tactical party, deploying with him in his light armoured vehicle (LAV) every time that the battle group commander deployed forward with his tactical command post—which would be almost continuously…
Chapter 12 – Operation ENDURING FREEDOM
…Warrant Officer John Gero would recall that from the moment they landed they were immediately run through weapons zeroing, a combat first aid session, instructions on using the personal radios and the theatre rules of engagement. They were tired and not able to go to bed in their tents until late the next day. They would be in those tents for the first six weeks without electricity and denied the use of Coleman lanterns. Individual meal packs supplied for the first month were all the same menu—a breakfast one. To relieve the tedium, one troop bought a goat from a farmer which he roasted for them on a grill taken from a Bison carrier.…
… B Troop’s commander, Captain Andrew Nicholson, felt that the command side of the force didn’t understand the gravity of the situation of road moves. The practice was already developing that rather than moving a bound behind the infantry as had been practiced in Wainwright, the guns would move a day ahead of them to occupy an artillery manoeuvre area with a time to be ready before first light. The purpose of this was to provide cover for the main party’s move. There would, however, be no security force for the gun troop; they would always provide their own and started referring to themselves as “infartillery.” Gun positions were occupied using a box formation placing a Bison armoured personnel carrier at each corner to provide all-around local defence. Most of their tactics were being learned on-the-job in theatre rather than having been part of their training.…
… The two troops stayed bound to the rough roads, which would progressively be more subject to ambushes and seeded with improvised explosive devices. If nothing else, the gun troops’ deployments to the north had taught them that they needed to be self-reliant, as help was a long, long way away. It was preferable to stay put in austere gun positions as opposed to having to drive back and forth to KAF…
– Master Warrant Officer (Retd) John Gero, interview by Wolf Riedel, February 22, 2023.
– Master Warrant Officer (Retd) Paul Parsons and Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Gallagher, interview by Kevin Smith, May 25 and -June 1, 2021.; Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Gallagher, interview by Brian Reid, Wolf Riedel and Kevin Smith, May 17 and 18, 2021.
– Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Nicholson, interview by Kevin Smith, May 3, 2022.
Chapter 16 – Reflections and Rotations
…For Nelson, the operation stands out:
There were parts of the tour where you were like ‘this experience is dangerous’ but at this point, at the very end of the tour, I honestly thought this is going to be where I meet my maker. I had a bad feeling about it… The British didn’t have any armoured vehicles and were getting their butts kicked so they asked for Canadian armour… I didn’t think I would make it out of that one.
…The problem was [the British] had to cross this dry river bed to get to this town… the Taliban had excellent fields of fire and what happens is that every time the British tried to cross this riverbed when they get there they’d get gunned down, so they couldn’t. We had to use these LAVs of the [quick reaction force] to basically roll across and put down some suppressing fire… so that the British could land and get their mobile infantry in… In the end it was very successful. Basically, once we rolled up with four LAVs shooting some 25 mm they scattered pretty fast. …
…Battery Sergeant Major, Paul Parsons was singularly unimpressed with the whole homecoming experience. Decompression lectures in Cyprus seemed more designed to convince him that his experiences should have given him post-traumatic stress disorder. He and his people were immediately thrown into a garrison mentality for the upcoming change of command parade and forced into the relish-green uniform rather than allowed to bask for a few days in their tan arid ones. Then he found himself alone with his battery commander gone and his troops now under a new leadership team. His next job was up in the air and he was eventually made battery sergeant major of Headquarters Battery…
…By the time it began its end of tour handover, E Battery would have fired close to 8,000 rounds from its four M777 howitzers and eight 81mm mortars. That would be over 13 times as many as A Battery had fired before them in support of ORION. Indeed, on the very first day that Task Force 3-06 took over from Task Force ORION, the battle group’s A Company found itself in a major battle. E Battery guns had to pound Taliban fighters while the battery’s fire support coordination centre (FSCC) would direct aerial attacks against enemy positions in depth.
No. It would not be a boring tour…
– Lieutenant-Colonel Howie Nelson, interview by Wolf Riedel, Brian Reid and Kevin Smith, January 21 and 28, 2022.
Chapter 21 – Operation MEDUSA: September 6 – 17, 2006
…Throughout the operation, while the FOOs had been manoeuvring with their respective companies, the gunline had stayed in one location. Its isolated position and good fields of view provided excellent security. It had also removed them from the threat of ambush and the mortars and rockets that they had experienced close to Patrol Base WILSON. As such, the guns could dedicate maximum effort to providing fire support to the infantry.
Ammunition resupply remained an issue. While the in-theatre quantities of 155mm ammunition had required daily firing limits, the actual delivery of that ammunition from Kandahar Airfield (KAF) to the gun position, through the by-now infamous “Ambush Alley” was of greater concern. Ground based combat logistics patrols were constantly high-risk targets. The creation of such a patrol with its requisite force protection packet had routinely proven difficult.
To help alleviate this issue, Battery Sergeant Major Montague was redeployed into his traditional role on the gunline. Not only did this help with the management of the delivery of over a thousand rounds of 155mm to the gun position, it also helped with the leadership and mentorship that a battery sergeant major brings to the troops.[1] …
… Taliban improvised explosive device (IED) attacks resumed almost immediately. Captain Ian Plummer, with B Company, recalls,
Driving back to KAF after MEDUSA [two] LAVs up from me (platoon commander Captain Piers Pappin) got hit by a [suicide vehicle borne] IED. (I was told the largest to hit Canadians at the time) knocked his driver unconscious and blew out all eight tires. The explosion was so big that I thought it hit the [company commander’s] LAV between us. Something dented in the [company commander’s] helmet. It also blew a handset off a dismounted radio in my bin and left [the insurgent’s] body parts all over my LAV.[2]
No Canadian died in that incident. Harder hit was A Company on the 18th when a suicide bomber rode his bicycle into a group civilians and a group of soldiers on patrol. The bomb killed 4 Canadians, wounded 10 Canadians and 27 Afghan civilians including children.[3]…
[1] Major Greg Ivey, email to Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Johnson, September 20, 2006.
[2] Captain Ian Plummer, email to Brian Reid, undated.
[3] “Suicide bomber kills 4 Canadian Soldiers.” , CBC News, Last Updated September 18, 2006.
– Major Greg Ivey, email to Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Johnson, September 20, 2006.
