Op MEDUSA videos

Operation MEDUSA video Part 1:

Operation MEDUSA video Part 2:

Operation MEDUSA video Part 3:

This exert is taken from the book “IN THEIR OWN WORDS” Chapter 8

An Ominous Start:

The Opening Battle of Operation MEDUSA.

Corporal Jason Funnel.

Medal of Military Valour (3 September 2006)

“You Never Leave a Wounded Royal behind.”

On September 3, 2006, during Operation MEDUSA in Afghanistan, Corporal Funnel of 7 Platoon Charles Company braved intense enemy fire to come to the assistance of his comrades trapped in a disabled vehicle in an enemy kill zone. 

Ignoring his personal safety by twice crossing ground covered by effective enemy fire, Corporal Funnel successfully assisted in the treatment and evacuation of his injured and killed comrades while returning effective fire. 

His brave and professional actions saved lives and allowed the orderly withdrawal of his platoon under heavy fire.

Jason Funnel was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He attended Escott Public School and then Athens District High School, both in Ontario.  In 1998, he joined the Brockville Rifles, also in Ontario, but later took his release in 2002.  During his time with the Reserves, he deployed in 2001 to Bosnia (OP PALLADIUM, ROTO 8).  Returning to the military, he joined the Regular Force in 2005 and subsequently deployed to Afghanistan (OP ARCHER, ROTO 2) as part of 7 Platoon, Charles Company, 1RCR BG, Task Force 3-06.

Master Corporal Sean Hubert Niefer

Medal of Military Valor (3 September 2006)

“I swear I could feel the wind from rounds passing by, not more than an inch or two in front of my face, just a steady stream of machine gun rounds going past.”

Master Corporal Niefer was a member of Charles Company, 1^st Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, in Rotation 2 of Operation ARCHER in Afghanistan. 

On September 3, 2006, while engaged in combat operations in support of Operation MEDUSA, he selflessly ordered his vehicle into the enemy kill zone to support extraction of wounded comrades trapped by an enemy ambush. 

He subsequently provided covering fire from a highly exposed position to facilitate their evacuation and, by doing so, saved the lives of numerous fellow soldiers. 

His outstanding leadership, courage and valiant action brought great credit to Canada and the Canadian Forces.

Sean Niefer is from Ontario.  Although born in Whitney.  He grew up primarily in Appleton.  He received his early education entirely in Carleton Place, first at St. Mary’s Catholic School and later Carleton Place High School.  Between 1997 and 1999, he attended Algonquin College.  He joined the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (CH OF O) in January 1996 when he was only 17 and still in High School.  Between April and November 2001, he deployed to Bosnia (OP PALLADIUM, ROTO 8).  Immediately upon his return to Canada, he transferred to the regular force, in December 2001, to 1RCR.  He was deployed twice to Afghanistan.  He first deployed to Kabul with the 3RCR BG and later to Kandahar between August 2006 and March 2007 (OP ARCHER, ROTO 2).  On his second tour in Afghanistan, he served with 7 Platoon, Charles Company, 1RCR BG, TASK FORCE 3-06.

Private Michael Patrick O’Rourke

Medal of Military Valour (3 September 2006)

“It’s your own comrades that get you through it and keep you going.”

On September 3, 2006, Private O’Rourke, a member of 7 Platoon Charles Company participating in Operation MEDUSA, selflessly ignored his personal safety by braving intense enemy fire to assist in the treatment and evacuation of his comrades trapped in a disabled vehicle. 

Twice crossing through sustained enemy fire, Private O’Rourke returned effective fire and successfully assisted in the evacuation of injured or killed personnel. 

His brave and professional actions saved lives and allowed the orderly withdrawal of his platoon under heavy fire.

Mike O’Rourke was born in Lahr, Germany, after his return to Canada, he attended General Panet High School in Petawawa, Ontario.  Joining the CF in November 2004, he later deployed to Afghanistan between August and November 2006 (OP ARCHER, ROTO 2.).  While in Kandahar, he served with 7 Platoon, Charles company, 1RCR BG, task force 3-06.

Corporal Clinton John Orr

Medal of Military Valour (3 September 2006).

“Heavy engineering equipment doesn’t go where we went.”

Corporal Orr was a member of 23 Field Squadron, 1^st Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, in Rotation 2 of Operation ARCHER in Afghanistan. 

On September 3, 2006, he was operating an armoured vehicle attached to 2 Troop during an assault in Pashmul. 

Amidst intense combat action and under direct enemy fire, he placed himself at great risk by maneuvering to recover one light armoured vehicle and only ceased his relentless attempts to extract a second one when informed that the vehicles’ crew had withdrawn to safety. 

His focus on the mission and his courage in the face of danger have brought great credit to the Canadian Forces and to Canada.

Clinton Orr was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia where he spent most of his early years.  He joined the Canadian Forces in July 2000.  He has three times been deployed to Afghanistan:

first to Kabul, 2003/2004, then to

Kandahar 2006/07, and again to

Kandahar, 2008/09. 

During his last two tours, he deployed as a heavy equipment operator.  On his second tour, during which he earned the medal of Military Valour, he served with 23 Field Squadron, 1RCR BG, Task Force 3-06.

Across the Arghandab River, the area around the white school burns as the Canadians attack.

Operation MEDUSA began in early September 2006 after the Taliban took advantage of the fact that Canadian and Afghan forces had left the region earlier that summer.  With no one there to stop them, the enemy re-established their presence in what was referred to as the “White School” and Canadian troops were ordered to attack the complex  ….  with deadly results for both sides.

Corporal Clinton John Orr saw events unfold from the cab of the bulldozer that he was operating, totally exposed to enemy fire, in an attempt to clear a path for the LAVs and other vehicles engaged in the attack.

I’m a heavy equipment operator.  When I knew I was going overseas, I talked to my friends who were already there.  They mainly stayed in KAF.  They did maintenance at some FOBs and construction on the main camps.  So I was like,

“Okay, sweet!”

I got to Afghanistan on the 13^th of August.  So we were doing maintenance for the first couple of weeks.  I’d wake up in the morning, do some PT (Physical training), go do some maintenance, chill out, have something to eat, whatever, and then off at four.  Just like a normal day. This is the way I thought the tour was going to go.  Then they said,

“We’re going on Op MEDUSA.” 

And I was like,

“All right.”

And then they said,

“You’re operating a back hoe.”

I’m like,

“A back hoe that’s not armoured down in Panjwai District?” 

It was all civilian equipment that I’d been using.  Then they said they were going to put armour on it.  It was ridiculous.  It was homemade.  Every time you would shut the door, pieces of armour would fall off.  The same was done with the small bulldozer that I actually ended up operating.  It had a plastic roof on it with four clips.  Every time a Chinook (twin blade helicopter) would land close to where I was, my roof would blow off!  Heavy engineering equipment doesn’t go where we went.  This was all totally out of the blue.  They said we didn’t need the Badgers  …  they have a Leopard chassis with a blade on the front and an arm that comes around;

they can go pretty fast;

they can do more than we do;

they push more;

they push faster. 

Dozers are used for finesse.  If we had, had a Badger on the day of Op MEDUSA, I think things would have been totally different.

On 2 September 2006, the battle group brought me to a battle position, which is now known as Ma’sum Ghar.  As things turned out, I ran the dozer pretty much the whole time I was there.  I knocked down all the walls, from Ma’sum Ghar into the Arghandab River.  I was ordered to fill in a wadi to get ready for the attack of Op MEDUSA.  It was about six or seven feet deep and about eight feet wide.  That is their drainage system in Afghanistan and they needed me to kind of build a road over it  …  to breach it.  It was just under two kilometers away from the objective, the White School.  We were going to come in from the south and we were going to cross that wadi to start our attack.

A Canadian dozer breaches an irrigation ditch in Panjwai during Op Medusa.

For half a day, I worked on filling in the wadi and then the battle group pulled me back and took me to a different battle position, which was on the east side of the  River.  I got really sick because the dozer had no air conditioning and the bottles of water were hotter than coffee.  I was dehydrated and I was puking.  I was just getting ready to get into bed when they came and told me that I had to take the dozer back up to the battle position near Ma’sum Ghar, where I had just been.  That was about a 20 to 25 minutes’ dozer ride through Panjwai, the actual town.  They told me that during the assault I was pretty much going to be in front, with the guns behind me, because I had to fill in all the wadis that the LAVs couldn’t get through and the vehicles like the G-Wagon couldn’t get over.  I had to make them all a path.

So we stayed there that night and then early on the morning of the 3^rd, around six-ish, we started getting ready.  First, the battle group sent people out through the road I had made the day before, just to kind of show presence.  Then, they sent me with some LAVs and a G-Wagon in behind me and we started off through the Arghandab.  On the way, I was filling in stuff they couldn’t go over, and then we came up out of the river bed.  From there you could see all the different compounds, because you were now on the other side of the Arghandab.  This is where the White School is situated.  We stayed there for a little bit to observe the area.

Then the battle group had me go west. I had to fill in two more wadis because all their drainage is connected and square, just like farming in Canada.  At that point, Master Corporal Lance Hooper, who was driving the Zettelmeyer (ZL), came over with me.  We were about 50 meters away from the White School.  The battle group wanted us to do two breaches into the compound, so that, when the vehicles came, they could take separate ways in.  Basically he and I were up there on our own.  The LAVs were covering as far as they could, and they were looking our way, but other than that, it was just me and Hooper going in and doing our breaches.

When we were finished, Warrant Officer Richard Nolan’s G-Wagon went left and a LAV went right, out of a breach, and as soon as they stopped, they were RPGed from both sides, it was an ambush!  The enemy set it up.  I saw the top pop off the LAV.  All the kit that was strapped on there just exploded right in the air.  I’m thinking,

“Wow; it’s a LAV; it’s armoured; it’s supposed to protect the guys.” 

The G-Wagon got hit too.  As soon as that happened, I’m like,

“Why did the G-Wagon go in first?  It shouldn’t have been in there.  It’s crazy.” 

All of a sudden nobody was moving, and then there was just chaos, with all the LAVs’ cannons letting fly.  All I had for communications was a personal radio, so all I could hear was my section commander, Sergeant Ronnie Dix, back in the rear telling me what he was hearing on the main radio.  I’m not hearing anything directly from the guys upfront.  I’m just seeing all this stuff happening and it’s just unreal.

While Corporal Orr was exposed to enemy fire and his life was certainly at risk, his account of the battle was largely from the perspective of a “non-combatant.”  Three others – Master Corporal Sean Niefer, Corporal Jason Funnell and Private Michael O’Rourke – experienced the firefight from the inside, as it were.  Throughout the battle, Niefer repeatedly exposed himself to withering enemy fire to lay down fire of his own.  Having different responsibilities on that day, he remembers the lead up to the operation, and its initial phase, somewhat differently. 

He recalls:

The main objective for Op MEDUSA was the White School … the same place where the PATS (Patricias) had had a lot of issues on the previous tour.  It was the headquarters, the node, for the Taliban in the area.

The initial plan was to have three days’ bombardment – JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions), artillery, air strikes, as well as LAVs – and then go across and take the objective.  On the morning of the 3^rd, we were told to mount up.  We asked what was going on and they told us we were heading across the river to do a recce on the opposite for a breaching point for the engineers.  So we thought,

“Yeah, we’re just going to go across, help the engineers identify where we’re going to breach, and then pull back.” 

So we mounted up.

Objective Rugby, the schoolhouse, was kind of on an angle off to our left, so we pretty much headed straight across the river, which was fairly dry but there were pockets of water here and there.  We didn’t want to land right in front of the school and we didn’t want to take the road that was further to the right of where we landed because of the IEDs.  Where we landed was kind of in an open field.  We, 7 Platoon, were in the lead going across the river, followed by the engineers, followed by Company Headquarters, followed by 8 Platoon.  Once we hit the other side, the engineers put in a breach, at which point we were expecting to get pulled back.  That’s when we got the word to filter through and exploit the field.  So the 8 Platoon bounded through our position with four LAVs, along with Company Headquarters with two LAVs, while we held the breach.  We had four of our LAVs, as well as one engineer LAV, and a G-Wagon that was the platoon warrant’s vehicle.

As everyone came in, we took up almost a half-moon offensive posture along the edge of the field oriented towards Objective Rugby.   So 8 Platoon took up their positions and then Company Headquarters, and the 7 Platoon came up behind and we filled in the gaps.  We sat there for a bit.  As soon as another breach was done, 7 Platoon got the word to head through.  So the order of march going through the second breach was the engineer LAV, the 3-1 Alpha, 3-1 Charlie and then 3-1 Delta, the G-Wagon, and then my vehicle, 3-1 Bravo, was the last.  As we came through the breach, we flanked out into an extended line and approached on an axis.  We had that same order of march, but spread out from right to left, with my vehicle taking up the extreme left as we were going through.  As we were moving through, we were in this forest of marijuana.  The drivers couldn’t see where they were going because it was too high.  The only ones who could really see where they were going were the crew commanders because their heads were sticking out the tops of the LAVs.  We probably got another 50-some metres and then we had to stop because we came onto a berm of earth that was blocking our advance.  So we sat there for about a minute talking about the next obstacle and our next step.  We were going to call forward the dozer again to doze the obstacle down so we could approach onto the objective.  We all had our heads out, looking around and then, all of a sudden, that’s when we got ambushed by the enemy.

1. Near the white schoolhouse, 7 Platton is caught in a deadly crossfire where Rick Nolan and Shane Stachnik are killed.
2.  Afghan National Army soldiers and their American trainers attack to the north, toward route Comox.
3. The main company p[osition, site of the Zettlemeyer attack that kills Frank Mellish and William Cushley.
4. Dismounted from their LAVs, 8 Platoon assaults a series of compounds.







The attack came as a surprise because the early intelligence reports indicated that there was little activity, if any, around the schoolhouse.  Private O’Rourke described the scene as weirdly, even disturbingly quiet.

The morning was very quiet. It was dead quiet, not a thing moving, not a bird chirping, nothing, dead quiet.  I don’t think anybody really knew what we were walking into so there wasn’t a lot of talk.  Some people were kind of anxious, some were nervous, I remember I was nervous about it because it was my first big operation.  But I definitely didn’t think we would be walking into a huge ambush.


The assumption was that the enemy had pulled out, but we were still wary.  We had heard stories about the underground cities that they have.  The place had been a Taliban stronghold since the Russians went in.  But the Russians couldn’t take them at the schoolhouse.  It was well-fortified, and the network of tunnels was probably how they withstood the twelve hours of shelling we dropped on them.  I don’t doubt that those tunnels played a role in the ambush on the 3^rd of September.  They probably came out of the ground just like ants and swarmed us.  But it was so quiet  …  I was thinking this was going to be a cakewalk.

We crossed the breach and took our positions …. 7 Platoon was on the left and 8 Platoon was on the right.  I didn’t see this, but apparently as soon as we had moved in, somebody on the roof of the schoolhouse stood up and set off a pen flare and then pretty much all hell broke loose.  I was sitting right beside the platoon commander, Captain Derek Wessan, who was up in the hatch and I said

“Whoa! What the hell was that?”

All of a sudden I heard a rocket going over … to me it sounded like a little girls screaming over top of my LAV.  Then all I could hear was machine gun fire all around us and bouncing off our LAV.  It was just craziness.

Niefer recalled that the attack was so sudden that it took everyone a few seconds to realize what was going on.

I remember kind of looking around and it looked like flashes all the way around.  It was like in a stadium where you see the photographer’s flashes going off  …  lighting up all around us.  It took us a couple of seconds to realize what it was.  We were kind of transfixed.  Then it dawned on us that we were under attack.  I remember looking straight ahead at the building and seeing that place light up with muzzle flashes and then scanning all the way around to my side.  And even looking back over my shoulder  …  there were muzzle flashes behind us as well.  So they had formed basically a horseshoe ring around us, almost enveloping us on all three sides, leaving just the back end where we had approached from as the only kind of open area.  So we immediately dropped down into our LAVs and I think that’s maybe why I didn’t see the G-Wagon that was next to us get hit by an RPG.  It went through the front windshield and killed Warrant Officer Nolan and injured the medic in the back, Corporal Richard Furoy, as well as severely injuring the interpreter.  The only one that is still pretty functional was the driver, Corporal Sean Teal.

Camouflaging a LAV using marijuana and corn.

Then on the far right flank, the engineer LAV – the first one through the breach – also took a couple of rounds.  One ended up killing the section commander.  That was Sergeant Shane Stachnik.  As well, the concussion from the round they had taken injured a lot of the guys in the back of the vehicle and knocked the driver unconscious.

In our vehicle, the radio started right away and the platoon commander ordered us to engage.  So the LAVs immediately started pounding the position.  Wherever we saw muzzle flashes, whether it be in the marijuana or in the actual building, we just started pounding it with high explosive rounds.  My LAV got maybe 20- some rounds off and then the cannon jammed.  So we started going through our drills right away, trying the unjam the cannon and get it going again, but nothing seemed to be working.  It remained jammed.  Then my gunner noticed the cord from his headset had got wrapped up in the rounds and got fed up in the feed chute and jammed it.  So, we switched to the co-axial machine gun mounted inside the turret.  We just had to get rounds on the enemy.  We started raking through the muzzle flashes wherever we saw them  …  just laying down fire.  The container on the turret for the ammunition holds about two boxes worth, plus whatever is in the tray.  So we went through that fairly quickly.

We ran out of ammunition on the co-ax, so the only weapon left was the pintle-mounted machine gun.  So I went up on top of the LAV.  At the time, we didn’t have spade grips with two handles and a butterfly trigger like we have now.  The only way to get a really good grasp of the weapon and actually aim it so you’re not just shooting for the sake of shooting is to get the butt of the weapon into your shoulder.  The pintle-mount itself is basically like a metal post about a foot high to give it some angle clearances, but we had to aim down because of the angle at which we were shooting at the enemy.  So to get the butt of the weapon to that position, to get the body to that position, you had to stand completely out of the turret.  Well, I was standing on top of my seat.  At the very top of the chair there’s a little ledge, and I remember putting my foot on that and kind of standing out of the turret.  So here I was exposed from just above my knees to enemy fire.

Canadian and Afghan soldier take cover in Panjwai.

I was firing on any muzzle flashes I could see and there were a lot of them.  To this day, I don’t know if I hit anything or didn’t hit anything.  I just fired into any flashes I saw and I would stitch the area around them to try and make sure I got whomever was firing. I’d just work from muzzle to muzzle.  Then I ran out of ammunition.  I yelled down to the guys to hand-me up some more ammunition and they handed me up a couple of boxes.   I put one on my seat and brought the other one up with me and dumped it out on top of the turret.  Then, after finding the end, I reloaded the machine gun and tried to fire.  I would get about two or three rounds off and the belt would snap because obviously it was just a rat’s net, just a pile.  It wouldn’t feed properly and it would snap.  I did that a couple of time and it wouldn’t work.

Up to this point, Niefer had been completely oblivious to the shower of enemy rounds directed at him.  With the latest firing problem, he realized just how great the danger really was.

The fire coming in on us was just unbelievable.  It was almost like a laser show.  I swear I could feel the wind from rounds passing by, not more that an inch or two in front of my face, just a steady stream of machine gun rounds going past.  I could feel them coming from almost all directions, including from behind.  It was just an absolute chaos of angles and a mishmash of rounds.  It was a perfect kill zone.  I also saw RPG and rockets flying by.  I’m pretty sure we got hit by an RPG then.  I just can’t explain how intense it was!  I remember feeling the rounds kind of graze by and there must have been tens of thousands flying all over the place.  Thank God the Taliban weren’t very good shots because I remember sitting up there thinking,

“It only takes one.  It only takes one guy to aim one good round and that’s it.”
 

But then it’s also weird because at that point I felt like I was in a bubble of my own.  I was sitting there and it was almost like a glass bubble all around me.  Almost every single round that looked like it was coming straight on always seemed to beer off or just miss.  It was the most eerie feeling.  I knew nothing about what was going on elsewhere.   I didn’t know whether the vehicle or the guys inside would be impervious to enemy fire like I was.  I just knew that by some kind of grace of God, I could stay up there and it would be okay, because I had this little glass bubble around me.

Niefer was able to work out a system for feeding the machine gun in such a way that it would keep firing without the belt breaking.  He continued to send machine gun bursts towards the muzzle flashes all around him.

I ended up having to stay up there and lay out the ammunition in a neat row, get it all sorted out, snake that ammunition into a weapon, and fire it off.  I got that second box away and then went down, got my third box, went up, dumped it out again, did the same thing, and got off about 20 rounds when I heard in my earpiece,

“Start the withdrawal.”  

So I stopped firing and gave my order to my driver to start reversing and to take us out of there.  We started getting turned around and as we were driving back towards the breach, that’s when I looked over and saw Corporal Teal, the driver of the G-Wagon.  He was outside waving us down.  I noticed he had bodies lying around his legs and stuff.  I told my driver to stop and we reoriented our vehicle kind of between him and the enemy and we backed up0.  I told my driver to drop the ramp.  We started dropping the ramp and Sergeant Brent Crellin in the back was like,

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you guys doing?” 

So I told him,

“We’ve got wounded.  We need you guys to jump out and grab the wounded to evacuate them.”

In another LAV that was close by, Private Mike O’Rourke and Corporal Jason Funnell were ordered to help with the wounded.  O’Rourke recalled that his training immediately took over and he braved the withering enemy fire outside the LAV without giving it very much thought at all.

Bravo Company advances from the north.

Me and Funnel were closes to the door, so I knew we were going out.  Pretty much as soon as that ramp went down, I shut off and “Soldier Mike” kicked in.  All the training and everything that you ever had took over.  I knew we were going out so I grabbed the oil and I automatically oiled up my weapon really well, cocked it, readied it, put it on safe, and the waiter for the word to dismount. We got the word and then we’re running though these pot fields and we’re low to the ground  …  you can see that the pot plants above you are just getting chopped up by bullets and there is pot flying everywhere.  You could hear the bullets whizzing past you.  We came out near the G-Wagon and Sergeant Scott Fawcett assessed the situation. 

“Okay, Troops hurt.  Doc’s hurt.  Rich’s dead. Take the terp or take the doc.” 

So I grabbed the doc and started doing first aid on him, which, looking back on it, I found kind of ironic.  I felt like,

“Aren’t you supposed to be treating me?”

So I did first aid on him, picked him up, carried him back to my LAV, put him on the ramp, ran back down, went down on one knee, and waited for the word to come back if they needed more help, which they did.  So back I went. Funnel had brought the terp back to the LAV.  He came back to the G-Wagon with me too.  Then we had to get the body of Warrant Officer Nolan off the battlefield.  We were going to carry him back to the LAV, but then the word to withdraw was given, and you could see LAVs pulling past us and we had to get one of them to stop to pick us up.  Me and Corporal Teal loaded the warrant into Niefer’s LAV, I think, and it took off.

Corporal Funnell vividly remembers the scene when he and O’Rourke were making several returns to take care of the wounded and to retrieve the body of Warrant Officer Nolan:

The terp was pretty mobile, but he couldn’t see, so I just grabbed onto him under the arm.  I said,

“It’s all right.  Stick with me.  Let’s go!” 

I was pulling him along.  Doc was a little bit messed up.  He was starting to black out, in and out a little bit, but he was more or less good to go.  He was able to keep conscious.

During their efforts to load the dead and wounded, Private O’Rourke and Corporal Funnells’s actions were covered from several angles, including from the top of the LAV where Master Corporal Niefer had again returned to fire the exposed pintle-mounted machine gun. 

Soldiers fire across the Arghandab during the Sept 3rd battle.








Niefer remembers:

As we positioned ourselves, and just before they dropped the ramp, I went back up onto the pintle-mount to lay down covering fire for they guys since they would be exposed. So we dropped the ramp.  I manage to get off that full box and then I went down, got another box, had enough time to reload again, and got off about half a box.  Then I got word that we were all loaded up with the body of Warrant Officer Nolan and we were good to go.  So the ramp was up and I told my driver,

“Okay, get us out of here.  Bring us back to the breach and then we’ll head to the lines.” 

So we wheeled around and started racing off towards the breach.

While Niefer, Funnel and O’Rourke were scrambling to retrieve the casualties and fall back to a safer position, all the while under an intense enemy fire.  Corporal Orr felt isolated sitting in his dozer with the makeshift armour and flimsy roof.  He had no communications other than his personal radio, so he was not totally aware of what was taking place.  All he could do at this moment was sit back and watch.

I’m in a box with small windows on three sides.  It was like watching a TV in my dozer with no volume.  I would see stuff happening.  At least I didn’t get hit with anything big.  I got shot at a little bit, but I didn’t hear that stuff because when the dozer runs, it’s so loud.  I saw thing happening and I’m like,

“Okay, we’re shooting back at them.  There can’t be that many.” 

I didn’t know anything. I’m pretty sure if I’d had a radio and I could have heard all the contact reports and people saying that people were dying, I would have freaked out because I couldn’t defend myself.  I was probably one of the only vehicles on the battlefield that couldn’t shoot back.  If I saw something – like the one Taliban I saw – I couldn’t do anything.  Because I couldn’t hear radio traffic from the LAV’s, I didn’t know if they wanted me there; I didn’t know if I was in their way; I didn’t know if they wanted me to do something.  Whatever came over the radio to the LAV that my section commander was in, he would pass it on to me.

To be honest, because I didn’t know what was really going on, it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen  …  at the start.  I didn’t know people were dying until later.  So looking at what was going on, I saw all the firepower that Canada had on this one battlefield shooting at this one school.  It was just exploding with bullets.  I’m kind of scared, but I’m kind of enjoying it too because I’m watching these things happen that are just unreal, that I’ve never seen and I’ll probably never see again.  I could see all my guys kicking ass.  To me, everybody was alive at that point.

Niefer’s LAV sped towards the breach and greater safety, away from the White School.  At this time, he dropped down to help his gunner try to get the cannon up and running.  Then the LAV came to an abrupt halt that sent everyone flying forward  …  violently.  More danger and complications awaited Niefer and his crew.

On the move during Operation MEDUSA.









We must have been going a pretty good speed, about 50 or 60 kilometres and hour, when we slammed headlong into the ditch. 

BOOM! 

We missed the breach by about 10 or 15 feet and slammed full force into the irrigation ditch.  It was a good thing we had those armoured plates and our body armour on, because we got thrown forward right into the controls of the LAV and it just crushed into me.  Without that armour plating, I would have had a busted-up chest.  All I remember, is a lot of yelling and screaming.  Guys in the back were in pain, of course.  I was kind of dazed for a couple of seconds and then we realized what had happened.  I got up, looked around, and saw that we had missed the breach.  I got onto the radio, told the platoon commander that we were stuck and requested the dozer to come by and try to pull us out.

I due time, Orr received word to go and help the LAV that was stuck in the ditch.  As before, confusion reigned supreme.

I got a call on the radio saying that I needed to go in and recover Sergeant Shane Stachnik’s LAV.  I’m like,

“Okay.”

I opened the door of the dozer and Hooper opened his on the ZL. We looked at each other and neither of us was getting out, so he threw me a chain and I started heading out in my dozer.  I crossed the breach I had just made to the other side.  There were marijuana fields everywhere.  My dozer was a small one. It was a D6 dozer and compared to the eight-foot-tall marijuana plants, it was pretty much covered, just like a G-Wagon.  You couldn’t really see it.  By this time there were more LAVs through the breach and all their cannons were firing.  I had to stop because the guns were traversing.  It was like a game of Frogger or something.  Their guns were turning and I didn’t want to be in their line of fire, so I stopped, I’m turning, I’m going, I’m stopping.  I don’t think anyone told the LAVs that I was coming in.  So I’m wanting them to see me.   I’m driving up and they’re shooting.  Then they see me and I can see them kind of traverse the other way.

As if Orr’s movement forward wasn’t confused and complicated enough….

I probably got about 20 metres in and the LAV I’m heading for --- Stachnik’s --- is about 25 metres from the White School, not very far at all.  So I get to him and I’m like,

“Why am I out here?”

They thought the LAV that got hit was a mobility kill – I was going in to tow it out – but it wasn’t.  The turret was shot, it was done, so they couldn’t shoot back, but they were still mobile.  When I got there, I said,

“Every LAV is moving.  I don’t know why you want me here.”

They told me to back up.  So I backed up and I got to the same spot I was at with the ZL originally.  Then they called me again.  They said,

“There’s a LAV there that needs to be pulled out.”

So I’m like,

“Okay.”

So I go back in and cross the breach again.  I get there and I look around and all the LAVs are moving.  So I’m thinking that I can’t keep doing this.  This is getting crazy.  So I look around and I tell them the LAVs are all moving.  There is nothing here.  I pulled out and a third time I got called back in.  I get up to the breach and I look to my left and there’s the LAV in the ditch.  I’m like,

“Okay, I see the LAV now.”

Having discovered his purpose, Orr continued on with his task.

The LAV had been coming back, away from the school, but they came back through the second breach the ZL had made, and what happened was that they came at it at an angle. The breach was only so wide.  We only made them about a blade and a half width wide, about five metres. It was a hasty breach, as in, “Let’s get there quick and get back.” So he came at an angle because the driver’s hatch was down and he couldn’t see the breach.  But when he came at it at an angle, he pretty much went straight into the ditch because he missed the road.  So when the LAV hit, the guys couldn’t get out of it.  Their back door wouldn’t come down. They were wedged in and couldn’t swing their door open.  They were sitting ducks.

Having witnessed Niefer’s LAV crash headlong into the irrigation ditch, O’Rourke’s LAV moved into position to try and cover them until help arrived.

O’Rourke recalls.

We watched Master Corporal Niefer’s LAV take off with Warrant Nolan inside, but they crashed right into this ditch.  So we decided our LAV was going to stay and give them cover.  We’d try to take out many machine gun nests or anybody trying to hit the LAV.  The fire was constant  …  bombs going off left, right and centre.  There were bullets flying everywhere.  It was something you would only see in the movies.  You would think it doesn’t happen in real life. But it does! Meanwhile, our LAV was a sitting duck.  Sergeant Fawcett said,

“We’ll dismount in the ditch.”

We’re infanteers. The safest place to be is in a trench. So we hopped into the ditch.

And from Niefer’s perspective, from inside the stuck LAV:

While we sat there waiting, we tried using the turret, spinning it around and the turret stuck because the force of the impact had jammed it.  So even if we had our co-ax up and running and the cannon up and running, they were still useless. I had grabbed more ammunition for the pintle-mount when we got word that the dozer was coming by.  We needed someone to hook it up.  The sergeant in the back tasked two of the guys to jump out and go forward to get the towing cable off the front of the vehicle and hook it up to the dozer.  They got out, maybe through the air sentry hatch or the escape hatch in the back ramp, went forward, but couldn’t find it.  I guess they thought it was in one spot underneath the vehicle, whereas we kept it on top.  So they raced back and they were like,

“We can’t find the towing cable!”

With Niefer’s LAV crew occupied in trying to effect their extraction from the ditch, Corporal Orr arrived at the scene and, working with Corporal Jason Ruffolo, set about trying to tow the LAV and the men trapped inside out to safety. 

Corporal Orr recalls:

I went up to them and I backed up to the front of the LAV. I looked back and you could see the turret with the hatch open.  I see this guy, Corporal Ruffolo, and we looked at each other  …  we were doing the same thing me and Master Corporal Hooper had been doing earlier,

“Uh, who’s going to get out?”

Somebody’s got to hook it up, the LAV to the dozer.  So he got out and he hooked up to my vehicle.  Once he got back in the hatch, I gave it to ‘er.  I tried three or four attempts to do a running start because the angle of the LAV in the ditch was so severe and I needed as much leverage as I could get.  I moved the LAV enough that they could get their back door open a bit.  There was pretty much no way I was going to pull him out with my small dozer though.  So I backed up, Ruffolo unhooked, and left the SWR (Steel Wire Rope) on the LAV.  Then I went around to the back.  I knew I could get it from behind because the way it goes in is the way it’s going to come out.

O’Rourke remembers watching the scene unfolding in front of him:

We were sitting there waiting and I could see Corporal Ruffolo from the stuck LAV get up and do what he had to do, which was to try to hook the cable up to the dozer to get her out.  They didn’t get it out, but they got it out just enough so that the back door could open somewhat.  We then got the order to mount back up.  We had two extra guys with us because two of them had already dismounted from another LAV to try to help Ruffolo.  So we fit a section-plus in the back of the LAV, which apparently you’re not supposed to do, but you can.

From inside the stuck LAV, Niefer watched on in disbelief as his driver very calmly carried out the task at hand while still under intense enemy fire.

Soldiers use a wall for cover during Op Medusa.

The dozer arrived at out position and that’s when Corporal Ruffolo, my driver – I think he must have been feeling guilty for missing the breach – volunteered. He was like,

“Okay, I’ll do it.  I know where the cable is.”

So he jumped up on top of the LAV and I remember sticking my head out too and watching him stand in full view on top of the LAV, unhooking this cable with rounds pinging off the vehicle.  The intensity of the incoming round never let up.  He just stood up there in the crossfire and calmly hooked the towing cable up to the dozer.  He jumped back in and I asked him,

“What the hell were you thinking?”

And he said,

“Oh, I didn’t even think about that actually.”

So they tried towing us out.  When we initially crashed, our nose dug into the opposite side of the ditch and that made our ass end a little higher.  They tried pulling us out from the front.  All they did was pull us forward a bit and our ass end – BOOM! – clunks down and we levelled off.  But they didn’t have the power to drag us up and out.  What was happening now was our nose and ass were sitting on the ledges of the ditch and our wheels were spinning in the air.  So I told the platoon commander,

“This is a no-go.  We’re pretty screwed.”

He told me,

“You have one minute to decide if you’re going to try pulling out the vehicle again or if you’re going to abandon boat.”

I told him right away,

“Fuck it! We’re going to abandon the vehicle!” 

Then we disconnected the towing cable – Ruffolo went ahead and did it – and the dozer took off.  Ruffolo got back into the LAV and I got on the intercom and told everyone we were going to abandon the vehicle.  I said,

“Get your fighting kit and get prepared to dismount.” 

Just before they tried to dismount, I went back on the pintle-mount to fire off the last of the box to provide them with cover and any type of chance of getting out alive without getting cut down.

Because of the way we were sitting, I guess, we were kind of pinched, jammed, and the back ramp could only drop maybe 30 centimetres at most.  We couldn’t dismount that way, so the ramp was put back up and, just then, an RPG came our way and hit the very top of the ramp.  If the ramp hadn’t been jammed, it would have flow right into the LAV and probably taken out the entire section.  Then we took RPG hits from the left and right.  The enemy, I’m pretty sure, was getting into the ditch on both sides of us, as well as behind us.  We were taking crossfire from RPGs and machine guns.  The machine gun and the AK-47s, or whatever, were rattling off the side of the LAV.  It was like a hard rain on a tin roof, it was just constant, with a few of these RPGs flying in and rocking the vehicle.  We knew it was just a matter of time before one got through.  So the guys opened up the escape hatch and they were able to jump down into the ditch.  They put down some of their own covering fire both ways and then scrambled up the side of the ditch and then booted it back  …  about a 75 to 100 metre sprint down the route that the dozer had originally laid down.  I got off the pintle-mount, came down, looked at my gunner, Corporal Dan Rosati, and we suited up, got our tac vest on.  We slithered out through the side of the turret and through the back of the LAV. I don’t know why we stopped, but I remember looking at the ground and seeing puffs of dirt kicking up all around our feet.  I was thinking,

“This is very weird and surreal.”

The whole time, right from the initial ambush until that point, for me the whole thing had been void of emotion.  There was no fear, it was kind of robotic, very methodical.  I knew in my head it was real – that it only takes one round or one piece of shrapnel and it’s all over – but there really wasn’t any excitement of any kind. I felt nothing.

The town of Bazaar-e-Panjwai with Mar Ghar in the back ground.

Corporal Funnell, who had earlier risked his life to help with the dead and the injured from the G-Wagon, had been picked up by Niefer’s LAV. He vividly remembers what happened after the section had exited the LAV through the escape hatch.

We were thinking,

“We need to get out of here, kind of now-ish. It’s only a matter of time before the 82 (an 82mm recoilless rifle) starts firing at you.”

Just before I was about to get out the air sentry hatches, Sergeant Brent Crellin booted open the combat door and yelled,

“Get out!”

I pick up a C6, get out, go to fire, and the gas collar busted.  The gas collar is a part that controls the gas, and without that piece, the action will not cycle.  With a broken gas collar, it’s manual cocking only.  I shot about one burst and that was it. I had the biggest bolt-action rifle going.  We run down into the ditch and make it to the Zettelmeyer where they’re setting up a company casualty collection point.  It was too close though to the action.

When Niefer and Rosati left the LAV and began moving to the rear, they sat down in the ditch to catch their breath before carrying on.  They looked back and Niefer realized he had to return to the abandoned LAV.

Inside the vehicle was a bunch of weapons – M72s and C7s – left behind from the wounded and the dead.  I thought,

“The vehicle is going to get overrun.  They’re not going to be able to use it, but the last thing we want is those weapons falling into their hands.” 

I said to Dan,

“We have to bring all these out.”

So we jumped back into the LAV and we distributed the weapons.  I think he had something like three M72s and I had a few. He also had a couple of rifles on his back and I had two or three on my back.  We jumped out and that’s when we started our open dash down that 100 metres toward life, back to friendly lines.  We sprinted back to where 8 Platoon had set up in the original position and they were still putting out supporting fire.  We ran through their lines and there was what looked like a huge pile of dirt.  We dove into it, only to find out it was just a pile of straw. So we came up coughing.  It obviously wasn’t the cover we were looking for. So we looked around and I saw the rest of the section taking cover behind the Zettelmeyer  …  that big engineering piece of equipment. It was armoured, so we thought,

“Good place to go!”

The front end of the Zettelmeyer was positioned pretty much towards Objective Rugby, so we went behind it.  We were all kind of huddled around the back end.  I was kind of towards the edge of the right-hand side.  I got a count of my section, got my numbers, made sure I had all my guys.  Everyone had made it back without a scratch on them, unbelievable as it was.  At that point the exhaustion just set in – it was 45 or 50 degrees, maybe more – and I was dry and my lungs were on fire. It felt like there was no moisture in my body.

When Niefer’s section, including Corporal Funnell, had finally been able to exit the LAV and begin their withdrawal to the Zettelmeyer, Corporal Orr also began his slow trek in the dozer back towards safety.

Once the escape hatch popped open, the guys in the LAV jumped out and started booting it out of there.  Then the section commander came out.  He knocked on my window and said,

“Get the fuck out of here!” 

We’re not just talking to each other. Everybody is creaming and it’s intense.  There is still firing going on.  There are still RPGs flying everywhere.  There are still bombs going off, dropped by the planes up above us.  Stuff is dropping 50 to 100 metres away from us and it’s not going off.  It was crazy.  You can’t see anything.  I can’t see any Taliban. I can’t see anybody moving around.  When I started leaving, everybody left.  I’m the slowest vehicle out there.  I can only go three, four, maybe five kilometres an hour.  So I start leaving and all these guys are trying to go around me … “slow guy, get out of the way!” kind of thing.

The guys on foot jumped in another LAV, Private O’Rourke’s vehicle, that pulled up and those inside were yelling.

“Get in! Get in! Get in!”

It was packed.  When I crossed the breach, they escorted me back, away from the chaos.  I got parked, so the ZL and the dozer were beside each other facing the White School.  Beside me was a bale of hay.  It was probably not the best place to be because it’s not going to stop anything.  I was kind of laughing nervously because I didn’t know what was going on.  I had no idea that two guys had died.  All I had was the personal radio and they talked to me once in a blue moon.  So, I see some guys by the hay bale and I’m like,

“Move your tail guys”

about four minutes later, the ZL got hit by an 82mm round.  It’s a tall machine … a big, armoured German loader.  All I see is black smoke and liquid. Everything close by got covered with diesel fuel and shrapnel.  All I’m hearing on the radio is,

“Holy fuck, I’m hit!”

I said,

“Hey, Hoop, you all right?”

after all the chaos was over, I heard my section commander trying to call Hoop, asking him if he was able to move the ZL. 

“Hoop, Hoop, can you move the ZL”?  

At the same time that he was asking, I look over and I see Hoop. He’s bleeding; he’s hurt; he’s burnt; and he’s getting on a Blackhawk helicopter to go back to KAF.

From Funnell’s perspective at the casualty collection point:

I was talking to Corporal Derick Lewis who was setting it up and it’s like. 

“We’re in contact within 400 metres of here. We need to push back.”

Just then, an 82mm round sailed through and killed Warrant Officer Frank Mellish.  The Sergeant-Major, Master Warrant Officer John Barnes, just took a concussion injury.  It took down Lewis. It killed Private Will Cushley.  It blew me back six or ten feet.  Corporal Rodney Grubb was there, and he took a piece of shrapnel, but it was a minor injury.

Master Corporal Niefer was amongst those thrown by the blast.

After we had got behind the Zettelmeyer, a rocket came screaming in.  At first, I didn’t think it hit because I remember looking over my right shoulder and seeing a flash.  The immediate reaction of my body was to duck away from it and kind of get low.  The next thing I know, I found myself on the ground and my face in the dirt.  I knew it was a rocket, but I thought it may have flow over top of us, and for some reason, I thought that the force of it flying over top was enough to knock us down.  I didn’t realize it had impacted on the side of the vehicle.  I remember sucking dirt and then starting to get up.  My ears had a really intense ringing in them, it took a good ten seconds for that to go away.  I kind of opened my eyes and got up on my knees.  I looked to my right and saw Private Cushley lying there on his back, not making any moves at all.  I thought he was unconscious.  We were still taking incoming fire and the threat of another rocket coming in was pretty high.  I crawled over to Will and grabbed hold of his vest and started hauling him towards the left-hand side of the vehicle to get away from where the rounds were coming in.  I looked over and Warrant Mellish was on the ground and he was screaming.  Ruffolo had gone over to him and started applying a tourniquet to his leg.  He thought he got the major bleeding and he started hauling him off to the side of the vehicle as well.  It was then Ruffolo noticed that a piece of fragment had gone in either through or just above the warrant’s vest.  It pierced through his chest and he was gurgling out blood.  Unfortunately, he didn’t make it.

As I look back on it, I realize I had been standing in perfect line between Cushley and Mellish, and they both were killed.  There were a couple of guys in front of me who took shrapnel wounds. The sergeant-major behind me was knocked to the ground.  He took blast injuries.  And I was right in the center of the thing  …  totally unscathed.  I think I was still using my little glass bubble because I didn’t have a scratch on me other than the ringing in my ears.  So we pulled them onto the left-hand side of the vehicle out of the way of the incoming fire.  That’s when the medics jumped on Will and started going to work on him, but he also passed away.  We then got the rest of our guys who were still functional and set up a little defensive perimeter around the casualties to provide whatever covering fire we could.

As if the strike on the Zettlemeyer was not quite enough, after all that had already happened, another terrifying event was in the offing.  O’Rourke remembers what occurred next:

At this point, I was up on top of the LAV, and that’s when a big, 500-pound bomb comes out of nowhere.  It hit the ground without detonating, and then all we can do is sit there and watch it pop up and start to skip and tumble towards us.  It looked just like this giant football flying through the air end over end, and my only thought was,

“If that goes off, I’m dead.”

I ducked down and closed my eyes and just hoped it was done.  I heard the big thud. It finally stopped without going off and we all breathed a pretty big sigh of relief.  Then I got back to work loading the LAV.

Bullets continued to fly all around us.  Looking back on it, I can’t really recall ever seeing any of the Taliban up close.  It was morning and we had daylight, but they were ghosts.  At one point, when I was back at the G-Wagon applying first aid on the doc, I caught a glimpse of sandaled feet running through the pot fields, but I was so focused on the job in front of me that I didn’t see anything more.  Even after we started to withdraw, I was so focused on doing what I had to do that I didn’t see anything else.  The whole thing only seemed to me to last for 30 seconds, but apparently it was somewhere along the lines of five or six hours.

After the bomb dropped without going off, Sergeant Fawcett took off because the sergeant-major was hit so he assumed the position of the sergeant-major and decided what the casualty collection point was going to be.  He got the collection point together, we pulled back to there, and that’s when everything kind of set in for everybody.  No one cold really wrap their head around what had just happened.  I think most of us were in shock and completely at a loss as to what to do.  I was just so full of adrenaline, but also sorrow after seeing my warrant officer killed and then seeing them still extracting bodies. We were stunned.

As they began their withdrawal, Corporal Funnell also found himself trying to sort out in his mind exactly what had happened.  He too reflected back on the day’s events.

A 500-pound bomb came in and fell short, rolled 25 metres ahead of us.  Thankfully, it didn’t go off. We were there for a while and then an American SF patrol came up and started giving us a hand there at the Zettelmeyer.  Then we all started making our way back on our withdrawal.  We were five h ours, six hours maybe, in the kill zone.  The Taliban had a textbook ambush set up.  As soon as we rolled in, there was a horseshoe around us, and then when we punched through that, they had a secondary horseshoe, which was even bigger.  So we pretty much drove straight into it.

Losing our warrant (Nolan) right off the bas was pretty significant because that’s, I’d say, more than 60 percent of your platoon’s knowledge and experience right there.  Corporals are fairly smart, but you’re not going to, in six years or eight years, know the same as a warrant who’s been in for a while.  He was qualified. He was probably one of the best people I ever worked under in my whole career. He gave you pretty wide arcs to work in. if you screwed up, you were on your won. But if you were doing good, he’d tell you so.   If you needed help, he was there.

I never got to fire my M72 that day. The last thing Warrant Nolan said to me was,

“You want to fire that today, don’t you?”

It was while we were making our second breach and I went over to the G-Wagon and started talking to him, he was dead the next time I saw him.

As he sat in his dozer during the strike on the Zettelmeyer, the full weight of reality set in and Orr likewise realized the enormity of what had just occurred.  As before, he was frustrated because he was aware that there was very little he could do.  Events were happening around him that he was largely powerless to influence.

Everybody that was around that area got his with shrapnel.  It killed Warrant Mellish.  Now I’m like,

“Do I get out? Do I try to help him?”

Then I saw an American medic and then our medics and our guys come up to the ZL.  When I looked down, I saw the warrant there. He wasn’t moving and there was blood everywhere.  There were other guys wounded.  They were safe behind the ZL because it’s an armoured vehicle, but because of the shrapnel, it took them out.

So there were a couple of guys injured and obviously the warrant is dying. So I’m looking there and I’m like,

“What do I do?

I’m by myself.  I’m not in the LAV with eight guys.  All I have is this dozer.”

Afterward, we found out that the Taliban were targeting heavy equipment and that’s why they hit the ZL.  We – Hoop and I – were the ones that got the LAVs into the place; we got them to the school without using the roads; we could get them out if we had to … which made us a target.

Throughout the whole tour, we didn’t use a single road that was already there.  Obviously, IEDs are on the roads.  That’s how the tour before us got caught because they would go in on the roads that were already there.  But now the Taliban got all screwed up because we’re coming though their grape fields and here come these LAV’S.  We fill in the wadi and they’re waiting by the road, but all of a sudden these trees start crashing down on them and it’s like Jurassic Park.  Trees are coming down and they see them shaking and then the LAVs come in.  It’s totally new to the Taliban.  They had no idea that, that was going to happen.  That’s why we were the number one target for a while, because they realized that we were getting them in and they couldn’t do anything about it.

After the ZL got hit, the battle group said,

“Okay, everybody pull back.”

So we pulled back about a kilometre to the middle of the Arghandab River.  You could still see smoke from the school, it was on fire.  The ZL was still smoking.  That’s when one of our master corporals came up and asked me if I was all right.  I said,

“Yeah, I’m good.”

And then he said that Shane Stachnik had died.  I’d known Shane for pretty much my whole career. Even at that point, I thought,

“It can’t be real.”

It doesn’t happen, a buddy of yours dying like that.  And then I’m by myself again.  He closed the door and I have nobody to talk to.  So I’m sitting there again and now all I have to do is think, because we’re waiting, we weren’t going to pull back all the way yet.  I’m sitting there thinking that my buddy just died.  I just started thinking about how he got hit.  How did he look? The battle went on for hours, so just a few hours ago I had seen him.  And now I’m never going to see him again. I’m wondering why the LAV didn’t protect him.  I saw the LAV get hit. I didn’t see anybody sticking out. Did it penetrate?  There were a lot of “what ifs.” What if he wasn’t’ there? Why did the G-Wagon and the engineer LAV go in first? Should it have been there, would the RPG have missed?  Those things went through my mind and I had nobody to talk to.

I looked over and they were taking the bodies to the LAV and everyone started moving back.  That kind of hit me pretty hard.  After seeing all that firepower, now you see everybody pulling back.  Nobody is left up there.  Just Hoop’s ZL and the LAV in the ditch. They just left them there and a couple of days later they dropped a couple of 500-pound bombs on them.  The ZL is made of magnesium – most of it --- so for about four or five days straight all you would see is sparks.  A piece of magnesium would go up and the flame, from where I was, look about eight feet high.  But I was two kilometres away so it’s hard to imagine how intense that fire really was.  And it burned for about a week because magnesium burns for a while.

The loss of a LAV and the many sustained casualties meant that the remainder of the platoon had to overload the remaining vehicles to effect their withdrawal Niefer recalls:

We eventually got the word,

“Okay, we’ll start loading up the wounded and dead into the vehicles.”

One LAV had the ramp down. We took Warrant Mellish and laid him on top of some other bodies and then we were all loaded into the vehicle, so it was jammed.  I’d never seen guys jammed like that into a LAV before.  Me and Master Corporal Max Smith – my 3IC – helped the sergeant-major walk over the bodies.  I think he had some type of collapsed lung – something in his chest was pretty serious – but he was jammed in there trying to breathe. It was just insane.  Then we still had Will.  So we l put him on the back ramp, laid him across, and then we gave the word.  So Master Corporal Smith, myself, and our medic kind of held on to Will as we drove away.  I remember having to sit on Warrant Mellish’s bloodied leg. It was the only place I could sit.  I could tell that it was him because of the tourniquet and the blood.

We managed to get back to the new casualty collection point in the middle of the Arghandab River and Master Corporal Smith and I decided that we’d send the guys away, unload the bodies and put them into the body bags so that the others wouldn’t have to deal with that.  We unloaded them and the first thing we did was take care of Will.  So we took care of the bodies and then we joined some other section – I can’t remember who – and pulled back to where we had started on the mountainside.

When Orr got back to Ma’sum Ghar, the “what ifs” were still eating away at him; others who had been involved in the battle were asking questions as well.

We were talking amongst ourselves.  They had previously told us there would be three days of bombardment and that they were going to just flatten the area before the attack. But then, suddenly, a day or so early, they said,

“We’re going in tomorrow morning.”

We were asking some of the leaders, the sergeants, why we went in so early.  Maybe some anger came out of it.  Why did our intelligence say there was nobody there? They didn’t see any movement around.  Then the CO of the battle group pulled us in.  he talked to us about the fact that he too was upset about the decision to go in early because it wasn’t his decision. It came down from a lot higher than him.  I think the decision was made because no movement was happening there and they thought they should take it when things were quiet.

Those “what ifs” also had me thinking about if they’d shot at me first, then maybe those guys wouldn’t have died.  I also thought that maybe I could have done things better.  I was pretty much a new heavy equipment operator going into that battle.  I got my course in 2005, and I went on tour in 2006.  Now that I have been operating for a few years, when they say there’s a LAV out there that you have to get, my first instinct now would be to go right to the back of it because when a vehicle is stuck, the best way to get it out is to look at the way it went in.  You want to try to pull it out on the same tracks it went in on.  I should have known to go to the back and hook up from the back and pull it out.  But I had no communication, so ho would I have talked to the LAV driver to tell him that I was behind him?  The guys told me later that I moved it forward enough that they could get out through the escape hatch.  They said that I save their lives. But to me, getting the LAV out would have been better.  I picture that LAV every day. I picture the LAV right now.  I know I could have pulled it out. Heavy equipment operators are brutally stubborn.  It’s like when we get stuck, we’ll try to get unstuck for an hour before we ask for help.  We’re really stubborn that way and I just see it and it bugs me to death.  When I hear Ruffolo and the boys say that I did help them by pulling them forward enough – it did move but it didn’t move very far – it helps me a little bit.  It makes me feel better.

Niefer was looking forward to a good night’s sleep, but a nasty reaction the day’s momentous events soon set in.  as well, unaware of it at the time, another real-life nightmare was soon to occur that he would be intimately involved with.

So I thought that, that was it and we tried to relax that night.  I mean, we had kind of just shown up.  We had no LAV. We had no vehicle. Later they called in air strikes and blew up the LAV we’d left behind with 1000-pounders and whatnot.  That’s when things became a little bit more real.  So that night, when I went to sleep, I started having dreams, just kind of reliving everything. I remember waking up and thinking to myself,

“This is crazy!”

Then I told myself,

“Don’t keep thinking about stupid shit.  Think happy shit.”

And so I thought about barbecues back home with my wife, friends and family, and I had the best sleep of my life that night on that rocky mountainside.  That was the last time I even had any bad dreams.

But then, unfortunately, the next morning, at about 0500 or 0530, we were woken up by an American A-10 strike.  Eight Platoon and 7 Platoon were side-by-side on the mountainside, separated only by a small rise.  I remember I was lying down on the ground, kind of just opening my eyes to the light that had come up and kind of taking my sweet time getting up when all of a sudden I heard a huge noise.  I looked up and there was a waterfall of sparks raining down on us.  I remember turning over on my stomach and covering my head with my hands and just waiting for the shit to fall.  It was the sparks from the high explosives from the A-10.  So jumped into the back of whatever vehicles were there and took cover, making sure there was nothing else incoming.  Then we ran over that crest and we were literally stopped in our tracks. You could see 38 guys from 8 Platoon – plus or minus one or two – all lying there in one area in a pool of blood.  Thirty-eight guys! It’s just insane how may that is.

Private O’Rourke was also nearby when the off-course A-10 strike landed on 8 Platoon, injuring many soldiers that he knew personally.

Once we were out of the firefight, the fatigue really set in. I didn’t realize it at the time, but during the battle there was so much dust kicked up and I had gotten so dehydrated that I was literally spitting mud.   My body was completely exhausted, so after I got some food into me, I tried to get as much sleep as I could.  I was completely spent.  I didn’t want to move, but I couldn’t sleep.  My eyes just couldn’t close. We got our orders that we were going to go back there in the morning, and no one was happy about it.

Then the morning rolled around, September 4^th, but it looked like the 4^th of July.  It was an A-10 strike that went off-course.  I was standing right below the ridge where it hit and it looked just like one of those handheld sparklers, except it was a huge one.  I dove for cover and then someone shouted,

“It’s an A-10 strike! Get all the first air kits you can!”

After a moment I realized that the bomb had come right down on top of 8 Platoon who were down in this little gully on the other side of the ridge.  I know a lot of guys in Platoon, so I was sure to grab every piece of first aid kit I had.  I came up over the ridge and it was just a sea of bodies.  Everybody was hurt.  Everybody was hit.  Nobody was moving.  My first thought was that the whole platoon was dead. We immediately went back into our first aid training and went to work. As it turned out, there was only one fatal casualty, which is still horrible, but better than the whole platoon.

The A-10 strike had put about three dozen guys out of commission for at least a week or two. They had to reconstitute all of 8 Platoon.  They had to get guys to come back from Canada just because guys were hurt so bad, I sat there with my buddy who was hit.  I sat there with him, kept him covered when the dust would blow in and then helped put him on the helicopter.  That was pretty much it.  We ended up going for the ramp ceremonies a day later.  The ceremony was important  …  it was a huge pay of respect to your fallen comrades to see the whole base shut down and line up.  But even more important is the support you get from your section. It’s your won comrades that get you through it and keep you going.

The events of the 3^rd and 4^th of September were just the start of Op MEDUSA for Charles Company.  As Niefer attests, however, their efforts would not be in vain:

So that pretty much marked the beginning of Op MEDUSA for us. It was definitely not on a good note. Op MEDUSA went for a good month, and in the end, Charles Company was the one to go in and take Objective Rugby.  We sat there on Objective Rugby for a good week or so in a defensive position.  It took us probably a good week of advance to contact, slow approach, and we ended up taking it with no more casualties on our side.  Not necessarily no more bad luck.  My section alone had three IEDs or mines or something within a three-week period through that whole process and we went through a lot of vehicles …  three or four as I remember. We became known as “3-1 Boom” because every time we’d go out, we’d hit something.  If I was a cat, I had probably used a good seven or eight lives in that first month alone.  So I was getting a little antsy about whether I could stretch out the last one for the remainder of the tour.  But thank God, things got a little better we were still in contact quite often for the remainder of the tour.  Charles Company was there for seven months by the time we rotated out and for the entire tour  ---  probably a good six months of it  –  we were in the field.

We would be out in the field for about two months, hard living on rations, no showers.  Basically just what you were carrying on you back.  No laundry unless you found a well and you could rinse something out.  We were living on the rocks and dirt.  We did that for a couple of months and then we’d rotate in for about two days and then we’d go back out for another two months.  After MEDUSA, we moved into a strong point along Route Summit so it got a little bit better.  We weren’t doing advance to contact every day.  We were now on the defensive.  We could kind of step back.  We still had some large battles around those strong points, but they were less intense than the 3^rd of September.  The 3^rd was really what I consider getting our baptism by fire  …   and it hurt. It was absolutely insane.  All the subsequent battles after that were nothing.  They paled in comparison and they were very relaxed, which sound kind of weird.  I mean, a “relaxed” battle? Guys were joking, passing gum along the line and stuff.  But in comparison to the 3^rd, it was almost like being on the ranges.

Corporal Orr also had a relatively easier time of it for the last part of his tour  …  finally getting to operate a Badger, a piece of kit that he and the other Canadians certainly could have used at the White School.

I’m not a qualified Badger operator, but one of the guys got hurt, so they pulled me out of heavy equipment and put me in the Badger for the last three months of the tour.  When I got that – having a radio and everything – I felt a lot better.  I could talk to my section commander and to anybody I wanted to, and I could hear everything.  I got scared a little bit, though, because I could hear the intelligence reports, like,

“20 expected Taliban coming from the west.”

But I got to see two different worlds, and it was a lot harder in the dozer world with no radio.

Private O’Rourke was rotated back to Canada halfway through the tour, but he took away many memories of excellent leadership and camaraderie.

When it comes to leadership, Sergeant Fawcett did everything exactly right.  He took time to assess the situation and got done what needed to be done.  He did exactly what he needed to do and what he had to do. I’ve heard stories about crew commanders cowering in their turrets. When there’s no one else in the LAV but you and your driver, you don’t want your crew commander weeping in the corner.  All my leadership that day was fantastic. That’s why I think even though it was horrible casualty-wise, it was still a success.  In the end we took the objective. We took the White School. No other army has been able to do that.  And when I think of Charles Company … fantastic. They are one of the best companies that I have served with so far.  Every man, every soldier in that company that day, did what they had to do to hold down the fort  …  to make sure that everybody got out alive and safe.

Corporal Funnell also had high praise for the soldiers of his platoon.

Everybody I the platoon stepped up and did what needed to get done.  Nobody shut ‘er down.  Nobody found a hole and laid down. It’s “close with and destroy. “which everybody in 7 Platoon did.”  As a platoon, we were very tight, close and all hard working.  You had your jokers and you had buys that were fairly serious  …  and it was all good.  After September 3^rd, the morale within the company went down significantly because we were down a platoon plus.  Two of our most experienced warrants – Nolan and Mellish – were down.  It was pretty rough.   But nobody shut ‘er down.  After MEDUSA, we kept our morale up by just talking to each other, shooting the shit and carrying on.  You just carry on. It’s not that anything is changed.  It’s just that you get used to dealing with it better. It’s just that you don’t really stop and think about it.

Numerous decoration for bravery were awarded for actions taken on 3 September 2006 given the intensity of the combat during the opening stages of Op MEDUSA. Master Corporal Niefer sums up the matter best:

I received my M.M.V. for the 3^rd in particular  …  for going back-and-forth, up-and-down on the pintle-mount, providing covering fire from the highly exposed position to facilitate the evacuation of “friendlies.” My driver, Jason Ruffolo, got the same award for a combination of going out to hook up that cable under fire voluntarily, as well as for when we took what they think was an 82mm rocket behind the Zettelmeyer.  Most of the guys jumped to cover behind the vehicle, except for the wounded, whereas he went right away to Warrant Mellish without taking cover first.  As well, there was Private Mike O’Rourke in 3-1 Charlie. He got the M.M.V. for consistently traversing back-and forth between the G-Wagon and his LAV.  Jason Funnell, who also received the M.M.V., was with him.  Sergeant Scott Fawcett got the M.M.V. for his leadership.  First, he took over the platoon warrants’ duties and then, when the sergeant-major went down, he took over his job.  But he also went back-and-forth with Funnell and O’Rourke, bringing casualties back and exposing himself to machine gun fire.  Corporal Sean Teal got the S.M.V.  he was the drier of the G-Wagon.  He pulled the bodies out of the G-Wagon, which was on fire, and he laid down covering fire with his C7 to protect the medic and the interpreter.  He maintained order and good leadership as well.

Niefer, Orr, Funnell and O’Rourke bad varying reactions to the fact that they had been awarded the Medal of Military Valour.  Niefer, for instance, doesn’t like to talk about it when he’s with his fellow soldiers.

It’s kind of weird, in terms of being with your peers, it’s almost embarrassing.  Not ashamed – it’s a great honour – but it’s not something you talk about at work, that would seem like gloating or bragging or something.  It’s awkward even talking about it just to my family.  I mean, why are there some of us who got recognition, whereas a lot of guys didn’t?  when I look at the medal, I immediately thin of my section of guys, so really I would say it’s almost like an award for the section.

Corporal funnel felt that his actions during the battle were what he was trained to do.

That’s what we do and we’re good at it.  But nobody does anything on their own.  The whole platoon was actually doing their jobs.  Yeah, I ran back-and-forth to the LAV and G-Wagon twice, or three times, but we were still just doing our job as infantry.  You never leave a wounded Royal behind.  Everybody was working with you. Winning the medal makes you feel good, but at the same time, there are other guys that are right beside you putting first aid on a guy or whatever.  Everybody knew their job.

Corporal Orr was told early on that he was being put forward for some type of recognition, but he was surprised to hear that it was the M.M.V.

A superior told me,

“I put you in because I watched you and I’ve got stories from people that saw what you were doing and said, “What the hell is a dozer doing between all those LAVs?” When I saw that it just blew my mind.  I put you up for a commendation.”

I said.

“Okay, thanks. That sounds awesome!”  what do you say?

I was told to do something; I went in; I did my job; I came out. I knew something was coming, but I didn’t know that it was going to be so big. 

My dad is not an emotional guy.  He’s a retired military engineer. He did exactly what I do … heavy equipment operator.  And he cried.  You don’t see that very often, my dad crying. It was cool. It was really neat to see. 

But you know, if you would have told me pre-tour what I’d be involved in, I would have said,

“I’m not doing that, no freaking way am I doing that! I’m not going in like that.”

If someone had said,

“you’re going to go in and you’re going to get shot at to win this medal,”

I would l have said,

“I don’t want the medal.”

It’s the same with the V.C. If some guy came up to me and said,

“I bet you’d like to have that too”

I would say,

“No, because then I would have to be put in a situation that was out of my hands, and I don’t want to be put in that kind of scenario.”

But when you’re put in it, you do what you do.  I think the Medal of Military

Valour is an awesome honour.  It’s unreal. I don’t go around flaunting it.  But when somebody says to somebody else,

“He won the medal of valour, “

And that person comes up and shakes my hand, it feels great.  It’s probably one of the best feeling in the world.  I have a lot of respect for a medal like that. It doesn’t get any better.

I would like to dedicate that medal to all of the boys in Charles Company especially.  I don’t think of it as just a medal for me.  I think of it as something for everybody that was with me that day.  Everybody that was on that battlefield that day deserved it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud to wear it, but I was just doing my job, just l like every other soldier on that field was doing their job.  Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I feel that the whole company should have been decorated for the feats that were accomplished and overcome that day.

I remember awhile after we had cleared Objective Rugby, we were driving though the Panjwai District again and I said,

“Where are we?”

They said,

“Remember Objective Rugby?”

 I said,

“Yes.”

They said,

“Well, we’re here.”

It was crowded with people.  The markets were back open.  We made a difference.

But there were more than one or two guys on that battlefield.  There was all of 7 Platoon, all of 8 Platoon, the Engineers, everybody in the task force, everybody did their part.  Everybody did what they had to do to ensure a successful withdrawal of casualties and of everybody that was still alive.  The task force, 1RCR, was good to go, bang on.  So I wear the medal with great pride.  I don’t look at it as if I’m sort of a “super soldier” or something, because we were all just doing our job.  That’s it and that’s all.

Master Corporal Niefer, Corporal Funnell, Corporal Orr and Private O’Rourke were invested with their medals of Military Valour by the then-Governor General, and Commander-in-Chief of Canada, her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean, at Rideau Hall .