http://www.theglobeandmail.com//servlet/story/LAC.20060518.BLATCHFORD18/TPStory//?pageRequested=all
Voice of pride and respect falls silent
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
E-mail Christie Blatchford | Read Bio | Latest Columns
Less than two months ago, in a long and articulate letter to her baby sister Kate, studying in France, posted on her blog, Captain Nichola Goddard described herself.
"I feel like a poster child for why people should join the military," she wrote.
Killed in action yesterday, Capt. Goddard -- a FOO, or Forward Observation Officer, with the 1st Canadian Royal Horse Artillery, a job widely considered one of the best in any army and one of the most dangerous -- is the first Canadian female combat soldier to die while engaged in battle.
It is a special cruelty that there are those who will cite her death as reason why people should not join the military, or why the Canadian military should not be in Afghanistan, or anywhere else.
On March 25, Capt. Goddard had just returned from 15 days in the mountains north of Kandahar on Operation Sola Kowel, which in Pashto means "Peacemaker." She was bursting with pride (in herself a little, and for good reason, but chiefly in the Canadian Forces and Canada's mission in Afghanistan), humour, wit, insight and intelligence.
"I am always astonished at the way that the military acts as a great equalizer," she wrote. "It doesn't matter where you are from, or how much money you had growing up or the size of your family. It doesn't even matter what country you're from or your level of education. Once you're out with other soldiers, doing your thing, we are all the same."
She was speaking in particular reference to the Afghan National Army, with whose soldiers Canadians always work, and the brave interpreters employed by the Canadians, and her admiration for them.
They had watched in awe as Capt. Goddard completed a 10-kilometre march up a mountain, carrying 45 kilogramsof kit on her back, and she had watched as they ran past her up those same rocky inclines.
Later, at a shura, one of the meetings with village elders Canadians hold regularly, the men in the town were staring at Capt. Goddard. The interpreter approached her and said, she wrote, "Please excuse their staring. They are just very surprised that you are a woman working with all of these men. I have told them that you climbed over the mountain with us with your heavy bag and that you had no problems. They think that you must be very strong.
"I explained to them that you are just like the men, and that you can do everything that they can do the same as them."
"It was," Capt. Goddard wrote, "perhaps the greatest statement of equality that I have ever heard, and it was given by a Pakistani-raised, Afghan male in the middle of an Afghan village that is only accessible by a five-kilometre walk up a mountain.
"It just goes to show that anything is possible and that stereotypes are often completely wrong."
She was so full of fun and warmth.
As one of about only 230 women out of the 2,300 Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan, she found that staring was a common occurrence. "I am not sure," she wrote, "how I am going to feel walking through a town without attracting a crowd. It will be quite humbling after all of the attention I am getting here."
Self-deprecating humour was clearly her style. Lisa LaFlamme and a CTV cameraman were embedded with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, with whom Capt. Goddard was attached on Operation Sola Kowel, and Ms. LaFlamme latched onto her right away, Capt. Goddard wrote.
While in theory a big booster of embedded media, she much preferred it when someone else did the talking, but Ms. LaFlamme, who was working on a documentary, was persistent, and she was interviewed several times.
"I am afraid I was a dismal failure on the interviews," Capt. Goddard wrote. "She kept asking if I was scared or apprehensive; I said no. . . . She then asked me what my biggest concern was. I said that it is that I will make a poor decision that will hurt someone unnecessarily.
"That is my biggest fear, and something that I think every leader struggles with all of the time. . . . I don't think that was really moving enough for her, which was kind of ironic, because it is almost all-consuming to me."
Ms. LaFlamme even filmed her once, giving orders. "I tried very hard not to swear, but I don't think I was successful. I'm sorry, Dad. I guess that if it makes it to the documentary, they'll cut out the swearing part or beep it over or something."
Alas, Capt. Goddard concluded, "I'm afraid that my 15 minutes of fame will be more like 15 seconds." The only part, she thought, that might make the cut was the time she called in a "contact" of two men carrying rifles. "It turns out they were two guys with umbrellas," she wrote.
Her regard and affection for Afghans was tangible. She found their little mud towns beautiful, understood how much work it would have taken to build them, and loved the mud walls that turned the simplest hut into a private compound. "It is interesting," she wrote, "the human desire to claim something as their 'own.' In the middle of nowhere, a single house will have a wall around it, claiming that space."
Respect for what in the modern parlance is called the "other" permeated all her sharp observations. "There are gardens everywhere, and they are terraced with an irrigation system that would do any civil engineer proud, . . . all done by hand. Not to mention the planting, weeding and harvesting, which is all done by hand. I can't wait until the summer when everything will be in bloom. I wish that I had my Dad's gift with a camera to capture the colours properly."
When the soldiers met the Koochi, the nomads on the desert, what did she notice but their grace, and the animals who herded the hundreds of goats and sheep. "They had dogs that looked like Great Danes crossed with horses -- beautiful, massive things."
She was graceful herself, eating goat soup at an ANA New Year's celebration "without making a face or anything," fending off the occasional marriage proposal and questions about how her husband Jay was not a soldier ("I said that if you were strong enough to handle me, you didn't need to be a soldier.") or why she, a woman, couldn't even bake a decent flatbread.
All the while, she thought about her grandparents and "what they must have gone through in World War I and II. This is nothing compared to that," she wrote.
"I have an end date. I know that I'll be home in August. I have the ability to come back to a warm tent and call home to hear my Mum's voice. I have the ability to check e-mail and send a message instantly. I am so proud of all the veterans that I know, but especially both of my grandfathers and grandmothers.
"I am in such good company in uniform."
The last thing she wrote in that long letter was that her family and friends pray for Captain Trevor Greene, the soldier who was axed in the head at a shura several weeks before.
On our last outing with the soldiers in Afghanistan last month, before heading home, Globe and Mail photographer Louie Palu and I were embedded with Charlie Company of the PPCLI on a trip to Forward Operating Base Robinson, about 100 klicks north of Kandahar.
It was a trip from hell -- 23 hours in the close confines of Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) and other, less protected vehicles; improvised explosive devices all around; a suicide bomber desperately trying to make his way through the Kandahar city traffic to get to and blow up our convoy; the usual vehicle breakdowns; soldiers occasionally getting lost in the black night and a terrible accident that saw a truck sideswipe the LAV I was in, send the cannon flying, which badly bloodied and injured two young privates.
Capt. Goddard was our FOO. It was her job to co-ordinate the artillery assets in our battle group and call down artillery fire when necessary.
I never met her. I would have remembered that big, space-between-the-front-teeth smile. And let's face it, there are so few female soldiers in Afghanistan, so very few in combat positions. We women tend to notice one another almost as much as the men notice us.
To me, she was The Voice, that warm, completely unflappable, calm voice on the radio that felt like balm to taut nerves and overactive imaginations.
After we finally arrived at the FOB, safe and sound, we asked Major Bill Fletcher, Officer Commanding for Charlie Company, about The Voice. "Oh, that's Capt. Nich," he said. She was fabulous, he said, and he'd prefer never to go anywhere without her.
They are all without her now,
as are we.
http://sympaticomsn.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060518/afghanistan_carbomb_060518
Goddard's parents say she believed in mission
CTV.ca News Staff
The parents of fallen Canadian soldier Capt. Nichola Goddard said their daughter loved being a solider, and her need to help others earned her the nickname "Care Bear."
"Our daughter, Capt. Nichola Goddard, has been portrayed in the media as a strong leader, an officer who cared for her soldiers, and one who believed in the Canadian mission in Afghanistan," her father, Tim Goddard, told a press conference in Calgary Thursday.
"She was all of those things, but she was also so much more."
Goddard, 26, was killed Wednesday during an intense firefight with Taliban insurgents near Panjwai -- 24 kilometres west of Kandahar city.
Her father said she loved camping and had a great appreciation of the outdoors, likely gained from her time living in northern Saskatchewan and Baffin Island. She also loved animals, and had two dogs and two cats bought from an animal shelter in Manitoba.
But she was best known for her altruism, her father said, adding that "behind her huge smile was an even bigger heart."
"Once, during a ski race, one of the other competitors became hypothermic and collapsed by the side of the trail," he recalled.
"Nichola stopped and helped him down to the finish, losing any chance of winning that race for herself. After that, her friends all called her 'Care Bear.'"
Goddard's mother, Sally, said her daughter grew up around the world, attending seven schools before she graduated from high school.
Earlier Thursday, Goddard's husband said his wife loved being a soldier and thought nothing of being a female officer.
"I don't think she wanted to be perceived as a female doing a job. She felt she was just like one of the other soldiers and wanted to come across that way," Jason Beam told The Canadian Press from his home in Shilo, Man.
Beam and Goddard last spoke the morning before her fatal mission.
Hundreds of Canadian soldiers were supporting Afghan security forces in one of the most violent firefights since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001.
"She really wanted to go, she definitely wanted to make a difference," said Beam, who met his wife in basic training when the couple were teenagers.
A ramp ceremony for Goddard is set to take place in Afghanistan on Friday morning.
A National Defence spokeswoman said the ceremony will be held in Kandahar at 7 a.m. local time Friday (10:30 p.m. ET Thursday), before Goddard's body begins the long journey home to Canada.
The spokeswoman could not say when Goddard's body is due to arrive back, or whether any part of the process would be open to the media.
Funeral plans have not been finalized, but the service will be in Calgary, where her parents live.
A public memorial service will also be held at Canadian Forces Base Shilo for her friends and colleagues, said Beam.
The federal government recently closed the actual arrival home of fallen soldiers to the media, arguing that it wanted to allow their families to grieve in private.
Goddard, of Calgary, was married with no children.
Beam said he and his wife discussed having children in several years and that she doted on their two dogs and two cats.
"When she called back, she was always checking on how they were doing," he said.
Goddard was the 17th Canadian to be killed in Afghanistan since the current mission began in 2002, and Canada's first female combat death since the Second World War.
News of Goddard's fatality came as MPs in the House of Commons began debating a Conservative motion to extend the Canadian mission by two years.
Late Wednesday, MPs voted by a narrow margin of 149-145 to extend the Canadian military mission to February 2009.
Both the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois voted against the motion.
Moment of silence
On Thursday, MPs observed a moment of silence to honour the fallen soldier.
Goddard was serving with Task Force Afghanistan and was attached to the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (1 PPCLI) Battle Group.
She was serving as a forward artillery observer -- helping direct fire at enemy positions from near the front lines -- when the LAV III she was riding in was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Despite her risky assignment, she was known as a strong leader who inspired loyalty and courage among the soldiers of her unit.
"She went out of her way to make people feel welcome," her friend, Capt. Harry Crawford, told The Canadian Press.
"She always made sure her soldiers were taken care of. I know a lot of her soldiers and I know that they respected her."
In a lengthy email posted on her sister's Internet blog, Goddard described how she missed her daily Tim Hortons coffee and the pride she felt at wearing the uniform.
She recounted carrying a 45-kilogram pack uphill on a two-kilometre march, as well as other daily challenges of her role in the Afghan mission.
"I feel like a poster child for why people should join the military," Goddard wrote. "It was an amazing 15 days."
Attacks across Afghanistan
Around 100 people were killed Wednesday and Thursday as hundreds of insurgents attacked a southern town and fighting flared across the country.
Afghan officials said 13 policemen and 40 Taliban were killed in hours of fighting that raged after the coalition strike on Mosa Qala town -- 470 km southwest of Kabul -- was launched on Wednesday evening.
In a separate incident, a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy in the generally peaceful western city of Herat, killing himself and an American civilian.
A U.S. embassy spokesman said he was a State Department contractor training Afghan police.
A suicide bomber also attacked a U.S. military convoy near Ghazni town, 125 km southwest of Kabul, killing himself and a man on a motorcycle, an Afghan army officer said.