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What a year it has been. Reflecting on everything that has happened really makes me think about the busy lives we all live.

This year started off with lots of snow and lots of work. Many of the soldiers in my shop prepared for a tour in Afghanistan, so we were swamped with work with so many people off the floor on training.

Multiple exercises and the floods in Manitoba took many soldiers away from home for over nine months straight, and with all that man power gone, well, the mass amounts of broken vehicles coming from exercises and the operations had us working over time.

But eventually things calmed down. Then I got married in the summer to a wonderful woman. The wedding was wonderful. Many friends and family showed up. We got so many gifts we had to move into a bigger apartment. I would like to put out a thanks right now to everyone who supported us at the wedding and helped us get started with our life.

Shortly before the wedding, at the bachelor party, we were paint balling and I went for a slide and caught a stick, bending my ankle under me. This resulted in a broken ankle. I really didn’t want to wear my big moon boot – given to me by the doctors – while walking down the isle, so I wrapped my ankle up real tight and stuffed my swollen ankle into my parade boots. Everyone was surprised I was walking as well as I did. I did limp a lot and by the end of the night by ankle had swollen up a lot more.

After our nice wedding and reception, we settled down into our new home in September. In October I left for CFB Cold Lake. There I received OJT training on Aircraft Maintenance Support Equipment (AMSE). I also got to work out in a shop by the bombing range. We were told we could not do P.T outside due to bears.

A Buddy of mine went hunting and got his first buck. The Antlers were scored at 405 points. Apparently the record is 415! Not bad for his first deer. We were quite impressed. He gave me a few pounds of meat. He got about 80lbs of his buck. I have skinned a few dear now, and I know the average is about 30lbs to 40lbs of meat. Nice job!

Up in Cold Lake, my buddies and I also experienced a very sad time. As we came back to base from the weekend – me driving home on the weekends to see the wife our buddy “Z” pulled us into his room. I first saw a bunch of crime scene tape on “HB’s” door. I assumed he was going to talk to us about a bunch of shit the boys got into. But the news was far worse. On November 13th, 2011, HB passed away, resulting from suicide.

We all took it pretty hard. The worst part, trying to understand why. Nobody really will know why, we only can come up with our own theories to make sense of it. The next couple of weeks were tough. I staff really helped us get through it though. We had a really nice memorial service for him, and a bunch of guys were sent to Ontario to be Pallbearers.

The beginning of December saw us back in Edmonton. We are now getting ready for the Christmas Holidays where we will have 3 weeks off. We had our Soldiers Dinner on the 8th, and were lucky enough to get the following Friday off, leading in this weekend. Now I have one more week at work, then I get the next 3 weeks off.

I hope you all had a good year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

On November 13th 2011, Craftsman Matthew Hunter-Brown passed away. I met this amazing person sometime in September, but never really got to know him until the beginning of October when HB – as I came to know him – and some other Craftsman, including myself, where sent up to CFB Cold Lake on a OJT rotation to practice our skills as Vehicle Technicians.

Over the next month and a half I came to know HB as a joyful fellow. He made us laugh with his witty comments, and lightened our day when he would walk into the shop early in the morning with a smile on his face. The rest of us would stare at the guy with disbelief at how he could be so happy in the morning.

HB was truly a friend to us all. Not having him around on the shop floor really puts a damper in the day, and brings a realization that life is fragile and we should not take it lightly.

Rest in Peace HB wherever you are. I hope you can party it up until your friends join you.

I just bought myself a new phone. It is the HTC Desire. So my first challenge to myself is to be able to successfully type out and post a whole blog post.

So here it goes.

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I was driving home from work with my buddy Willy when a conversation we were having caused me to ask myself this question: When did I realize I was a patriotic Canadian?

U can check out Willy’s blog here

As a young boy I grew up in an American aware family. My dad is American. Most of my family is American. I wanted to be American. The day I realized I wanted to be Canadian was a day that changed my life.

The actual day I realized I was patriotic I can’t remember the date but I do know what helped me find the love for my country.

My buddy Warren and I were playing with our little plastic soldiers. I always played the Americans, Warren the Germans. But this time he wanted to be the good guys. So we switched.

The game was going good for me. I knocked down most of his men. But he had a little force in reserve hidden in his little cabin. I was about to finish him off when he called out his reserves. He pulled out his light green soldiers and set them up.

He looked at me and said, “Cuyler you beat the yanks, but there is no way your beating the Canadian Peace Keepers.”

And he beat me.

From that time on when I played the good guys, all my soldiers were Canadian Peace Keepers. I’m not sure why that moment I found the love for my country. I was always into army stuff, and I had failed to look into my own countries history it had created for itself in that area.

My friend Warren actually, without knowing it, opened me up to a whole new area to explore. From that point on I stopped focusing on America. I became a proud Canadian and joined the Canadian Military which I’m proud and honored to be a part of.

I Am Canadian.

Found this awesome Rick Mercer video on a friends facebook page. Anyways I think it needs more publicity so I’ll contribute to increasing it’s views.

He rants about Canada’s Defense Spending Policy.

Hope you enjoy,

Cuyler

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Well this is it. The last installment of the Soldier Qualification Series. I’m still debating if I will edit these all up and put them into one book for sale. I did mention in a previous post on the site that I might do that. But now that I look more at the whole serial, I can see that it is more of a recounting of my experiences, not really a story with problems to solve.

Anyways, this is it. No more Soldier Qualification serials after this one.

Enjoy

Cuyler Callahan

Warning: If you are offended by swearing, and some graphic scenes and scenarios, don’t read!

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Soldier Qualification 05 October 2010 Part 8

After my night of living in the dream world, the 5:30 Stand Too is sounded off with some arty sims. After we freeze in our trenches for a couple hours, we eat our breakfast and start our tasks for the day. The remaining people that haven’t done the day or night recces will complete their recces. The rest of the people not on recces will fill in trenches and wrap up the barbed wire, disarm any flares.

Because I had finished both my recces, I had the privileged to fill in trenches just previously dug. Not exactly a fun task, but something that had to be done. The real bitch trenches to fill back in were the trenches we had fortified with tin.

Trenches were bad, but wrapping up the razor wire was more of a pain then stretching it out. I cut my uniform up, and myself. My combat boots received some fresh slices in the leather. Nevertheless, we got the razor wire wrapped up and back up the hill onto the trucks.

The day wears on. We are attacked a couple of times just to fuck with us a bit more. We get the camp cleaned up. We then are told to pitch our hooches on the hill. “There will be no cock tonight, just good sleep,” we are told by our staff. None of us believed it, but we really hoped they weren’t bullshitting us.

As the night begins to descend, the rest of my section that had not gone on the night recce are sent to complete the recce. The rest of our told that there will be sentries tonight still. My shift is at 5Am. Not to bad I’m thinking, so I get my stuff ready for a hasty awakening, expecting something to go wrong during the night, and I crawl into my sleeping bag and fall asleep.

“Callahan! Callahan! CALLAHAN!” I sit up in my hooch.

“What! Who is it?” I say in a half sleep drawl.

“Get your ass out here to sentry!” Myre snaps.

“But I’m not on until five.”

“I don’t care, just get out here.”

“Okay, hold on.” I’m not sure what this bullshit is, and they better have an explanation. I start pulling my pants on that are at the bottom of my sleeping bag. Midway I start dreaming again. I am on a recce, I’m in a trench under attack, I’m on a ruck march. I’m back in the dreamworld, not sure which is real.

“CALLAHAN! Where the fuck are you?” I wake up.

“What are you talking about.” I say back to Myre.

“Your on sentry. I told you twenty minutes ago.”

“I’m not on until five.”

“I just talked to you about this. Just get out here.” Myre sounded more exasperated and tired now then pissed off.

“Okay, I’ll be out in a minute,” I say.

“Hurry.”

I start looking for my pants. Where the hell were my pants. I couldn’t find them. I feel in the dark for my pants everywhere. About five minutes later I find them half way on my legs. That is when I realized she was right when she had asked me twenty minutes ago and I fell asleep putting my pants on.

I get dressed and start walking in the bush towards the sentry point. The sleep fuck hit again. I’m dreaming. I’m on a recce, ruck march, in trenches, doing section attacks, sleeping in my hooch.

“CALLAHAN! Where the fuck are you?” Myre hollers. I wake up.

I realize I’m not sure where I’m at. I can’t see anything, and I kept running into trees. “I’m not sure,” I try to whisper-yell back. “I’m lost out in the bush. I fell asleep and kept walking out here into the bush.”

Silence ensued. Then about thirty seconds later. “The fuck! You did what?”

“I fell asleep walking over. Sorry, just talk so I can find my way out of this bush.”

They kept saying “over here, over here” again and again. I eventually found them.

Myre explained, “Okay, when our people get back from the recce, we can all go to sleep. You just have to stay on sentry with Sherri until they get back, the staff changed it and said we don’t have to stay on all night. Me and Knight have been out here for two hours. Ahronson won’t wake up, so that’s why we asked you.”

“Okay, I see. Fucking Ahronson, but whatever, I’ll do it,” I said.

“Thanks Cali.” Myre and Knight went to bed.

Sherri and I lay on our bellies with our legs near each other so we could kick each other to stay awake. Around One the last night recce rolled in and we each went to bed.

During the night, probably around three- Im just guessing- Knight was thrashing around in the hooch, freaking out. I assume its an attack and start throwing on my bats, boots, and gear. Knight keeps on doing what he is doing, which is thrashing around, grabbing stuff. It looks like he is throwing on his stuff as well.

Myre sits up, “What the fuck are you guys doing?” she says with her chick voice.

“Stand Too,” I say, “lets go, go, go.”

“There is no cock tonight, go back to sleep.”

“Knight what are you doing, isn’t there a Stand Too,” I say to him, with a confused look. Myre looks at him as well, waiting for an answer.

Knight doesn’t answer. He just keeps moving around, making noise. I realize now, that he’s tossing his sleeping bag around violently, like he’s trying to sort stuff out with it. He still doesn’t answer.

“Fuck it, I’m going back to sleep,” Myre says.

“Ya…me too I guess,” still half confused about what just happened. Why was Knight thrashing around so much like he was in a rush, like something was going to kill him if he didn’t finish what he was doing? Why didn’t he answer? Whatever. I went back to bed.

***

The next morning at six- they let us sleep in- arties went off, and we got up, in a rush.

“Pack up your shit, we’ll eat breakfast, then ruck home. HURRY THE FUCK UP!” Sergent Moy yelled.

After we packed up, we ate our breakfast. I asked Knight again about last night.

“Ya man, it was real weird,” he said. “I woke up out in the middle of the bush, just in my liner, my legs on top of a log, and my face in the dirt. The weird part was, I had tied my liner into my sleeping bag just before I went to bed. How it all untied itself, and then me ending up in the middle of the bush, about one hundred feet away, scared the shit out of me.”

“Do you remember me freaking out when you came in, and Myre calming me down, and you not answering us?” I asked.

“Kinda, I was pretty freaked out and focused on sorting out my shit.”

“Hmm. Weird shit sleep fuck does to a person eh?”

“Ya man,” Knight agreed.

***

Our shit was packed. We all stood in ranks of two, rucks on our back. My feet were still hamburger, and extremely painful to walk on. Now I had a seven kilometer ruck back to base on those same feet. I was not looking forward to it.

We do the ruck however. We get back to base. I drop my shit off near my bed. We eat lunch. We unload the kit off the truck and clean it. Around sixteen hundred, we have all the kit clean. Warrant Kellog gathers us around him.

“Troops, good fucking work out there. You did good. Now the rest is all fun. We get to throw some grenades, and shoot some mother fucking machine guns. Have a good weekend. You are all Confined to Barracks until tomorrow. I don’t want nobody driving right now. You are all to sleep fucked. Dismissed!”

The weekend is ours. It is funny how in the field, we don’t feel our bodies pain as much. Our body seems to tense up and keep on running. As soon as we get back to base and our body knows it is time to relax, the pains hit. I could barely walk. I waddled to the showers, stayed in the shower for almost half an hour. Then went right to bed. I didn’t wake up until twelve Saturday morning.

***

The last week of SQ was pretty sweet. I got to throw grenades and shoot the C-9 machine gun and C-6 machine gun. Not more to say about that. Grenades make a large boom. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving side of the C-9 or C-6. Oh and C-9s jam way to fucking much.

We had our graduation party the night before our grad ceremony. We all got drunk. Hillman of course, got drunk like Hillman does. We eventually had a Warrant tell us to take our buddy home before he made a fool of himself and got himself in trouble. But it was a party. A good time.

We graduated the next day. It was a fifteen minute ceremony in combats. After that, course was done, the next day we loaded up our kit onto a bus and headed back to Borden, or wherever everybody else came from. We left Meaford behind, most likely never to return.
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Well that is it folks. The Serial is done. I hoped you enjoyed this serial.

Cuyler Callahan