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Ontario soldier killed in Kandahar
Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, September 03, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canada has lost another soldier in Afghanistan, just days after he received a medal for bravery.
Andrew Grenon of Windsor, Ont. was two weeks away from concluding his second Afghan tour. His death came just 10 days after he was awarded a bravery medal in the field.
"I am proud of the way he died, I am proud of what he did," his distraught mother Theresa Charbonneau told the Windsor Star. Grenon's Windsor family was informed of his death Wednesday morning. Grenon, 23, joined the Canadian military more than four years ago and was with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based at CFB Shilo in Manitoba.
Andrew Grenon, 23, of Windsor, Ont. was two weeks away from concluding his second Afghan tour.
Doug Schmidt/Windsor Star
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Three combat engineers attached to 2 Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry were killed by a roadside bomb blast onAug. 20.
Grenon saw some of the fiercest fighting during Operation Medusa during his first tour in 2006/07 and was injured twice, but he enthusiastically volunteered for this latest tour.
On Aug. 24, Grenon was the recipient of a Canadian Expeditionary Forces Commander's Commendation for an incident that occurred early on his current tour, which began March 3. "Andrew's actions prevented the outbreak of a riot and saved the lives of two soldiers," reads the bravery award's inscription.
No details of the incident in which Grenon was killed have yet been released by the Canadian military.
Grenon spoke to Canwest News Service as he prepared to leave for home during an earlier tour of duty in Afghanistan in February 2007.
He described harrowing experiences in combat. When they rolled into Masum Ghar during Operation Medusa, Grenon said, he was disappointed when he heard firing on the south side of the mountain. He felt they'd gone to the wrong spot and would miss any contact with the enemy.
"And then they started coming up over the ridge and they were hammering us from the top and we were soon getting it from three sides," he recalled in an interview.
Grenon said he fired 1,600 machine-gun rounds in one two-hour stretch. The Canadians suffered only a few minor injuries.
Grenon was injured twice during his earlier Afghan tour. Once, he was struck deaf temporarily and covered in scratches and bruises from thrown-up gravel after a mortar landed in the middle of a patrol base. Another time his LAV III drove over a double-stack of anti-tank mines and his vehicle was enveloped in a fireball. He had to be pulled to safety by his comrades. That led to another bout of short-term hearing loss and a chipped knee bone.
But the worst incident was when the platoon ran a harrowing 8.5-kilometre gauntlet through hundreds of Taliban fighters along Ambush Alley on an Aug. 21, 2006 night convoy.
Grenon turned to answer a comrade in the vehicle when a rocket-propelled grenade shot by under his arm, right where his chest had been a second earlier. One signaller's helmet caught a bullet but, miraculously, there was not a single Canadian casualty.
"That was the closest I came to dying," said Grenon.
Cpl. Dustin Wasden, one of the three killed in the August attack, is to be buried Wednesday in his hometown of Spiritwood, Sask. Wasden was killed along with Sgt. Shawn Eades of Hamilton, Ont., and Sapper Stephan John Stock, 25, of Campbell River, B.C.
Two Canadian aid workers employed by the International Rescue Committee were also killed last month in the Central Asian country's Logar province when their car, en route to Kabul, came under attack. Jacqueline Kirk, 40, of Outremont, Que. and Shirley Case, 30, from Williams Lake, B.C., had been in Afghanistan helping mentally and physically disabled children.
When the latest attacks are added to the death of Canadian diplomat GlynBerry in 2006, the Canadian death toll in Afghanistan is 97 since 2002.
About 2,500 Canadian troops are stationed in Afghanistan, most of whom are based in the volatile Kandahar province.
Last week, the U.S. announced it had sent an additional 800 soldiers to support the Canadian mission
