From Alberta to Afghanistan: Constable Robert Wright

Cst. Robert Wright speaks to Canyon School
students during their Remembrance Day ceremonies
C. Davis photo

Constable Robert Wright is currently serving his society as a member of the Pincher Creek RCMP. 

Over the course of last week, as he has done before, he spoke to kids at our local schools during their Remembrance Day events.  One of the things Constable Wright brought up at each event was the wide-ranging impact war has not only on the soldier but also on his or her family, friends, and community. Children and spouses are left behind to worry, too often to grieve, with the continuity of family life disrupted or destroyed.

His knowledge on the subject is a very personal one, having served in Afghanistan.

His story is a reminder that war and conflict is not over, that young men and women still make the sacrifice, that Remembrance Day is unfortunately not just about the past.  It's also about the present and the foreseeable future.   

Here then, in his own words only slightly tidied for public consumption, is a little bit of one man's story. Thank you, Bob Wright, for your ongoing service to our society, and for your candor.

Cst. Robert Wright, Contributor:

I signed up for the Forces in 2003 out of Edmonton. After doing some shopping around and looking at all the different trades nothing really interested me and that's when the recruiter asked if I liked camping. This was a common joke because of course most guys who walked into that office liked camping. The recruiter signed me up into the infantry and told me two things, one of which was "I don't know why anybody would do that to themselves". The reason I signed up is a bit of a different story.

I was engaged to my wife at the time and didn't have a lot of education but wanted to be able to provide for her. I wanted a job that had some perks to it, a pension, medical, paid time off, and all the good stuff. So needless to say the options were a bit limited. My father had served in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) and later the Airborne Regiment, and his father had served in the Navy. I figured that if it was good enough for them I would be able to forge out a living too.

My wife to be wasn't thrilled by the prospect of me joining the military and it was little more than talk for awhile, until one day in a fit of frustration after searching the job ads I walked downtown and signed up.

I learned some important life lessons later that night, such as: If your going to join the Army you may want to run it past your wife before you sign the papers.

We were married on February 4, 2003 and I shipped out for training April 4 to Quebec. I did my basic training there and then went to Wainwright for Battle School and trade specific training. Wainwright was more of what you'd see in the movies, including lots of yelling, screaming, early morning runs and inspections.

In December of that year I graduated into the PPCLI regiment and was finally aloud to return home to my new wife.

I spent the next three years serving with the regiment out of Edmonton. During this time I trained in several different areas and skill sets from survival exercises in the Arctic Circle to close quarter combat training in the United States. I had an aptitude when it came to shooting and operating weapons systems and eventually ended up training as a crew commander and gunner on a LAV (an amphibious reconnaissance vehicle).

In 2005 I learned we'd be going overseas to Afghanistan. The timing was difficult for a few reasons. Braun Woodfield, my bunk mate from basic training, had just been killed outside of Kandahar in what was believed to be an accident and my wife had just found out we were pregnant with child number two and number one was only 6 months old.

Ironically, I left Edmonton on February 4th (our anniversary) to go to Afghanistan. There wasn't a great deal of information that filtered down to our level as far as mission specifics went but we knew what we had been training for and knew what we were trained to do, and that sufficed for the time.

So my whole Company (PPCLI 1st battalion, Charlie Company) loaded the plane February 4th, 2006. I almost slept in, as my wife and I had celebrated our anniversary the night before. We had all these plans for a big breakfast in the morning and a long drawn out goodbye, but instead I woke up to guys pounding on my window telling me we were going to miss our flight.

I remember handing my friend a $20 and asking him to take my wife some flowers after he had dropped us all off to help cushion the blow. After a few different plan changes and flying around half the world we landed in the middle of a desert in the United Arab Emirates at what was then a secret military installation called Camp Mirage. There we were fitted with our weapons and grabbed most of our combat gear and jumped on a C130 to head over the Gulf of Oman, Pakistan and then landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I remember getting off the C130 at the air field and seeing this large hanger that had holes in it. I remember looking around and thinking "This place looks like a war zone" and then almost laughing out loud at how stupid that would have sounded had I said that out loud.

We were marched through the camp and shown to our new accommodations which were called the BAT tents, (big ass tents). The Army never missing a beat or apparently a sale had procured a couple of hundred sets of children's bunk beds from lord knows where (actually we had a pretty good idea) and we were set to the task of setting them all up.

I'm sure we had close to 200 men and women in the tent by the time it was all done, and we had redefined living in close quarters.

We started to work not long after, mainly in supporting roles. The first mission I can remember was securing some sensitive cargo that had been jettisoned off a US plane when it almost crash landed. 30 of us jumped on a British Chinook and were dropped who knows where. I remember having to chase after some local who had managed to load a fuel pod onto a makeshift wheel barrow and was running like the devil was on his back. We ended up finding what we needed to and destroyed the rest.

I guess they liked what we did because not long after that we were informed that our platoon was chosen to be the new QRF (Quick Reaction Force) for the entire collation. This would mean that we would now sleep next to the runway and that at any point in time, the 30 of us would be called to sort out everything from sensitive recovery operations, mainly UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to mine strikes and ambushes. We were there to be dropped in at a moments notice to level the playing field if the powers that be felt the enemy was getting the upper hand.

April 28-29, 2006:

We received information that a small group of American Special Forces who had been doing a convey escort had come under attack and that several enemy personal had followed them back to their FOB (Forward operating base) and were now preparing an assault on the compound. We were taken by helicopter in the middle of the night and dropped off and assisted in securing the area. Shortly after we were awakened by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) that hit the compound and was immediately followed by small arms fire. When I opened my eyes I was looking straight up in the air and the sky was full of tracer fire.

Orders were shouted and we started running out the main gate to meet the enemy head on. Our warrant officer was there counting bodies as they came running out.  He sent the first 6 or 7 to one position and then stopped at me and told three of us to take another position. I remember running to man a mortar position and then having to move as the fire fight continued. My friend at one point tried to leave and run for more shells. He took two steps and was met by a blanket of rounds just in front of him. I don't recall how long it lasted but I do remember the radio transmissions telling us there was 200 to 300 personnel closing in on our position.

The 30 of us plus our American counterparts were able to hold the position until some much needed air support was able to assist. When the shooting stopped I remember the only thing we could hear were our friends who had been shot screaming in pain. The radio transmissions between positions started reporting dead and wounded men. We had one Hummer that we "borrowed", and we used it to run people off the position back inside the compound for medical treatment.

Before the night was over 5 Canadians had been seriously wounded, one killed (Rob Costell) and our American medic had been killed as well. We held the position for another five days before reinforcements arrived. The next day I remember them passing a satellite phone around the positions because at this point this was the first instance of combat the Canadians had been in since who knows when and the first time Canadians and Americans had died fighting side by side since Korea, so rather then the news running wild with it (they did anyway) and our families knowing nothing we were allowed 3 minutes on the phone, basically to tell them it wasn't you who was killed.