A Salute to the Troops
There are a lot of blind people walking around here, they just don’t realize it," said 16-year-old Edouard, who grew up on the streets of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. These words struck home as HMCS Ville de Québec began her last trip from Mombasa, Kenya to Mogadishu, Somalia. For the 253 Canadian sailors, soldiers and airmen of my ship’s company, our assignment to support the World Food Programme (WFP) has been an eye-opening experience in a region that gets barely any visibility back home.
On 6 August 2008, we were officially reassigned from an anti-terrorist mission in the Mediterranean Sea with Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 and ordered to proceed through the Suez Canal. Everyone aboard sensed we were about to embark on a good mission, but I don’t think any of us suspected what our shared experiences during that mission would mean to us.
As we rounded the Horn of Africa and approached the coast of Puntland, we saw the first clear signs of piracy: blips on our radar screens representing merchant vessels held for ransom. That told us we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. Pirates seizing merchant vessels within sight of land — that was well outside our experience. In North American or European waters, piracy would elicit a swift response from police or Special Forces, but in this lawless, violent place it was part of daily life.
As the mission got into full swing in late August with the escort of the...
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