In light of some recent public comments regarding Canadian military service, I thought I’d share the story of this tee shirt. It’s a @brooksrunning tee, circa 2008.

I deployed to Kandahar in June of 2008, my first as a CRO. The mission was known as ILO (in lieu of) MEDEVAC. Translation: an Air Force Rescue helicopter with PJs aboard flying Dustoff missions, basically attached to the Army.

On the team’s second mission, my TL picked up what was left of a Canadian soldier. I won’t share the words used to describe the remains they transported. It was a fucking mess.

Canadians were all over RC-S at the time. And day in and out, became the majority of our business when shit went south. I was a naive O3, and brand new operator, and I didn’t really have a grasp on what the Canadians were going through. Because I was simply flying over it.

Most of the time anyway. I think it all came to a head on one mission. The guys pulled me from my shift because they wanted an O. All we knew was a Canadian convoy had been IED’d and extrication was needed. They wanted me to run interface with the GFC.

The overflight was horrifying. The Canadian version of a Stryker was burning, sitting on a massive crater. The rest of the convoy had stopped. We put in.

The GFC was a baby-faced CGO. Face like a cherub. He simply pointed at the burning vehicle and said he had men inside. I sent the Js to check it out, and ran comms with the GFC and our orbiting helo.

The kid was blank. Not there at all. He just said the guys inside were alive after the IED. He had some wounded at the CCP — the lucky ones who made it out.

Secondaries started going off at the vehicle. My TL ran back. Nothing we could do at that point. He doubted anyone was left alive at that point.

I have never felt as impotent as when I told that GFC that there was nothing we could do. He nodded, and went back to staring at the horizon. We grabbed the wounded, called in the helo, and left.

I used to get emails from friends and family. Everyone was praying for my safety, they said. Save them, I responded. Pray for the Canadians and Afghans dying in droves while I sit in an air conditioned hooch playing XBox.

The next month, my helo crashed going in for some Aussie SAS outside Tarin Kowt. No injuries, but I was rattled.

They sat us down for two weeks and then put us back in the fight. My last mission was a zero-zero night with @Shwag92 flying co as a 1Lt into a goddamn postage stamp of an LZ at a shared CAN-AFG outpost. A repeat of the conditions that we’d crashed in, but a worse LZ.

We had to go around on the first approach, feet off the deck and drifting. Just like before. At one point, I saw my J through NVGs in the other door. Looked like a cat you’re trying to throw in a tub.

Aircrew pulled it off, and we made it in. And I’ll never forget seeing a Canadian medic leading a litter team carrying a seriously wounded Afghan to us, shouting the patient handoff, then disappearing into the gloom.

He was everything I wasn’t. And then he was gone and so was I. That was it. Rodeo was over. Time to go home.

Back in the world, I was so angry. At myself, for not being shoulder to shoulder with our allies. And at a nation that had forgotten the mission it sent us on/talked the world into joining. So I ran like I never had before. Joined a racing club. 4am workouts, etc.

I walked into a Tucson running store one day, saw that shirt, and I knew I was going to buy it. It was everything I’d experienced and was living. The black grief of survival. The flag of a nation whose dead and wounded I’d carried.

I wore it to unit PT one day. Got some odd looks, like, Canada? You don’t see US mil wearing the flags of other countries too often, so it didn’t come as a surprise. So I told them that I wore it in honor of the Canadian dead/wounded I’d seen.

Then I’d lace up and pound pavement .

I can’t say a black tee was a great color for Tucson summer runs. But I think that was part of it. I needed to suffer and atone.

Every day, I see CAN mil up here in AK, and @CAFinUS in my feed. And every goddamn time one of ours falls, they make it a point to honor our dead. So it pained me — very deeply — to see Canadian media forced to report the US official’s comments to their nation.

If you’re a Canadian and reading this, I want you to know that I deeply respect the sacrifices your country has made for mine. It’s not much at all, but I’ll run in this shirt until the day I die. I think of your dead every time I put it on.