Jack Truscott didn't want to embezzle money from Lithiate Chem, the company where he's head of research.His sudden divorce was messy and he had to pay a settlement quickly. He had "borrowed" a couple of hundred grand, but he didn't think people would notice so soon.Now he's got to get his quarterly bonus and return the money before he's found out. All he needs is a breakthrough in the research department.His top researchers, Chad and Lacy, might have the solution. T...

On Guard For Thee: Canadian Peacekeeping Missions is a collection of stories about Canadian men and women who have served overseas on UN or NATO missions from the end of the Cold War to the present day. The stories are collected directly from the individual veterans. Contributors represent virtually every major Canadian mission, including Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. They represent the whole of the operational experience, from the training they undergo b...

If a soldier today is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he or she gets counselling and therapy and treatment. In World War II, it was a different story. Bomber crews were especially horribly treated, in a system that used threats and psychological bullying to make the airmen -- many of them not yet twenty years old -- climb the ladder again and again to do their almost impossibly dangerous job.At twenty years old, with twenty-seven missions as a Lancaster bomber pilot ...

On April 18, 2002, Alpha Company, Third Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was on a training exercise at Tarnak Farms, a former Taliban artillery range in southern Afghanistan. The exercise had been underway for nearly seven hours when two American fighter pilots flew overhead. One, Major Harry Schmidt, saw the artillery fire below, and thinking he was under attack, dropped a laser-guided bomb.Four Canadian soldiers died that night, the first Canadian com...

A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada’s war in Afghanistan.Visceral, intimate and captivating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat, and an introductory reflection b...

In the Service of Peace simple words that adorn the obverse of every United Nations medal, yet behind this eloquence lurks violence and an unheralded heroism invisible to an often misunderstood quarter of Canadas military history. The Canadian contribution to peacekeeping is enormous but ensnared in a lethal mythology that has seen it abandoned to popular folklore. From the early and intrinsic Canadian contribution to the U.N. Emergency Force in 1956, through the blur of the frenetic 1990s...

Clearing the Way: Combat Engineers in Kandahar is the story of the men and women of 23 Field Squadron who served with the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group in Kandahar in 2006. Through the eyes of thirteen Squadron members relive the early days of the war in Kandahar and the coming of age of a group of soldiers recorded in graphic detail. The reader experiences the large scale battles with Taliban fighters during Operation Medusa the building of Route Summit and the construction of ...

By every principle of war, every shred of military logic, logistics support to Canada's Task Force Orion in Afghanistan should have collapsed in July 2006. There are few countries that offer a greater challenge to logistics than Afghanistan, and yet Canadian soldiers lived through an enormous test on this deadly international stage - a monumental accomplishment. Canadian combat operations were widespread across southern Afghanistan in 2006, and logistics soldiers worked in quiet desperatio...

In 200708, Dr. Ray Wiss, a former infantry officer, served with the Canadian Forces at forward operating bases in Khandahar's Panjwayi valley, the area experiencing the most intense combat in Afghanistan. He spent more time in the combat area than any other Canadian physician, and his successful first book, FOB Doc, was the diary of his time outside the wire” during that tour of duty.Captain Wiss's experience in Afghanistan convinced him...

"Never talked about it."That's what most people say when they're asked if the veteran in the family ever shared wartime experiences. Describing combat, imprisonment or lost comrades from the World Wars, the Korea War, or even Afghanistan is reserved for Remembrance Day or the Legion lounge. Nobody was ever supposed to see them get emotional, show their vulnerability. Nobody was ever to know the hell of their war.About 25 years ago, Ted Barris began breaking through the sile...

Many Canadians see the role their country's military plays in Afghanistan as an anomaly. However, this assumption is far from the truth. As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has commented, "Canadians are fierce fighters." Fortune Favours the Brave certainly proves this point in a collection of essays that showcases the fighting spirit and courage of Canada's military.Daring actions featured in the book include the intrepid assault on the Fortress of Louisbourg and the cat-an...

No Lack of Courage is the story of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Operation Medusa, the largely Canadian action in Afghanistan from 1 to 17 September 2006, to dislodge a heavily entrenched Taliban force in the Pashmul district of Afghanistans Kandahar Province. At stake, according to senior Afghan politicians and NATO military commanders, was nothing less than the very existence of the reconstituted state of Afghanistan, as well as the NATO alliance itself. In a bitterly...