A Devastating Event on Duty

Heroes Remember - Canadian Armed forces

A Devastating Event on Duty

Transcript

An event, of course, I can tell you is the 20th of March 2009 at around 8 in the morning we got up. We were in an operation and we got up, we got into our vehicle, rolled down a mountain and then one of our vehicles hit an IED. It was the vehicle on my back and so I was in the LAV at the time, troop carrier vehicle, and so the ramp came down and then I saw the coyote upside down and in very bad shape and then it’s on, you know, you are thinking what’s up? So you go out, we were five in the back of the vehicle. We went out, I walked down to find out one of our guys were killed. The vehicle fell on him and so he was dead there. And then I am looking for the driver and the driver was nowhere to be found so the driver got, I guess exploded. So he was nowhere to be found, so that was a hard day. That was a hard day. There was three people badly injured too so you got to put that behind your mind, you know, the two that passed on and you have to… this is really hard to talk about. And so you have to go and help the ones that are injured so that’s what we did. I mean we did the first aid on the people, you know, get them down for the helicopter to come and pick them up. And all the way you are thinking too, sometimes there is an IED but there are secondary IED’s, device to hit the first responders. But anyway, so ya that’s what we did so we got the injured down the hill. It lasted for me maybe twenty minutes in between the hit and the helicopter to come and pick them up and we get relief from the quick reaction force and stuff like that. But it’s a twenty minute that to me it seemed like an hour. I couldn’t believe when I looked back and I got to know the timings and stuff and I was thinking, twenty minutes is so short but it seemed so long. So that was a sad day, of course, losing two of our guys and then you have to go on. The mission is not finished. We had another two months to go so it makes for a hard two months because from there for me it got tougher, my mental health got… it affected me a lot and right away because it was a really harsh moment.

Description

Ms. Dupuis shares an emotional experience while on patrol where two of her comrades are killed.

Natacha Dupuis

Ms. Natacha Dupuis was born May 25, 1979 in Longueuil, Quebec. Throughout her younger years, she always had a desire to join the military. In 1997, at age 18, Ms. Dupuis joined the reserves and with family support and encouragement, she enlisted with Armoured Corp as a tanker. After receiving her basic training in Montreal as well as completed the Crewman course in Valcartier, Ms. Dupuis moved to Vancouver and joined the British Columbia Regiment. There she took an advance reconnaissance course and a few years later joined the Regular Force accepting more training on the Leopard tank and completed the Coyote Gunner/Driver course. Ms. Dupuis was deployed to Bosnia and twice to Afghanistan. Suffering from PTSD, Ms. Dupuis was medically released from the military. She now has a positive focus on her future and maintains pride for her service years. She is involved with the Canada Army Run and is a proud member of the Soldier On organization.

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