Protecting Troops on the Ground

Our secondary job was troops and contact support so on the ground if you are engaged by any enemy you have the option called five liner. So you go into the net and you press the five line. You tell them where your location is, the enemy location, the type of fire you would like to receive and I believe the bearing you want us to execute the target on or prosecute the target on. So it’s really quick and it’s really neat because when this happened the pilots would always stay very, very, very calm. The troops on the ground sometimes their voices were naturally elevated and the pilots and we all go quiet and we listen in the comms and I would be there with my gun like getting really hyped up and excited because I would be hearing the troops on the ground and they would be calling five line and I would be getting super excited and then we would have to ask permission to leave the Chinook because primary is Chinook, secondary then is the troops and they always gave us permission. Sometimes in the evening too, a lot of times there were little fires and you could see the shadows of families having dinner and communing together but then other times there is nothing and that's when you knew like, okay, hyper vigilance, watching because there is probably someone digging and I have to look out and possibly I can find that person and lay an ID. I can find them before they lay it and hurt somebody. That’s what I was always looking for because my role was different. I wasn’t in the troops, I wasn’t on the ground. I was preventative and reactionary is what I took my role as.

From the air, Larimee describes his role in advising the troops of enemy location.

Arthur Larimee

Mr. Arthur Larimee was born January 23, 1986 in Edmonton, Alberta. Growing up in Alberta and being involved in sports, Arthur always understood the importance of camaraderie and with this, was drawn to the idea of joining the military. With the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, Arthur trained as door gunner. He was a weapons technician and deployed twice to Afghanistan. After his second deployment Arthur left the military and together with his spouse Brittany, a fellow PPCLI, fulfilled his aspirations of opening a gym with the desire to have a place for countless service men and women to come together for support both mentally and physically, maintaining that bond of friendship experienced during service time. He and his wife have opened a clothing line and are proud entrepreneurs of the Iron King Gym Ltd in Kingston, Ontario.