Foreigners in the military

The French have the French Foreign Legion.  The British have the Gurkha Regiment.  Both of these foreign components to their respective armies are well known and renowned the world over for being hard as a coffin nail.

The Gurkha Regiment in the British Army dates back to the fighting between 1814–1816 when the Nepalese Gurkha army fought against the British East India Company army.  Fighting them to a stalemate, the British made a deal with the Nepalese to recruit from them and it all carried on from there.

As is evident by three Gurkha’s receiving the Military Cross from the Queen, and numerous times throughout history – these foreign soldiers who still are not regarded highly enough by the British Army are a valuable asset.

The French Foreign Legion are the tough nuts of the French military.  Granted they were used rather ruthlessly in Algeria, but now anytime France needs to flex its military might or get its citizens out of harms way they don’t send Pierre or Olivier from the Parisien suburbs.  It’s the dudes who wear the white hats.

Check the Related Links for an interesting news article about two identical twin brothers.  One joined the British Army; the other was refused and joined the French Foreign Legion where his acts of bravery and gallantry earned him France’s highest award for valour – the ‘Legion D’honneur’.

I am a perfect example of the point I am making.  I am a foreigner in the Canadian military and would at any point not hesitate to bear arms and defend Canada and its interests with my life, but yet there are huge amounts of Canadians who would not and are not bearing arms for Canada.

Foreigners searching for a meaningful and useful way to give back are an extremely valuable and untapped resource.  It would be nice seeing other nations across the globe taking advantage of that.

Life’s Latest Developments

Very shortly I’m off for a month to CFB Shilo to complete my Artillery Gunner’s course.  It’s going to be hell, sitting in a classroom all day falling asleep and getting crunked on caffeine pills to try and counteract that.  There’s plenty of thing’s I’m going to learn, such as the definition of Fire Discipline which is:

Fire Discipline is the language of Fire Control.  It consists of words, phrases, rules and conventions which have specific meaning and which result in some definite action at the guns.

Then there’s things like the GPO Sequence of Orders, Must Orders, Types of Engagement, Types of Rounds and even more good stuff.

I’m a little bit nervous about going on course again, but I’m also pumped because I bought myself a pair of SWAT boots which are going to make things a whole lot more comfortable, as well as our annual 13km rucksack march.  I also bought some boot bands, a boonie hat, a waterproof pen and paper pad and a water bladder with my last name and last three digits sewn onto it.  The water bladder and holder are going to awesome for on and off duty.

Just found out my children’s mother is now engaged.  I’ve got a few opinions on how I think that will go but I’ll keep that to myself.  Time will tell I guess.  Her happiness is all I care about.  If she is happy then my babies are happy.

I’ve been hanging out with someone lately quite a lot that quite a few people have a negative opinion about.  It bothers me the way some people won’t even be around this mate of mine.  Far too many people are judgmental.  What right does any mere imperfect mortal have to cast moral judgments upon any other human being who isn’t hurting anybody?  I’m very particular and picky about who I hang out with.  The first and foremost criteria I look for is whether or not they get along with my children.  I’ve faltered on that thing one time and that person hasn’t been a friend for a long time.  Then I look to see whether they are open minded.  If they’re not then I usually can’t be friends with them.  Lastly I look to see if they’re truthful.  If they lie then they’re gone!

There was an incident that made me realise again the joys of having children. I had a cup of coffee which I was drinking at home and had nearly finished.  There was a bit left in the mug when my daughter Alex asked for a sip so I gave her the rest.  After the cup was empty I pretended to cry that she had drunk it all.

So in perfect innocence Alex spat the coffee back into the mug and offered it to me with a beautiful smile and said “Here you go, daddy!”

It was heart warming.  It is situations like that which make me realise that no matter how much they stress me out, and no matter how much sometimes I wish I was back in London as a 21 year old – having children is a gift and parenthood is the greatest privilege a person can have.

Obviously that is followed by being a member of the Canadian Forces hahaha.

Discussions on the military

Today I had the opportunity to talk to an acquaintance about the benefits and advantages of life in the Army.  A bit of explanation about the fact that nobody is ever made redundant in the military and that it’s a guaranteed income was supposed to convince her to give it a try.

She then went off on the same ol’ looney left liberal spiel about shooting people is always the last answer.  The same infuriating blinded point of view that is seen in so many stupid people.  It makes me want to smack people around when they spout all that bullshit about war isn’t necessary and shooting people is not the answer.

I told the person I was talking to that her point of view would get her about five feet in the deserts of Afghanistan against a murdering suicide bomber.  I explained that my point of view would get me considerably further and give me a much greater chance of living than hers would give her.

Trying to impress upon someone that serving in the military is an act of citizenship, a display of a sense of duty and caring towards innocent fellow human beings, is enough to make almost anyone want to slap somebody.

We both agreed that there will never be peace in the world and there will always be bad people.  She said Read more...

More weapons, more bullets, more soldiers, more dead bad guys

Bad people are killing innocent people all the time and the world seems to just sit by and do S.F.A.  What makes it worse is loony left liberal idiots who think that all you need is love and dialogue.  The thing is that bad people and murdering dogs don’t respond to love or dialogue.

In this latest attack in Baghdad somewhere around 132 people have been killed by two seperate car bombs.  All that Barack Obama can do is ‘pledge his support’.  These attacks prompted the world’s lamest response from the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.  He said ‘such acts of terrorism can have no justification, and must be condemned without reservation’. Read more...

News on the military ‘n myself

The last two months have been very eventful… and after 23 years of dreaming I finally made it happen. A slight incident cut it short officially by only two days but I’m making that up at the end of December on a weekend.  After that I’m hoping to get on my artillery course, all driving courses, and especially communications courses so I can get on those badass radios and do radio stuff.

Whilst on BMQ (L)… I experienced the awesomeness of IMP (individual meal packs) which are issued to the Canadian Forces.  Call me ridiculous but I loved them.  That may be that I was deprived of home comforts whilst in the field… nevertheless I now fully believe all my instructors when they say that out of all the western military powers in Afghanistan, we have by far the best meals.  Apparently the Yanks and British soldiers will always try to trade meal parts.  The bread in a packet rocks!  If you’re interested… you can actually buy IMPs from a surplus store.

I’m also glad that I did not join the British Army.  Not because of any perceived lack of dashing bravery, ruthlessness or competence… but because of the mere factor that our (Brits) squaddies bomb around Afghanistan in rag top Land Rovers, and their armour plates only cover their heart and not other vital organs.

Being a Canadian soldier I now have a lot of restrictions on what I can or cannot post on my website regarding the Canadian Forces particularly… so you might see the tone of my blog posts change somewhat.

One of our boys has passed away… Pte Kyle Whitehead from 3PPCLI passed away when his vehicle rolled on the Big River First Nation. What’s really uncanny is that his best friend ‘Sgt. Darby Morin’ from the same First Nation in Saskatchewan – passed away on the same day in Afghanistan whilst serving with the U.S Army.

According to this news story… the upcoming Olympics is pushing the Canadian Forces to the edge.  This article says that 4000 Canadian soldiers will be guarding the Olympics to protect all the heads of state.  That along with the Afghanistan mission and the upcoming G8 summit in Huntsville is testing the limits of our endurance according to this story.  My answer to that would be to quote one of my instructors on basic training… ‘We’re Canadian soldiers – we win!’.  I know one thing that would solve problems like this…  boosting Canada’s defence budget from $18billion to about $36billion to increase the size of our armed forces.