National Affairs
Payday an insult to all soldiers
Claire Hoy

The late John Wayne once described courage as, "being scared to death but saddling up anyway." No doubt the 30,000 Canadians who waited in 6the freezing rain on Easter Sunday on April 9, 1917, waiting for the dawn and the orders to attack Vimy Ridge were scared to death, but they saddled up and won arguably the most celebrated military victory in Canadian history.

And while nearly 3,000 brave Canadian soldiers died on that single day - compared to a total of 51 soldiers, plus one Canadian diplomat, who have died in Afghanistan since 2002 - this week's 90th anniversary ceremonies in France marking this battle hopefully will serve as a reminder to history-blind Canadians that this country's military history began long before its relatively recent involvement in UN peace-keeping missions.

Nor is the contrast between the deaths of the earlier soldiers and those of our current soldiers - including six killed this past weekend - meant to lessen the pain, or the individual bravery, of those who serve us now in Afghanistan.

But it is worth noting that if a country wants to make a real difference in the real world in fighting against tyranny, lives will be lost.

As Prime Minister Harper said when announcing the deaths of those six Canadians on Sunday, "Our hearts ache for them and their families. I know as we gather here on Easter Sunday, our thoughts and prayers are with them."

Amen to that. So too should our thoughts and prayers be with the tens of thousands of Canadians who have given their lives in previous conflicts - in the two great world wars, in Korea, and elsewhere - so that by thinking of them, and remembering them, we will know that their sacrifices were not wasted.

Too often as Canadians - a country unmatched in its' anxiety to either forget its' own history or rewrite it to conform to current political correctness - we either do not know or do not care what those who went before us had to do to make sure that we continue to enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy.

Whether it's those courageous World War 1 soldiers at Vimy 90 years ago, or our brave men and women currently serving to restore sanity to Afghanistan, we should constantly pay homage to their work and give thanks for their sacrifices.

Instead, too many Canadians - and certainly too many elected Canadians - are obsessed with demeaning their efforts, with perpetuating the false notion that military force is never necessary, that we can sit down and work out our differences with anybody without ever having to resort to weapons.

If only they were correct.

If only everybody had such good intentions. If only the Taliban and others - Hitler and Stalin come to mind in this context too - actually could be reasoned with, and we could all live happily ever after without having to risk the lives of our young men and women in the way that we do.

But the world doesn't work that way. It never has. It never will.

Which means that for those cultures which truly believe in freedom, in the dignity of all peoples, there are times when, as former U.S. general and president Dwight D. Eisenhower put it, "we're going to bring peace, even if we have to fight for it."

And while we're on the topic, could there be a more unsavory contrast than the current ceremonies honoring the Vimy soldiers - and the national sadness here of the deaths of six more of our soldiers in Afghanistan - with the news that the British Ministry of Defense is allowing some of the 15 British sailors and marines captured and released by the Iranians to sell their stories to newspapers and television and radio stations?

What an insult to all those sailors and marines who are fighting now and have fought before them. To think that getting captured - and then publicly kowtowing to their captors, in a disgraceful display of cowardice - can now be turned into a handsome profit.

It's unspeakable, really.

Sadly, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives - who was seen blubbering anti- British and anti-U.S. sentiments on television during her capture, is reported to be negotiating the biggest payday, perhaps as much as $500,000, to tell her story.

Let us leave the last word on the topic to British Navy Lt. Felix Carman, the highest-ranking of the 15 British captives, who spoke at length about the incident at a news conference last Friday.

"I'm not interested in making money out of this," he said. "My aim is to tell the story. There's some people who might be making money, but that's an individual's decision, that's very private, but that's not something that myself or many of the others will do."

Good for him.