HUA HIN, Thailand - It is the nature of
war to bring out the very best, as well as the
very worst, in human beings. And so in these days
of violence, just as there is no shortage of
horror stories emanating from Afghanistan, Iraq,
Darfur, Congo, Lebanon, there is no shortage of
heroes, as well.
But heroes are not always
found in the obvious places - on the battlefield,
in the hospitals, in the chapels, mosques,
temples, synagogues and funeral homes. Sometimes
they show up in
ordinary homes in places like
Regina, Saskatchewan.
Last summer, Master
Corporal Jeffrey Walsh, a 33-year-old father of
three young children, was six days into his second
tour of duty in Afghanistan with the Canadian
Armed Forces. Walsh and another master corporal,
his good friend Robbie Fraser, were bouncing down
a highway in the back of an armored vehicle near
Kandahar when a shot rang out.
That shot
robbed those three little kids of their dad, a
young woman of her husband, and retired Royal
Canadian Mounted Police officer Ben Walsh of his
son.
But the Taliban, or warlords, or
al-Qaeda, or highway bandits were never blamed for
the fatal shooting. Instead, Master Corporal
Fraser was charged this week after a seven-month
investigation with manslaughter and negligent
performance of duty. If convicted, Fraser could be
sentenced to life in prison.
The Canadian
military is being customarily tight-lipped about
the incident, but it appears that Jeffrey Walsh
was killed by an accidental discharge of a fellow
soldier's C-7 rifle.
Those of us who have
wended our way through life managing to avoid
violent conflict can only imagine, very
imperfectly, the effect events such as this have
on loved ones left behind. What would we do if we
were Ben Walsh and his wife, who not only lost
their son in faraway Afghanistan but, seven months
later, heard that a Canadian soldier had been
charged in the death?
Well, we know what
Ben Walsh did. He picked up the phone and called
Robbie Fraser. And he told the young corporal he
understood what he was going through. "I told him
he certainly should get good legal counsel and I
hoped to meet him one day, and just to hang in
there," Walsh told the Toronto Star.
And
that's not all. According to Canada's Sun Media
chain, Jeffrey Walsh's young widow, too, found
that dignity and decency are, for some, stronger
forces than grief and blame. "I've just let Rob
know that I'm here for him," said Julie Mason, 29.
"He's going through enough."
If the
definition of a hero is someone who sets standards
we can only hope to aim for, let alone reach,
perhaps it makes sense for those of us who see no
glory in war to look elsewhere. Perhaps in an era
- and what era has been different from this one? -
when so-called leaders start wars out of hatred,
revenge, power lust, greed and sheer stupidity,
all the basest elements of the human psyche, it is
no surprise that we find the highest standards
being set, and carried, by a grieving ex-cop and
the mother of three fatherless kids.
The
Walsh-Fraser affair comes at a difficult time for
Canada, which unlike its warlike neighbor to the
south is unused to seeing its soldiers come home
in coffins. Some opinion polls have found more
than half the Canadian populace opposed to their
country's military involvement in Afghanistan,
even though it is under Ottawa's obligations as a
member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
and not in direct support of the unpopular "war on
terror" as defined by George W Bush. Yet that
broader debate seems out of place, even unseemly,
in the context of the death of Corporal Walsh and
its fallout. Clearly, he and Robbie Fraser
believed they were serving their country.
But it seems clear that the vast legacy of
death, suffering, economic loss, political
instability and environmental devastation of the
many wars since the (second) "war to end all wars"
of 1939-45 have taught us next to nothing. The
real lessons are learned in spite of, not because
of, war.
From this perspective, we all
could do a lot worse than to learn from one
simple, straightforward observation uttered in a
modest home in Regina, Saskatchewan, by a retired
Mountie the great movers and shakers of our world
have never heard of.
"You cannot go on
hating people. It's not right."
David Simmons is an Asia Times
Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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