Soldiers Made Me Look Good

by Lewis MacKenzie

  “Sir, the lads have just found out that the seventh game with the Soviets is scheduled for the twenty-sixth, and that’s the final day of our patrol exercise.” The CSM was looking worried. “The game is in the morning, so we will definitely miss it. The men want to know if there is any way we can reschedule by a day or two.”

  I replied, “I’m sorry, but an essential part of the exercise is the helicopter extraction the night of the twenty-sixth. That can’t be changed, so I can’t change the exercise. We’ll just have to suck it up and accept that we will miss the game. The way things are going, it probably won’t matter much anyway.”

  During the next two weeks, we didn’t just train for my pet patrol exercise. In order to be ready for the colonel’s exercise, we marched, dug, fired our weapons, attacked, withdrew and practised the defence—all good infantry training, and all the more so if done in wet, miserable conditions and with a minimum of sleep. The relationship between me and the soldiers of my company became frosty, to say the least. I could tell that they were well and truly pissed off at me for scheduling an exercise during game seven of the series.

  On Friday, September 22, the nation received another stake through its heart. We lost 5–4 to the Soviets, putting us down three games to one with a tie. We would have to win the remaining three games to win the series, which seemed about as likely as my soldiers dropping their grudge against me. We were scheduled to depart our patrol assembly base at last light on Sunday. That meant that we were able to watch game six earlier in the day. Down 1–0 early in the second period and knowing that a loss would give the series win to the Soviets, our spirits were rock-bottom. Then, magically, in the space of two minutes Canada scored three quick goals, the first two by Dennis Hall and Yvon Cournoyer separated by a mere five seconds, and Paul Henderson’s coming less than a minute later. The entire country erupted with joy at the realization that our team had dodged the bullet of elimination and still had a chance to win the series if it won the next two games. But every eye in the company turned on me as if to say, “You son of a bitch. We’ll be on your stupid patrol exercise, flat on our face on the ground in the middle of nowhere, when game seven is played.” The phrase “If looks could kill” was never closer to the truth.

  I had briefed the patrol that the tough part of the exercise would start when we reached the far side of the Battle River and took up our position on the bluffs overlooking the road where we would spring our ambush. We would have to remain undetected for about forty hours. That meant absolutely no noise whatsoever, including no talking. We would send simple signals via the wires connecting each of us by the wrist. If someone had to defecate he would advise his buddy on each side of him, release the wire, crawl backward twenty yards to the rear in the forest and, without standing up at any time, do his business. Urination would be done in place. For many soldiers, in those simpler times, the restriction on smoking was the major challenge. Many of them had never gone even a few hours without a nicotine hit, let alone abstaining over two days. We would carry no food other than a loaf of bread with peanut butter between each slice. We would place the prepared loaf in the bottom part of our mess tin, place the cover on top of the loaf, stand on it, compressing the bread to the thickness of a book, and, presto, we would have a survival ration, which along with a container of water would keep us going for two days.

  We left our base camp at last light, and our infiltration was uneventful. The Battle River’s water level was low for that time of year and we were able to cross on foot, with water only up to our waist. On reaching the river bank, half of each platoon, covered by the other half, took off their boots and socks and kept them out of the water during the crossing. This was not to accommodate comfort but to avoid making the squishing noise of ninety-plus pairs of boots, which would be easily heard by the enemy force as we attempted to sneak through the woods on the far side.

  By midnight we had reached our layback position. It was ideally suited for our task. We took up a position on the edge of a thickly wooded area. We were facing north towards an open area with few bushes for cover, so it would be hard for anyone to surprise us from that direction. It would also be an ideal place for the helicopters to land at night in two days. To our sides and rear was thick forest, which would keep us well hidden. A dirt track ran from right to left across our front, neatly dividing the open area, and off to our far right, about one hundred yards away was the main north-south road, probably the enemy’s main supply route. That would be the site for our ambush in about forty hours.

  As the clouds cleared, the temperature dropped drastically overnight. Everyone was chilled to the bone, being soaking wet from the waist down. We travelled light and so did not have the luxury of a sleeping bag or a blanket. During the hours of darkness, we rotated sentry duty so that at least twenty-five per cent of our force was alert at any one time. The following day, the Alberta autumn sun was pleasantly hot and we lay still on our stomachs, keeping an eye on the open area to our front. A few sentries watched our flanks and rear. Occasionally I saw someone crawling back to relieve himself. We could hear and see the dust of vehicle traffic on the main road to our right, but the track to our front remained deserted. We nibbled on our peanut butter patties at our own pace, and they were not in fact too bad.

  The problem with lying absolutely still in one position for hours on end is that when you have to move quickly to, say, deal with a surprise encounter with the enemy, your body can become boardlike and just won’t move—no matter how young and fit you are. It’s possible to minimize the negative effects by flexing as many body joints and muscles as possible at least three or four times per hour. Fingers, wrists, shoulders, back, hips, knees, ankles and feet can all be exercised without much body movement, which might give your position away. So when it came time for me to defecate, the crawl to the rear was actually a relief for my stiff joints. On the other hand, completing the requirement while lying on my side made me thankful that I was alone.

  Spending the second night on our stomachs was a real endurance contest, made all the more so by the knowledge that every one of my soldiers was thinking about having to miss the seventh game against the Russians. Face-off was scheduled for 9 AM the next morning, and just about every Canadian, except for an underprivileged company commanded by a bull-headed individual and hiding in a forest west of the Battle River valley, would be watching.

  The day dawned dark and dreary, matching the mood around me. The compressed loaf of bread, now the size of a deck of cards, gave itself up to the demands of breakfast. After a few stretching exercises, we all settled down to another silent, boring day on our stomachs, testing Che Guevara’s patience principle.

  At 8:55 AM, we were startled to see a two-and-a-half-ton truck enter the clearing to our front on the track leading from the main road. It stopped about a hundred yards directly in front of us and started to back up. It continued to reverse until it was only fifteen yards in front of me. I had prearranged that four quick tugs on the wire connecting each soldier to his buddies on each side was a signal that they should crawl to my position. I gave the signal, and five minutes later every man in the company was silently huddled around me in a blob of ninety-plus soldiers.

  The truck’s engine stopped. The driver and the co-driver dismounted, and then, in a scene like the one in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, the tarp covering the back of the vehicle was rolled up to expose not a threatening machine gun, as had happened in the movie, but a twenty-six-inch Zenith colour TV. It was 8:58 AM, so my timing wasn’t bad.

  The rest, as they say, is history. Boris Mikhailov kicked Canadian defenceman Gary Bergman during a fight when Bergman drove Mikhailov’s head into the chicken wire above the boards (no Lexan panels in Moscow in those days), and the teams squared off sans gloves. The nation cheered—silence from our company. With minutes to go in a tie game, Paul Henderson beat four Russian players, slipped the puck through the legs of one defenceman, picked it up on the other side, fell forward and flicked
the puck over Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak’s shoulder for the 4–3 win. All of Canada went wild, except for the forced and eerie silence from our company—the only people in Canada who couldn’t join the cheering. Mind you, I did see about a hundred shit-eating grins. Two tugs on the wire and some hand signals, and everyone crawled back to their positions.

  That night, we launched the ambush in a driving rainstorm. Paul Argue led his helicopters into our pick-up zone under cover of darkness and flew us back to our base camp. The wash-up/ debrief took place in the welcoming warmth of a large, heated marquee tent. The first thing that happened was that two of the smokers who had gone without a cigarette for more than forty-eight hours fainted from their first puff. A few beers later, the stories got better. It was only two days to the final eighth game, and we’d be able to watch it in the comfort of a heated building. We cheered louder than anyone when Henderson did it again, scoring the winning goal in the final seconds of the game, more than making up for our forced silence in game seven.

  I haven’t recounted this potentially defining career moment because it had a positive impact on my bosses. It showed both me and my soldiers that they were the most important factor in any success I might have, then or in the future. Without their support, I’d have no career. They might have doubted my commitment to them in those few weeks, but hopefully, they wouldn’t doubt it in the future.

  11: Segue

  “Canada’s first female general, L. MacKenzie, to head up combat trials for women.”

  THE OTTAWA CITIZEN, AUGUST 1997

  THE STORIES TOLD in the previous chapters, of the “luck” that probably had a positive influence on my military career, occurred between 1960 and 1973. Many of the events that took place between that time and my post-military career are related in my first book, Peacekeeper: The Road to Sarajevo, and I will not retell those stories here. It may, however, be useful to describe the thirteen appointments I held between 1973 and 1993, to relate a few incidents not mentioned in Peacekeeper and to make some clarifications that benefit from hindsight.

  In May 1973, a helicopter carrying Canadian Captain Charles Laviolette, a member of the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) monitoring the 1972 Paris Peace Accord’s ceasefire, was shot down over Vietnam. The captain’s death sparked outrage in Canada, and many people, including veterans, called for Canada’s withdrawal from the ICCS. I wrote a letter to the Calgary Herald indicating that if the mission was proper, we should stay—after all, accepting risk is what soldiers get paid for—and I indicated that I would be prepared to go to Vietnam “tomorrow.” I was sent there a week later. Just a coincidence? I had, in fact, volunteered months earlier.

  On returning to Calgary from Vietnam, I found that things were heating up in the Middle East. On October 6, 1973, Egypt attacked Israel across the Suez Canal, and the Yom Kippur War was underway. Shortly after the ceasefire on October 26, the United Nations deployed a peacekeeping force to the Sinai. Its logistic support, provided by Canada and Poland, was based at the Cairo horse-racing track, next to the airport. A month later there was some very negative publicity in Canada regarding the leadership and living conditions at the Canadian base, and I was assigned to our contingent in Cairo to report directly back to National Defence HQ in Ottawa and do what I could to improve morale.

  I returned from Cairo in April 1974, having been warned that I would take over as the brigade major for Canada’s western-based army brigade. The brigade major’s position was the most-sought-after appointment for any major, as it had proven to be a launching pad for the careers of many senior officers. A month before I was to assume the position, the army reorganized the rank structure of its four brigade headquarters, and the brigade major’s positions, now renamed “Senior Staff Officers Operations” (eeech!), would be occupied by lieutenant-colonels. As a consolation prize, I was posted to the Canadian Forces HQ located in Lahr, West Germany, as the executive assistant to the commander, Major-General Jim Quinn, a veteran of the Italian Campaign in the Second World War. I remained there for two years, working in my second year for Major General Duncan A. MacAlpine, who had been our Canadian commander in Vietnam a few years earlier.

  As I neared the end of my executive assistant duties, I was told I would be promoted and would take command of 3rd Mechanized Commando, an infantry battalion just up the road from Lahr, near Baden-Baden. It too was a much-sought-after posting, and I was delighted. About two months before I was to take command, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jimmy Dextraze (the same officer who was commandant of the Infantry School in 1959 when I was in officer training) arrived from Canada. With no warning, he announced that 3rd Mechanized Commando would be disbanded as part of the downsizing of the Canadian commitment to NATO. Wow! With two prime postings in a row self-destructing within months of my scheduled arrival, I was feeling somewhat vulnerable.

  This time the consolation prize was a posting to Rome and six months attending the NATO Defence College. Not too bad, I hear you say. Following that, it got even better, as I returned to Calgary to take command of 1 PPCLI, the battalion I had served with as operations officer and company commander. The battalion served in Cyprus during the summer of 1978—my third tour on the island.

  Until the 1990s, anyone who had commanded a battalion-sized unit as a lieutenant-colonel entered an extensive period that did not offer much opportunity to lead soldiers. There was only one command appointment for an army colonel, and that was the Airborne Regiment. I had volunteered every year for a decade to serve with the regiment but had never made it. As a result, it was unlikely that I would be considered as its commander— even if I did, in the future, make the rank of full colonel. I was posted to the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College in Toronto as a member of the faculty for the one-year course preparing young majors for more senior rank. It was the longest posting of my career, ending after three full years. By that time I had been married for twelve years, and my daughter, Kimm, was eleven. My wife, Dora, and I felt so much at home that we bought our first home then.

  The year 1982–83 was spent at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The close to three hundred students were the top two per cent of lieutenant colonels in the U.S. Army; sixteen of us were full colonels from abroad, referred to as “international fellows.” It was an enjoyable and productive year. We dealt with strategic planning at the highest level and stayed fit with everyday sports periods. I made many valuable contacts that I would turn to over the next ten years.

  My first warning of a posting after Carlisle was as the director of infantry at National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ). This would be my first posting to Ottawa, as far away from soldiers as it was possible to get, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Dora and I went to Ottawa before my War College course was completed and bought our second house, having made a few bucks on the first one. Then, not for the first time, my posting was changed. The commander of the army, with its headquarters in St. Hubert, Quebec, was none other than Lieutenant-General Charlie Belzile, who, sixteen years earlier when he was Major Belzile, had helped me get to Libya with my British army battalion. General Charlie thought that my relationship with my future boss in Ottawa would be like oil and water, so he had me reassigned to his headquarters and put me in charge of army training, which would include organizing Rendezvous 85 in Wainwright, Alberta, the biggest army exercise in Canada since the Second World War.

  Two years later, once again with General Charlie’s input, I was posted to NDHQ as the colonel in charge of the career management of all officers in the Canadian Armed Forces up to and including the rank of major. It was to be a two-year posting, but early into the second year, while waiting for a military plane to return me to Canada from a meeting in the United Kingdom, I was called to the phone in the waiting lounge. It was Perrin Beatty, the minister of national defence. “Colonel, I have good news for you and other news,” he started. “The good news is that you are promoted to brigadier-general, effective now,
and the other news is that I’m putting you in charge of conducting trials to determine if we should permit women to serve in the combat occupations of the Canadian Armed Forces.”

  I arrived home in Ottawa that Friday evening. There was a brown envelope in my mailbox. It held two brigadier-general’s rank badges but no general officer’s hat badge. The media had got wind of the story regarding women being considered for the Forces’ combat trades: navy—both surface and sub-surface; air force—pilot; army—artillery, armour, infantry and combat engineers. Concurrent with the announcement of my promotion was that of Canada’s first female to make general officer rank— Sheila Hellstrom. The Ottawa Citizen assumed that a female would be put in charge of the combat trials for women and titled a front-page article in its Monday edition, “Canada’s first female general, L. MacKenzie, to head up combat trials for women”! As I arrived at work, a few of my friends started to call me “Louise.” (A few of them still do.) To make matters worse, I assumed the erroneous sexual designation had gone national in the media. When my mother phoned from Nova Scotia later in the day, she said, “I just saw the paper. Why didn’t you call and tell me you had made general?”

  I couldn’t resist; I replied, “I was waiting for news of the sex change to die down.”

  There was a very long pause at the other end of the line. I waited to hear something other than heavy breathing before blurting out, “Didn’t the article say I was Canada’s first female general officer?”

  “No,” she whispered, now totally confused. It took me a while to reassure her that everything was still in place. (I discovered later that only the Citizen had made the mistake.)

  I spent only part of 1987 preparing for the women-in-combat trials, before the Canadian Human Rights Commission blessedly rescued me from the job and made the idea of a trial redundant when it declared: Thou shalt not discriminate by sex regarding employment opportunities in the Canadian Forces—except in submarines. I thought the caveat was ridiculous; soldiers are much closer together in a slit trench than they are in a submarine, but even that restriction was lifted a few years later. The trials never would have happened anyway, as we had nowhere near enough female volunteers to create a cohort to qualify for a scientific trial.