The night this week that I phoned to congratulate Jess Larochelle - I've never met him, but I've written about him before, so like most lunatic writers I felt as if I knew him - he sounded delighted and surprised by the call, and politely let me babble for a few minutes. Then he said, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude," and quietly explained that he was visiting the parents of one of his fallen friends, was in their living room right then, and couldn't speak any longer.
As I hung up, I was both stricken and smiling: It was such a Canadian soldier's moment on so many levels.
This nice young man who might have been celebrating his own fine time in the sun was instead mourning a friend, and doing the right thing by spending time with his buddy's folks. Only those parents who have lost a soldier-child know how much the company of those young people matters. It may hurt like hell, but it's a welcome hurt. More than a few of the families who have lost a son, or a daughter, have ended up adopting the rest of the members of their child's section: They need one another.
Jess Larochelle is a 24-year-old private with the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment. When I was last in Afghanistan, over the Christmas holidays, I'd heard a lot about him.
Of the many who behaved with courage and grace on Oct. 14, the day that a little fortified position called Strong Point Centre was attacked by the Taliban, probably no one else was spoken of with quite the same head-shaking admiration that accompanied the mere mention of Larochelle's name.
This was a function of the grit and hard-headedness he had demonstrated but also of his tender years - he was, as his platoon commander Lieutenant Ray Corby later described him, this baby-faced kid who had just held it all together so magnificently.
When the Taliban attacked that Saturday, it was in a disciplined way and from multiple directions, using RPG fire and a heavy volume of small arms. Pte. Larochelle was alone in an OP, or observation post, in a defensive position on a hill where the Light Armoured Vehicle couldn't go. Lt. Corby saw an RPG hit the OP and assumed the worst.
He conducted himself in exemplary fashion this day too, but by the time he was able to make it up to the OP to check on the lone soldier - Lt. Corby was only three weeks into the job as the 9 Platoon boss and one of his sections had just returned from leave - his gnawing concern appeared to be well-founded. The first time he called out, there was no answer. "The second time I yelled, I saw this little head pop up," he said.
It was Pte. Larochelle, who in short order gave Lt. Corby covering fire so he could jump in the OP safely, then calmly briefed him on what he'd been doing - firing at the attacking enemy to the west with the machine gun and rocket launchers, then turning his back to the enemy and firing to the eastern flank to protect it.
Pte. Larochelle was almost out of ammo, and, as Lt. Corby said, would have been forgiven if in the circumstances he'd stopped firing and ducked down. But he never did.
In fact, he was poised enough to provide Lt. Corby more excellent cover as he raced over to another position, where he discovered that two soldiers had been fatally injured by shrapnel - Sergeant Darcy Tedford and Pte. Blake Williamson - and three others wounded, though by now back on their feet and in the fight once again.
After the battle, the platoon returned to Kandahar Air Field, about 30 kilometres east, and immediately began practising how they would carry their fallen comrades in one of those stirring ramp ceremonies with which Canadians have become familiar.
Pte. Larochelle was one of those who carried on his shoulders the casket of his friend, Pte. Williamson.
Only after Pte. Williamson was on his way back home did Pte. Larochelle confess there was something wrong with his back. He'd been injured in the RPG attack on the OP - pretty damn seriously, too, it turned out. He returned to Canada, where doctors thought for a time they might have to fuse some vertebrae in his neck, and though still on light duties, he's recovering, pain-free much of the time, and back with his unit in Petawawa.
This week, the story lost in the headlines over the Afghan detainee issue, Pte. Larochelle was awarded the Star of Military Valour, in prestige second only to the Canadian Victoria Cross, which has never been awarded since Canada established its own awards in 1993. He was not alone: Corporal Sean Teal was also awarded the SMV, while seven others were awarded the Medal of Military Valour, including the terrific young guy, Master Corporal Sean Niefer, who ran the show in the LAV that Globe photographer Kevin Van Paassen and I spent about a week in over Christmas.
All of these decorations are for distinguished acts of valour "in the presence of the enemy," a wonderfully mild description for the sort of courage they reward.
Seven other soldiers received Mentions in Dispatches for valiant conduct, devotion to duty or distinguished service.
All the award winners were members of the 1RCR battle group led by Lieutenant-Colonel Omer Lavoie. Pte. Larochelle, born to military parents Randy and Anna and raised in various parts of Canada and in Germany, considers North Bay home. It was there I spoke to his dad, who said that Jesse, as his folks call him, was always someone who could be counted on.
Soldier stories always lose out to political ones. That's what this week was. But if you for a minute thought that the hullabaloo over Afghan detainees was in any way about Canadian soldiers, you were wrong. Their stories are rarely shouted and infrequently heard in a world that pays attention to noise. And more often than not they involve nice young guys like Jess Larochelle who, whether he is manning a machine gun, in two directions no less, or visiting a fallen friend's lonely parents, is doing what's right.