The Canadian war vet is no longer an old guy

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On a sweltering Friday night in Winnipeg, he is the handsome young blond sipping beer in the stands at a football game. Fit and wearing shorts and wraparound shades, he looks more like one of the players on the field than a war veteran.

Observe closely and you might notice he presses a finger into his left ear every time the home team scores. The loud cheers of the crowd trigger a flash of pain in his blast-damaged ear. Listen, and you'll hear him swear occasionally. It's the infantryman's habit, one he is trying valiantly to keep in check, surrounded as he is by civilian fans. With his right eye damaged by shrapnel, he can't read the program or see names on player uniforms. But he can follow the action with his left.

Like thousands of the 55,173 Canadians who served in the Afghan mission, Bruce Legree has gone to war and already returned to civilian life, where he is studying, wrestling bureaucracy and trying to carve out a new purpose.

For decades, the Canadian war vet was the aging father, the elderly grandpa, the old uncle. Today's war vet is a psychology student living in a university dorm, like Mr. Legree, the firefighter, and a mother of five wrapping up maternity leave, the Ontario Provincial Police officer just coming off the night shift.

The identity of the Canadian veteran is undergoing a massive update while most Canadians have barely noticed.

An entire system has built up over decades to serve veterans into old age, infirmity and even death. But interviews with 10 new veterans, some of whom wish to remain anonymous, reveal that even revamped government services and benefits are too complex and often a bad fit for young men and women starting all over again.

Mr. Legree, for one, is grateful for two years of financial backing he's using to go to school, but he's lucky. It's only because he previously studied at Royal Military College and got extra credit from the University of Manitoba for military training that he can squeeze a degree into his program's 24-month limit.

Those credits are what landed him in Winnipeg, which adds another dimension to the veterans' tale, one of social isolation as they struggle to fit into new civilian lives. It's particularly difficult for those who had it thrust upon them by bad luck and army regulation.

Originally from Smiths Falls, Ont., Mr. Legree is in Manitoba for the first time in his life, living what he calls "this vagabond experience, where you just kind of wander around trying to figure out where you fit in now."

He's a highly motivated university student, but he is a stranger living far from his friends, girlfriend and family.

"I have virtually no identity," Mr. Legree says, although subsequent conversation reveals several. Like any good brother, he brags about his two smart elder sisters. He is a working-class guy who will soon be the first man in 10 generations of his family line to get a university degree. He's proud of this, but later worries the small boast might sound like he's diminishing the hard work of his dad, a school caretaker, and his mom and stepfather, who both work in a packaging plant.

Five years ago this summer, Mr. Legree and comrade Mathew Belear were with Bravo Company of the Royal Canadian Regiment battle group on the front line of Operation Medusa, a deadly and defining battle of Canada's war in Afghanistan.

Mr. Legree, a reservist who spent most of his eight-year career serving full-time, had been in country barely a month. Mr. Belear was a regular forces soldier on his second tour in Afghanistan. Their crew sat with their light armoured vehicle in the Kandahar desert, waiting to join the action.

As the blistering sun started to set, the two men were outside the vehicle, organizing ammunition and supplies. A volley of about a dozen Taliban rockets thumped into the sand around them. Mr. Belear was launched into the air while Mr. Legree sank to the ground.

While mates in other armoured vehicles returned fire, Mr. Legree was deaf and could feel blood flowing over his right eye, his vision blurred by a piece of shrapnel resting against his retina. He pressed himself into the sand, hoping to avoid taking another hit. Shrapnel peppered Mr. Belear's right side, including a larger piece that penetrated deep into his upper thigh. Blood poured out.

Eventually Mr. Legree and others staunched the bleeding from Mr. Belear's wound. Six men of the nine in their crew had some kind of injury, but these two were most serious. Their war was over.

Mr. Legree assumed his ears would eventually stop ringing and his hearing would return. But there was that blood obscuring his vision. Less than a week later he was back home in Ontario, shopping in a supermarket with his then-girlfriend, a patch covering his surgically repaired eye.

His wounds didn't end his military career. Mr. Legree was diagnosed with Crohn's disease a short time later. Another surgery followed after he lost about a third of his 185 pounds. Military doctors ruled his need for regular injections and specialist care meant he couldn't meet the army's minimum requirements.

Heartbroken, Mr. Legree was interested in a career in law enforcement but he knew no police department wants a recruit who is hard of hearing and visually impaired. He's now aiming to be a teacher instead.

"My experience has been the square peg being jammed into the round hole," he says. "But mostly, I just can't begin to tell you how much it hurts to not be a soldier any more."

Mr. Belear chose to leave the army and become a cop, joining the OPP. He overcame lingering pain in his hip and leg after three surgeries, along with permanent nerve damage to his shoulders from the impact of the explosions and a hard landing.

After he returned home to the Kingston area, the 28-year-old married his girlfriend, Anthea, and the couple had their two-year-old son, Hayden.

Like many police officers who patrol rural areas, Mr. Belear now spends many shifts alone, and like Mr. Legree he dearly misses military camaraderie.

He is critical of the Veterans Affairs system which left him facing a blizzard of paperwork and lengthy appeals stretching over months just to get a $23,000 lump-sum payment for only some of his wounds. In fact, Mr. Belear says he only managed to get through the system with partial success because of informal help offered by a pension officer who had helped his grandfather, Alf Belear, a Second World War vet, apply for his own $2,000 monthly pension years earlier. He's deeply grateful.

"I wasn't prepared for how difficult it was going to be. I don't think a lot of soldiers are either. You jump through all these hoops for them, then someone from Charlottetown tells you your injuries don't fit their checklist. So you start again," Mr. Belear said.

Later, the army forgot to give him the Sacrifice Medal, which soldiers receive for being wounded in action. He also wasn't invited to the ceremony where his unit received a citation for fighting in Operation Medusa. The army has corrected the mistakes and will give Mr. Belear his citation next month.

"I feel like I got lost in the shuffle, pretty much," he said.

Getting lost in the shuffle is easy. Between National Defence and Veterans Affairs, there is a long list of programs and private disability insurance plans offering services and money to vets. No two cases are the same, and no one person at either agency seems able to explain how it all works.

At the forefront are some 260 Veterans Affairs case managers spread across the country. It's up to them to try to tailor services to specific individual needs.

"That's the advantage of our case management system.… it allows us to deal with veterans' needs and to deal with individual circumstances. They can assess in the context of health, financial circumstances, community. It's all taken into account," said Anne-Marie Pellerin, the Veterans Affairs director of rehabilitation and case management, based in Charlottetown.

But there are limits. Vocational retraining programs are flexible to a point, but generally have a limit of $20,000 (this kicks in beyond Mr. Legree's 24-month program, which falls under DND). An intricate formula awards a lump-sum payment of up to $276,000 for specific injuries (this is the program that awarded Mr. Belear his $23,000). A complex system that assigns a one-time value to a lost limb or chronic pain is a recipe for dissatisfaction.

But even when everything works out well, when veterans serve without injury, they pay a price. Jessica Kok, one of a new generation of female Canadian soldiers who saw action, was also at the front line of Operation Medusa. From one of the rear hatches of her company commander's armoured vehicle, she kept watch, rifle at the ready, whenever it was on the move. She also called in mortar fire on enemy positions. More than once, that armoured vehicle was peppered by shrapnel.

Ms. Kok, now 34, got involved in the reserves in high school before she became a firefighter in Kitchener, Ont. She was never wounded and quickly returned to her civilian job after serving, but she said her tour in Afghanistan cost her lost wages and extra pension payments. None of this diminishes her pride, however.

She admits she's not exactly the veteran prototype: Not too many other frontline Canadian soldiers have given birth to two babies within five years of going to war. "I'm proud of my part in it, I'm proud of it all. I got veteran licence plates just to remind me of that part of my life. For me they're a memento every time I get into my Honda Pilot," Ms. Kok says.

There will be no veterans licence plates for Mr. Legree or Mr. Belear. Both men wear the title uneasily. Despite the price he's paid, Mr. Legree thinks he is not worthy of the name. Mr. Belear said the title still belongs to his grandfather, who died a few years ago.

For Mr. Legree, the discomfort is most evident on Remembrance Day. Last November, he and a friend went to the ceremony at Winnipeg's Minto Armoury. Dressed in civilian clothes and without his telltale war medals, he was an anonymous face in the crowd.

"It's this whole situation where you're intimately involved for so many years and then suddenly find yourself outside looking in," Mr. Legree said.

Even as the junior ranks gathered later for a drink, he felt like an outcast. Many of the men and women present had served in Afghanistan, but they were too busy socializing with their friends to pay any attention to a bearded outsider in civilian clothes. Mr. Legree doesn't blame them. "They were just doing their thing," he said. "I was just sorry not to be sharing the day with them."

Even deep within this military institution, the war vet drank a few sips of beer alone. He left before his drink was gone.