March Forth: The Inspiring True Story of a Canadian Soldier's Journey of Love, Hope and Survival

By Trevor Greene and Debbie Greene

At the age of forty-one, Trevor Greene, a journalist and a reservist in the Canadian Forces, was deployed to Afghanistan, leaving behind his fiancée, Debbie, and his young daughter, Grace. On March 4, 2006, while meeting with village elders in a remote village in Kandahar Province, Trevor removed his helmet, confident that a centuries-old pact would protect him from harm. Without warning, a teenage boy under the influence of the Taliban walked up to him and landed a rusty axe in his skull, nearly splitting his brain in two.

Initially, Debbie was told that Trevor would not survive. When he did, she was told that he would never be able to communicate or move on his own. But after years of rehabilitation, setbacks and crises, Trevor not only learned how to talk and move again, but in July 2010, he stood up at his wedding, Debbie at his side and Grace carrying their rings down the aisle as their flower girl.

March Forth is a remarkable story of love told in two voices: first in Trevor’s, up until the attack; then in Debbie’s, as she works tirelessly to rehabilitate her fiancé. Together, Trevor and Debbie have written the next chapter in their remarkable story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781443405140

Trevor Greene

TREVOR GREENE is an accomplished journalist and the author of Bad Date: The Lost Girls of Vancouver’s Low Track. After a stint with the Royal Canadian Navy, he joined the army reserves and deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

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PROLOGUE

Abaleful desert sun screamed down mercilessly on my helmet while the heat and dust wrapped around me like a monstrous, suffocating pillow. Through the sodden kaffiyeh desert scarf wrapped around my mouth and neck, the air was malodorous with the acrid stench of smoke and the burned-paper smell of ancient dust. Behind my sunglasses, my eyes blurred from the oily sweat oozing from my forehead. My saliva thickened, and dust coated my parched throat. My rifle was cumbersome and warm in my shooting gloves. The bottoms of my feet burned in my tan desert boots as I carefully stepped around ankle-breaking rocks of crumbling shale. We were on the third dusty day of foot patrol.

I was attached to One Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion PPCLI. Call sign Orion 11. Our mission was to patrol a five-hundred-square-kilometre area of operations in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, bounded in the east by a circle of jagged mountains we called the Belly Button. No foreign army had been in the Belly Button, the most dangerous real estate in Kandahar Province, since the fall of the Taliban in 2002.

The Red Devil Inn, so called for the Alpha Company nickname, was a wattled mud compound that had been converted into our forward operating base. Our home away from home was about seventy kilometres as the buzzard flies from the main coalition base at Kandahar Airfield but closer to a hundred after dusty swerves and switchbacks. The compound was the size of an elementary school gymnasium and was just outside the village of Gonbad, about seventy kilometres north of Kandahar City—right in the heart of Taliban country. A road led from the Red Devil Inn through the village and branched to the south. This branch came to be known as IED Alley because of the countless bombs that had been laced into the road by the Taliban.

The front entrance to the compound was a massive double-doored gate. A small hill in front of the gate was always crowded with villagers mesmerized by our vehicles. They were insatiably curious and would hang out on the hill for hours, seemingly in shifts. We wanted to maintain goodwill with the locals by being good neighbours, but their proximity to the Inn was of concern. Every morning, the villagers were frisked by three Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers in the unlikely event they carried weapons or explosives.

The Red Devil Inn’s surprisingly cool rooms were on the ground level and looked like they had been hewn out of bare sandstone. We slept two to a room on a packed-mud floor along with thousands of creepy-crawlies. The only ones we were concerned with were the scorpions and the hand-sized camel spiders. The mornings were teeth-chatteringly cold, and I needed a thermal fleece and a hat until the sun once again ruled the sky. The Inn was protected by our heavy machine guns, which stood perched on all four corners of the top level, protected by sandbags.

An oily diesel smell hung over us from the frequent burn-off of the excrement that accumulated in the latrines, which were alongside a beautiful apple orchard around the back. We ate our meals around a bonfire in the centre of the compound, swapping stories and food to and fro. We lived on tinfoil packets of over-preserved, artificially tasty food high in calories. Tabasco sauce was a necessity to overpower the medley of preservatives.

I always cleaned my rifle the night before a patrol. The greasy feel and acrid, industrial smell of the lubricant on my fingers brought back memories of the hundreds of times I had performed this task before. I listened for the reassuring dry click of the bolt smoothly sliding back and forth. I stuffed dry socks and foot powder, which are almost as important as a well-functioning weapon, into my rucksack before crawling into my sleeping bag for the night.

One morning like any other, we loaded up in the light armoured vehicle (LAV) under the watchful, curious gaze of the locals at the front gate. It was a tight, hip-to-hip fit on the benches of the LAV. I held my rifle between my legs and rested the brim of my helmet on the barrel. We travelled down a highway through dry riverbeds, or wadis, following faint truck paths in the dirt.

We carefully approached the first village of the day, stopping far enough away to achieve some standoff distance in case things went bad. As we entered the village, we were greeted with smiles and handshakes. Our presence usually garnered enough attention to draw a few people out, so we never had to knock on doors. At the edge of the village they invited us to sit down, so we sat cross-legged on the ground facing the elders and talked through an interpreter. These meetings with the village elders were called shuras. During the shura, our platoon commander, Kevin Schamuhn, probed for tactical information about Taliban presence in the area. As the Civil-Military Co-operation officer, I was responsible for determining the villagers’ infrastructure needs, which would help in reconstruction planning. After the shura, we handed out a few gifts of tea for the adults and pens for the kids, thanked the men for meeting with us and slowly made our way back to our vehicles.

At about 1330 local time, our three LAVs splashed across a small creek running alongside the tiny village of Shinkay, our third shura of the day. A farmer worked in a field and some kids played near a grove of trees. They stopped to gawk at us. We dismounted and assembled on the ground near a grassy area, a rare sight in the desert. We approached the farmer and introduced ourselves. Through our interpreter, the farmer indicated he would go and get the elders. As we waited for them, our security section set up a perimeter around where we wanted to meet.

A few minutes later, a smiling group of elders emerged with outstretched hands. We congregated on that peaceful, grassy spot in the shade of trees by the gently flowing river. Kevin and I sat cross-legged on the ground on either side of our interpreter, facing the elders. I placed my helmet on the ground next to me, as did the others, and laid my rifle on top of it. Section Commander Rob Dolson positioned himself on my left, and a senior Afghan solider sat on Kevin’s right. One of the elders waved at a young boy, who then disappeared for about ten minutes and brought back tea. The tea was freshly made and surprisingly refreshing. It was served in well-scrubbed water glasses carried on a silverish tray deeply scored with wide brown scratches.

A small group of young men and kids milled about curiously behind us. The rest of the members of One Platoon were fanned out behind them in defensive positions facing outward. I felt safe as usual with the superb soldiers of One Platoon watching my back. There was also the inviolable, centuries-old tradition of Pashtunwali, which guarantees the safety of guests and mandates they be shown every hospitality the village can muster.

The elders waited for us to initiate the conversation. Kevin opened the meeting as usual, speaking directly to the leader in English about our presence and their security situation. We are here to support your country and help the people of Afghanistan, he began. The men leaned forward, as they usually did, squinting and trying to make sense of his words. Once the interpreter had translated, only one man spoke back to the translator. The others watched intently in silence.

I could hear the familiar sounds of scuffing sandals and the voices of children at play in the village, reminding me of my own daughter on the other side of the world. As Kevin wrapped up his questions and turned the meeting over to me, I could hear the stream ripple nearby and thought about the peacefulness of the setting amidst all this war. By the time my next memory flashed across my consciousness, my daughter was one year older.

PART 1: BEFORE

Life isn’t about dawdling to the grave, arriving safely in an attractive, wrinkle-free body, but rather an adventure that ends skidding in sideways, champagne in one hand, strawberries in the other, totally worn out, screaming, Yeehaaa, what a ride!

—Anonymous

CHAPTER 1 :

THE ODYSSEY

Iwas five years old and riding west on the plains, lance in hand, on my jet-black horse as huge herds of buffalo thundered past. We rode relentlessly through the rain, wind and snow. My imaginary red tunic was stained with sweat and my blue britches were stiff with mud. My high leather riding boots creaked in the stirrups. This reverie lasted only a few minutes until I heard my mother snap, Trevor, pay attention! as she handed me the prayer book open to the proper page.

My family went to church every Sunday at the RCMP training facility called Depot, where my father was posted in 1969. He was appointed to instruct law for three years at the police academy before retiring twenty-six years later as a staff sergeant, the RCMP’s highest non-commissioned rank.

The small white church was always cool inside. As we entered the building, my gaze would be drawn to the crossed Mountie lances over the door. Dad told me they had been carried by horseback across the country as part of the 1874 March West, a push by the fledgling North-West Mounted Police to bring law and order to the frontier. I rarely paid attention during the service because I was always on the wrong page of the prayer book, leafing through it looking for stories and pictures. When my mother wasn’t looking, I would crawl down under the pews and look at people’s feet and study their shoes to see if they were shiny like Dad’s. A shiny pair of shoes indicated the wearer was a Mountie. Mum would haul me back to my seat by the scruff of my neck. My sister, Suzanne, always sat through the entire service quiet and pretty in her dress, while I crawled around in itchy wool pants on my hunt for shoes.

Being a Mountie, Dad was very fit. He worked out all the time, running three to five kilometres every day at noon. He trained with the RCMP’s emergency response team, and spent hours boxing and performing police holds in recruit training. In the summer, we would race each other down the sidewalk in front of our house. He would never let me win, but every time I lost, I would want to race again and again until I was exhausted. Dad would give me a head start of twice his height, but it never made much of a difference.

He would often take me to watch drill training. In the cavernous drill hall, buffalo heads were mounted everywhere under crossed lances. I loved hearing the sergeant major bawl commands at the recruits. The trainees would stamp their feet, turn in unison and march in perfect order. They looked tall, brave and stoic. I was in awe of the discipline and hard work that went into it. As I proudly polished Dad’s boots, I wondered if I would ever have the right stuff to serve the country one day.

We would move every few years when Dad got promoted. I was ten when we were posted to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and eleven when we transferred to Ottawa. It was in Ottawa that I got my first basketball hoop and ball, a major turning point in my life. This is where I realized that the harder I worked at home, the better I played in the game. Mum often came out and played with me. She would try to teach me the two-handed shot she had used in her high school basketball days in the fifties. Fortunately, my cousin Mickey, fifteen years my senior, lived nearby and would teach me how to shoot properly when she was gone. During pickup games with the neighbourhood kids, I perfected my jump shot. There was an oil spot about five metres from the left of the basket, and I made endless jump shots from there. At my high school games, I would try to get to that same position for a sure two points.

High school was where I really blossomed as an athlete, playing basketball, volleyball and track and field. I was one of the tallest in my grade, so I had an easy advantage in most sports. High school was also where I blossomed as a partier. Most Friday nights, we would get beer from the older kids, walk into the woods at the back of the school, sit on the case and drink it. Mum worked as a nurse’s aid in a nursing home. After a bachelor’s supper of minute steak and salad with Dad on nights she worked, I would go and pick her up. I hated the atmosphere in the nursing home. It reeked of urine and times gone by. I had trepidations about going in because I knew the place was going to be unpleasant. It smelled institutional—unwashed laundry, unwashed bodies, failed hope. Old people abandoned by their families and left to rot. The smell stayed in my nose the entire ride home. It was like being allergic to the smell of despair and abandonment.

I was being constantly volunteered to drive to basketball tournaments around the Ottawa Valley. We had a brown van that my buddy and I called the Propane-Powered Portable Passion Pit. It never actually saw any passion, but it fitted all my basketball teammates (who were in their prime for wanting passion, I suppose). We would drink pop and eat chips and boast how we would score at the game and hopefully with the girls. One year, I had to part ways with the van, thus depriving the team of both transportation and hope for passion. In that year, we went farther afield than Ottawa. Our team went all the way to Nova Scotia in what felt like a homecoming of sorts for me. Ecstatically happy to be back in the Nova Scotia rain and wind, I raced around like a madman while my teammates shivered inside.

By grade ten I knew I wanted to go to university. In my final year of high school, my parents and I would discuss my future at the supper table. After just a short stint at university Dad had joined the Mounties. Mum had gone straight to work in fashion at a department store (and she also modelled on TV). I don’t think they regretted their own choices, but they knew university could impact my life in a profound way. Still, I really didn’t know what I wanted to study. Like most RCMP brats, I toyed with the idea of joining the force, but ultimately I couldn’t reconcile myself to the life of constant motion between postings I had experienced in my younger days. In grade twelve, I serendipitously came across a copy of Joan Didion’s 1968 nonfiction masterpiece, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Her rich, poignant essays, on topics from the hippies of Haight-Ashbury to morality in the modern world, allowed me to see writing and journalism as art forms.

At the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I took a first-year course in great books as part of the Foundation Year Programme (FYP). The course ranged from the marble debating halls of ancient Greece to the machine guns of First World War. The first book of the program was Homer’s Odyssey, which I read in the summer prior to the start of the school year. The story of Odysseus, who made his way home after fighting in the Trojan War, spoke to me. I admired his fortitude in conquering any obstacle that stood in his way. The course gave me a world context for the first time in my life, and it allowed me to grasp esoteric ideas. It lengthened the reach of my mind to encompass the concepts of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers. The professors were passionate and fascinating, and many had studied at Oxford, including Dr. Robert Crouse, who was visibly moved when he lectured on Dante. Whenever he taught, the sunny lecture hall would be filled with former FYP students, eager to let themselves be captured by his eloquence again. He was mild-mannered and unassuming and entranced by literature. King’s was modelled on the Oxford/Cambridge, or Oxbridge, concept. Each residence had a don who lived in the first-floor suite. The don of my residence, Radical Bay, was a flamboyant Anglican priest named Father Hankey. He would sashay around the college grounds in a suit and academic robes, holding forth in the faint English accent he had acquired at Oxford.

After spending the summer after FYP scooping ice cream in Halifax, I was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from the King’s journalism program. To its credit, the university was renowned for the journalists it produced. Our professors taught us to trust our instincts in conducting interviews, and to pay attention to the little details that would colour our writing and make our readers feel like they were there. I was given an assignment to watch an object in the harbour for twenty-four hours and then write about it. I chose a splintery, beat-up old wharf. I pitched my tent on the walkway above it and carefully arranged my Thermos of coffee and my chocolate bars, grabbed my notebook and started watching at half hour intervals. I saw the sun set and rise over the wharf. I listened to the waves jostle the chains. When morning finally came and people started to wander by my tent and cast curious glances, I decided it was time to go. Bone-weary and bleary-eyed, I rolled up my tent, packed up my full book of notes and trudged back to King’s. That experience taught me to look at events from every angle because they change as your perspective changes.

At university I played varsity basketball and volleyball, but the first time I rowed, the other sports faded to oblivion. Before classes, at 5:30 a.m., our crew would gather in the administration building, yawning and with sleep in our eyes. We would run along the sidewalks and through a field where leaves were falling from the dew-covered trees. There was a loamy smell of wet earth all the way to the rowing club. We could feel the moisture of the air on our skin as we breathed in the cold sea air. Training began at 6 a.m., six days a week. We went out at dawn along the Northwest Arm, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes our oars wouldn’t touch the water at all as we rose on the crest of the breakers. The gurgle of bubbles down the wooden hull was a sign we were dipping our oars in perfect unison. This would elicit a sense of perfect rhythm all through my body that brought out goosebumps. We would warm up with twenty minutes of steady-state rowing at about half pressure and then take it up to just below full power for the next ten minutes. It was then that the burn started, as the lactic acid built up in my body. When the coxswain called for full power, I didn’t think I could muster any more strength, but my body obeyed every time. With the first full power stroke, the boat surged ahead. The coach, riding alongside in an aluminum boat, would bark, Long and strong. I kept this mantra running in my head for the entire practice. By the end, I was physically exhausted but mentally exhilarated. After training on the water, we would devour breakfast in the dining hall like starving dogs.

In a class on feature writing, our professor had us research story ideas and pitch them to the local paper. I had read that former slaves established a settlement in Halifax after the War of 1812. The thriving 150-year-old community of Africville was destroyed in the 1960s to make way for a bridge. But the culture itself couldn’t be destroyed, and former Africvillians fiercely clung to their traditions. I admired their tenacity and wanted to chronicle the injustices done to them by city hall, which had sent garbage trucks to move them out. The headline of my feature piece, which was published in the Chronicle Herald newspaper, was taken from a quote by a prominent former resident and activist: We Are Still Africvillians.

In my final year, fuelled by whiskey and cigars in the wee hours of the morning, I wrote a thesis called Brothers in Arms: The Military and Media in Halifax. I was inspired by the naval tradition of King’s and the East Coast fleet in the harbour. In one of my interviews, a retired navy captain told me that once a ship sailed over the horizon, only the families and the admirals paid any attention to it.

After my four years at King’s, I was convinced that I had all the tools for a writing career and was missing only a foreign correspondent adventure, preferably in some far-flung corner of the globe. My friend Mike, also a recent King’s graduate, was going to Japan to study martial arts, and I thought that would be a great place to get my career started. I felt excited to be going halfway around the world with no definite plans.

It took six months to get the working-holiday visa and passport. During that time, I read every book on Japan I could get my hands on. I bought a basic phrasebook to pick up a few words and key phrases. I didn’t want to appear ignorant. I wanted to become fluent in the culture and language because I thought it would impress the Japanese people to see a foreigner working so hard to learn about their country. In between studying about the country, its culture and its language, I donned a leather bowtie and white shirt for work as a busboy in a Greek restaurant. Before long, the white shirt became tainted with the stains of half-eaten Greek food. The six months flew by, but at last I was at the airport. I took most of my clothes because I knew it would be hard to find anything to fit my 6’4" frame in Japan. One-way ticket in hand, I left the comfort and stability of Canada behind me as I passed through security.

All through the flight, my mind churned. I wondered if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. Most of my friends had jobs with small community newspapers and were building their journalistic careers the traditional way. I wondered if I would skulk home with my head hung low after crashing into a brick wall of totally alien culture and language. I didn’t sleep at all on the flight. I tried to practise my rudimentary Japanese with the flight attendants, but they just smiled and nodded at me. Hours later, the plane landed at Narita airport, outside of Tokyo. I was to meet Mike at an inn in the northeast part of the city. Two bus rides later, I got off in front of the only English sign for miles around. After locating the inn, I checked in and was taken to the small room Mike and I would be temporarily sharing. Mike had arrived in Japan only the day before. That night, we went out to a pub to celebrate our arrival. We quickly learned that the Japanese word for two beers was nihon. The next morning, we went for our first breakfast: a small piece of fish, a bowl of rice and a bowl of brown liquid called miso soup. We drank litres of water because of the salt in the breakfast and too many nihons the previous night. After breakfast, we strolled around the neighbourhood and grabbed the only English newspapers we could find. A few days later, Mike would be heading north to pursue his martial arts training and I would be left on my own in Tokyo, a city of thirteen million people.

It was inevitable that my first job would be as an English teacher. When I went to meet my potential employer, a short Japanese man approached me, gave a slight bow and introduced himself: Hello Greene-san, I am Kawakami. We shook hands and he gave me his business card. The cards determine at a quick glance who is senior, and consequently, the deference to be shown by the length and depth of the bow of the junior.

He asked me to start a week later. My job was to teach mid-level English by repetition to adults at the company. I would read sentences over and over and have the students follow along. At the end of the day, I was sick of speaking English and wanted to think in French or any other language. I dreaded the thought of the ninety-minute ritual of swaying in a packed train carriage back to my apartment. My only consolations were the cleanliness of the Japanese and the fact that I was above the average armpit level. In the heat of the Japanese summer, my suit became rather pungent. When I got home, I tore it off and hung it outside to dry out and freshen up for the following day. This system worked well until I went out one morning to get my fresh suit and found only the hanger. For days after, I watched for a much smaller facsimile of my suit walking around the neighbourhood.

After only a few months of teaching English, I was bored and frustrated. Luckily, I came across an advertisement offering a position with one of the English daily newspapers. I was ecstatic when I got the job, which was to edit articles that had been translated from the larger parent newspaper. This was my first real break into a newsroom. I always kept an eye out for feature articles I could write. Somehow I heard about a homeless quarter in Tokyo called Sanya. I couldn’t believe that a prosperous nation like Japan could have homeless people. What intrigued me most was that all the men were from one generation: those who had worked preparing Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics. My article started with If the wind is right—or wrong, as the case may be—you can smell Sanya long before you see it. The only homeless quarter in Tokyo emits a pong of stinky feet, wet dog and asphalt which assails the senses as you emerge from the station. This was my first published piece in Japan. The editor sent me a rare memo of congratulations. Unbelievably, I was the first foreign journalist to write about the homeless. I felt my story didn’t do justice to the issue, however, or to the men themselves. I knew that I had only scratched the surface, and that a first-hand account was necessary.

During my time in Japan, I joined a rugby team and met a bunch of Australian guys. One day they invited me to go on a dive trip to the Philippines, but they were leaving in two weeks, which didn’t allow me enough time to get a visa. I had the time off work and didn’t want to waste it, so I booked passage on a freighter bound south for Okinawa, the birthplace of karate. The freighter was a cheaper and more adventurous way of travelling than flying. The cabins were spartan and the food terrible, but I loved to stand at the rail and breathe in the salt air. The trip took roughly three days, and I saw no land on the way down. It felt like I had dropped off the face of the earth. I was the only English-speaking passenger on board, so I spent the majority of the time reading and sleeping. I was happy to finally see Okinawa, which had been the scene of fierce battles during the Second World War; the scars were still visible but healing slowly. The agony of the islanders was obvious in some of the sights, such as one sandstone room with shrapnel pockmarks on the wall. Japanese propaganda had depicted the Americans as flesh-eaters, so when they began battling for the island, one desperate mother gathered her children around her and pulled the pin on a hand grenade, splattering their bodies all over the wall. American soldiers made the grisly discovery after defeating the Japanese.

I was staying in a hostel on the harbour and would often stroll through pineapple and mango plantations that had been rebuilt after the island was devastated. There were remains of machine-gun pillboxes and concrete bunkers strewn the length and breadth of the island. The Americans had landed in the south and fought their way north, taking huge casualties. It felt odd to be on the northern tip of the island, where the Japanese had made their last stand with their backs literally to the sea.

All too soon, my seven days of landlubbing were over. On the slow boat back to Tokyo, I thought about the heavy American military presence on Japan and what it must mean to be a modern-day soldier training day in and day out for a conflict you hope never comes. I thought about the island’s legacy of death and destruction, not really knowing why I had gone there. As waves lapped the ship, I thought about the brutal history of a desperate war.

When I returned to Tokyo, I decided to start freelancing. I had heard of a famous Canadian writer and naturalist named C.W. Nicol who lived up north in Nagano Prefecture. I had heard he had a direct manner that did not fit in Japan, where direct talk was considered rude or tactless. His nickname was Aka Oni, or Red Devil, because of the scorn and anger he expressed