Capt. Curtis Chow is a highly trained soldier with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. He's in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, with the safety of hundreds of people depending on his actions.
So what's he been up to lately? Washing cars, he says.
"It's kind of the non-sexy part of the job," Chow says, speaking from Kandahar Airfield on Wednesday. It's been pretty quiet lately, so they've been helping the logistics troops prep vehicles for return to Canada. That means getting all the dirt off them so they can clear customs.
"I'm sure there are infantry guys within the company who aren't super keen on washing vehicles and getting them loaded up," he says, "but they understand that's the mission and that's our job right now."
Chow, a St. Albert resident, is one of about 1,500 Canadian troops still in Afghanistan. Their mission: to pack up the roughly 1,000 vehicles and 1,800 sea cans of stuff that has piled up there since 2001.
Winding down in the desert
Born in Moose Jaw, Sask., Chow says he's been a full-fledged member of the army since 2005, having served as a reservist since 1996. This is his second tour in Afghanistan.
This tour has been quite a bit slower than the last one, he says: instead of being bivouacked with 12 cops-in-training in the middle of nowhere with little sleep and lots of stress, he's camped at the airfield, co-commanding the 108-member Force Protection Company as it guards convoys shuttling to and from the base.
They haven't run into any ambushes or improvised explosives and haven't done much shooting.
"Kandahar City has a lot more people moving around at all hours of the day," he notes, and the police seem more professional than they were on his previous tour. "It's a lot safer."
His troops did quite a few combat logistics patrols earlier this summer, he says, where they would escort long convoys of gear back to base, but they're pretty much done those at this point. Nowadays, his squad is either protecting diplomats or helping the logistics folks.
That often means car washing. "It's very dusty here, and we don't have any indoor parking lots," he says.
Canada is taking most of its vehicles and country-specific gear back home, Chow says. What stays and what goes is a matter of shipping costs.
"We're trying to sell most of our gym equipment because it's just too heavy to bring back," he says as an example, as well as most of their buildings. Some of the gear will be shipped north to Kabul for use in Canada's next mission.
And gearing up
Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan may have ended on July 7, notes Walter Dorn, professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, but its training assignment has just begun. Dubbed Operation Attention, it will involve about 950 soldiers training local police and troops in and around Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat.
"We're no longer going to be in Kandahar at all," he says, and there won't be any in-field mentoring. "It will be a much less dangerous mission, but still dangerous."
This second mission should wrap up in 2014. Some of those trainers are already in the field, Chow says, and a platoon of his troops is stationed in Kabul to protect them.
The troops hope to have everything packed up by the end of the year, Chow says, at which point he'll be going home to his wife and son. In the meantime, he and the soldiers have to make sure they do the best job they can, even if that job isn't all that exciting.
"A big part of that is [making sure] we don't leave here with our tail tucked under."
