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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Hotel Company was finishing up its mission in the arid plains of western Kandahar when one of its patrols hit a dangerous obstacle on Sunday afternoon. Few things can stop a Canadian LAV III armoured vehicle in the empty wastes of Maywand district, but the LAV crews were worried about driving across an ancient canal system, called a kareez, which resembles a series of deep holes hacked into the earth.
Their company had spent more than a month in that sun-baked expanse, and their clothes probably stank of sweat, garbage fires and anti-fungal foot powder, but their time in the desert would have made them familiar with threats such as the kareez holes, which could trap an unwary driver.
A gap between the holes, about four metres wide, seemed to offer a way past. Canadians had passed that way recently, so the soldiers had no reason to suspect that the narrow passage concealed the deadliest bomb to hit a Canadian military vehicle in half a century.
The explosive device was probably hidden in the dust within the past few days, and rigged with a pressure sensor, a battery and a detonator. Its punch was so powerful that six soldiers inside the troop compartment in the first of three LAVs died instantly. A seventh, a soldier who was seriously injured, was blown out of a hatch.
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(A metal screen separates the troop compartment from the front of the vehicle, and the soldiers in the front of the LAV emerged relatively unscathed from the blast.)
The seriously injured man, whose name was withheld, received a campaign medal yesterday from Lieutenant-Colonel Rob Walker, the battle group commander, who said he was impressed by the soldier's quick thinking in the frantic moments after the blast. The soldier was trained in advanced first-aid techniques, and even with injuries to his legs and arm, he remained lucid enough to give his crewmates instructions about how to save his own life.
"He told the gunner what to do to stop the bleeding and render first aid," Lt.-Col. Walker said. "I was very inspired by his account."
The troops, who had been living out of their eight-wheeled vehicles in the dust and heat for more than a month, were on their last convoy escort, Lt.-Col Walker said. They were due to rotate back to the base at Kandahar for a rest to refit their LAVs.
Among the many dramatic details that emerged yesterday, several pointed to a worrying improvement in the Taliban's bomb-making skills.
Lt.-Col. Walker said he initially wondered whether the bomb might have ignited an arsenal inside the LAV, which would have explained the high death toll, but he later discovered that the vehicle was only stocked with the regular complement of munitions, and some supplies of ammunition were removed from the wreck afterward.
He said he still can't rule out the possibility of a secondary explosion, but it also appears the insurgents had built an unusually potent device.
"It was a big bomb," Lt.-Col. Walker said.
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, range from the most basic, such as a hand grenade inside a dead rat triggered by a long piece of string, to the more sophisticated, such as a stack of artillery shells shaped to blast a molten plug of copper through the armour of a tank.
They can be triggered deliberately to hit the most vulnerable target, although in Sunday's case, the military said, the blast was triggered by a pressure plate.
IEDs have been responsible for an increasing death toll in Iraq, and it has become more and more clear that the skills honed against U.S. occupation forces there are being imported by the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan.
Experts will confirm whether secondary explosions inside the vehicle played a role in the Canadian soldiers' deaths, after a flatbed truck hauls the LAV back to Kandahar Air Field later this week.
The fact that the military can recover the vehicle reflects the Forces' confidence about their control over Maywand, a poorly governed district at the extreme western edge of Kandahar province.
On Tuesay, a farewell ramp ceremony was held in Kandahar for the six men.
In the sombre ceremony, a lone bagpiper played Amazing Grace as more than 1,000 troops saluted the dead soldiers.
Sixty pallbearers, all members of Hotel company, slowly carried the flag-draped caskets on their shoulders into an aircraft for the final trip home.
Last year, when another LAV was scuppered in a remote northern part of Kandahar, a British Harrier jet was sent to bomb the vehicle, keeping it out of Taliban hands.
The recovery operation was already under way yesterday in the remote northern part of Maywand, southeast of the village of Sang Bur, roughly 75 kilometres west of Kandahar city.
Canadian troops visited the same village about three weeks ago, but entered via a different route from the south. Convoys usually try to vary their routes as a way of avoiding improvised explosive devices, but most paths through Kandahar's western desert have seen heavy traffic since March 6, when the Canadian battle group started escorting convoys of British, U.S. and Afghan troops into neighbouring Helmand province as part of Operation Achilles.
The Canadian battle group's role in support of Achilles is coming to an end this week. Colonel Mike Cessford, the deputy Canadian commander in Afghanistan, said the troops from Hotel Company will get some time to rest at Kandahar Air Field, but he hinted that their work west of Kandahar city will resume.
"They will have time to think, grieve and prepare for the next step," Col. Cessford said.
Chief Warrant Officer Mark Baisley, the battle group's regimental sergeant-major, said the incident has taken a toll on the troops but they're recovering admirably.
"Initially it was shock and disbelief," CWO Baisley said. "But they're bouncing back. They're tough. . . . We come over here. We understand the risks we're going into."
<>PWith a report from Canadian Press
