GAGETOWN, N.B. — Master Cpl. Garland Smith of Pasadena came back home from his second tour of duty in Kandahar, Afghanistan to find there was a little more soldiering to do.
Taking his leave at CFB Gagetown, he was outside for a cigarette earlier this week when he noticed the dome light turning on in his neighbour’s car. Curious, as it was nighttime, he walked over and discovered the car was being robbed by a person he would come to realize was a teenager.
Smith chased the teen, who produced a knife. He knocked the knife out of the teen’s hand and held him down until the Gagetown RCMP showed up to make the arrest a few minutes later.
Smith said the teen was trying to escape, squirming and asking to be let go. But the 17-year military veteran would have none of that.
“It’s a pretty tight-knit community here, a military community, and he was breaking into my friend’s car,” Smith told The Western Star from his Gagetown home. “So I wasn’t about to let him go. It’s a close community, we’re always looking out for each other. I didn’t even think about it, I just reacted to the situation to tell you the truth.”
After his two tours in Afghanistan, he joked, the knife really didn’t scare him. Smith is a section commander for an infantry company with the Canadian Forces. He’s done various jobs around Kandahar and admitted to still being in the high alert stage that soldiers usually feel on patrol in Afghanistan. When that ends, he said, is different for every soldier.
In his first tour he was with the Provincial Reconstruction Team, ensuring safety of civilians during liaisons with locals, security of construction sites ensuring safety of civilians and workers, and mobility support — ensuring that people get from point A to point B, to various jobs.
Smith served as a crew commander in Kandahar for a LAV III, the same type of armoured troop transport vehicle that has become a target for roadside bombs and IED’s resulting in the deaths of several Canadian soldiers in the past few years. He called driving the vehicle “nerve-wracking” but then, he said, so is everything else in Kandahar.
“You don’t realize it until you’ve actually operated one, sure you could get blown up, but everything gets blown up over there,” he laughed. “Some you hear more than others, the way I used look at it, you’re just as likely back home to hit a moose going down the highway as you are to hit an IED. That’s one way that people get through it.”
Another way he “got through it” is by realizing the progress that has been made in Afghanistan.
“When I went back I saw kids going to school in an area that was literally a battlefield when I was there on my first tour,” he said. “So there is progress being made, we can show them that you don’t have to use violence to get things done.”
Smith originally signed up for the military because the job security was so attractive. As each year of his career passed he would think that it may be time to get out, but opted to stay in. Now at age 38, he said he will stay in the Forces for at least another couple of years.
He admits to not really knowing what they will get him to do next, but he would not be opposed to going back to Kandahar.
“I’d go back depending on what the mission is,” he said. I’m on leave now and they try to keep you out of it between missions. I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back home to Newfoundland.”
He acknowledged that the military is maxed out but doesn’t seem to worried about it.
“We’re a small army and we’re spread thin, but we’re good at making do with what we have.”
