4 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Four Canadian soldiers only days away from returning home from Afghanistan were killed and eight of their comrades were injured shortly after dawn while participating in Canada’s largest combat operation since the Korean War.

The men died in two separate incidents from improvised explosive devices that had been planted in the dirt by insurgents about 40 kilometres apart. The deaths brought to 116 the number of Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since the first troops were deployed here early in the spring of 2002.

It was "with a heavy heart" that Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, commander of Canada’s Task Force Afghanistan, announced the deaths on Friday in Operation Jaley, a joint Canadian-American-Afghan operation involving more than 2,000 combat troops. The mission was designed attack Taliban command centres and supply routes.

"Please do not think of this as a failure on the part of any person or of the mission itself," Vance said. "These wonderful Canadian men were, at the moment of their deaths, engaged directly in the continuing work to keep the insurgency sufficiently at bay to ensure the safety for the population, and to preserve our ability to meet the objectives of the Afghan people, the international community and the government of Canada."

Master Cpl. Scott Vernelli of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, and Pte. Tyler Crooks of 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, died when they were hit by an IED while on a foot patrol in western Zahri District as part of Operation Jaley. An Afghan interpreter was also killed. Five other soldiers from November Company were wounded as was another Afghan interpreter.

In the second incident, which occurred about two hours later, Trooper Jack Bouthillier and Trooper Corey Hayes from a reconnaissance squadron of the Petawawa-based Royal Canadian Dragoons died when their armoured vehicle struck an IED in Shah Wali Khot District about 20 kilometres northeast of Kandahar. Three other Dragoons were wounded in the same blast.

All the wounded were in stable condition after being flown by medevac helicopters to a multinational military hospital at the Kandahar Airfield where they were able to contact their kin in Canada, Vance said. The names of the wounded were not released.

Vernelli and Crooks of Port Colborne, Ont., were completing a six-hour, overnight dismounted mission – one of the last they were to have done after six months in Afghanistan – and were on their way back to their armoured vehicles at the time. The blast that killed them could be heard several kilometres away.

Vernelli, 28, who has married and had a six-month-old daughter. Crooks, 24, had what Capt. Chris Reeves described as "unsung heroes type jobs" in November Company. Their duties that were "not very glamourous" because they were not part of the rifle platoons that do much of the fighting, but that they had often been "out in front, doing some of the hardest jobs," he said.

Vernelli was in Kandahar in 2006 and "wanted to come back but we wasn’t sure in what role," said Reeves, who is November Company’s second-in-command. "He wanted a role that he would be able to contribute and do something interesting and more hands on" and had been personally recruited by the company commander.

Of Crooks, who was known as Crooksy, Reeves said: "He was a young soldier that everybody in the company knows. He was really fit and athletic and always had a seat at the ‘Big Boy’ table. You know what I mean."

Officers and the company sergeant major were putting Crooks’s name forward for consideration to become an officer, Reeves said in an interview conducted a few hours after the incident.

"He would have been good," the captain said. "He would have gone down over the next few years and worked on his education and his training and eventually become a platoon commander."

Bouthillier, 20, who was known as Boots was a keen sportsman and martial arts specialist renowned for his sense of humour, Vance said.

Hayes, 22, was remembered by Vance "not only as a friend and comrade in arms but a brother who inspired them to stand up in the face of danger and do what was right."

News of the IED strikes reached some soldiers based in Zahri/Panjwaii when senior warrant officers ordered them, joking and griping, out of their cots shortly after 6 a.m. The mood quickly turned sombre when a warrant officer silenced them with the hard news that members of their battle group had died and had been wounded.

"Success in war is costly," Vance said. "We are determined to succeed so that Afghan lives improve, but the insurgents are equally determined to challenge and prevent Afghanistan from flourishing as the nation it so wants to be."

One of the Canadians injured in the twin strikes Friday required evacuation to a U.S. Air Force hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, that specializes in dealing with those seriously wounded on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

As the traditional fighting season has gotten underway again after a winter of relative quiet, there has been a surge of enemy activity on the north and south banks of the Arghandab River in areas patrolled by the battle group, which is largely comprising the 3rd battalion of the Petawawa, Ont.-based Royal Canadian Regiment but also includes troops from the Royal Canadian Dragoons as well as engineers and others drawn from units across the Canadian Forces.

The RCR battle group, which is the sixth to have served in Kandahar since the spring of 2006, has been here since early last fall. Since then 19 Canadians have died. Seventeen soldiers from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry died during the rotation before that. Of the soldiers killed during the current rotation, nine worked were the battle group, four were with a police training team, three were from the provincial reconstruction team and three were with Joint Task Force Afghanistan.

The RCR is slated to be replaced soon by a battle group built around an infantry battalion from the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment – the Van Doos.

Relatively few of Canada’s casualties in Afghanistan have resulted from fire fights with the Taliban. Most of those who have died or been injured have been hit by improvised explosive devices – often home-made bombs fashioned out of old Soviet artillery shells and other ordnance and usually triggered remotely or by pressure contact or trip wires.

In the most recent multiple IED strike before Friday’s devastating explosions, three members of a counter-IED team died March 3 when their armoured vehicle struck a series of IEDs while returning from a rural area after having successfully neutralized another IED. Those troops operated from a base used by Canada’s provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar City.

The last Canadian to die in Afghanistan was Toronto native Trooper Marc Diab of the Royal Canadian Dragoons in an IED strike on March 8.