Photo: Adrian MacNair, Oct. 2, 2010

When I first got invited to Afghanistan by the DND, I almost didn’t read the email. It was all in capital letters and marked urgent, the modus operandi of the Nigerian banker. After I opened it and read the contents, I almost wanted to pretend I didn’t read the email because the idea was terrifying.

I’d been writing about Afghanistan for a couple of years from the safe confines of my home, a veritable keyboard warrior who could come to no harm beyond the odd coffee spill. When I was actually presented with the opportunity to go and see the place for myself I felt like a barking dog who had suddenly had his leash broken — I stopped barking for a moment and turned around to see whether I could tie the leash back up.

My sense of foreboding was melodramatic. I envisioned bullets and bombs and harrowing moments of duck and cover. I literally had no idea what to expect and the DND wasn’t going to hold my hand and telling me there was absolutely no way I could be harmed.

The truth is that getting harmed was part of the risk of the invitation, and getting past that mental stumbling block was the hardest part of the decision. Only once I had come to peace with the idea of dying could I put it behind me and simply focus on the opportunity.

My fears, while entirely understandable, were disproportionately unfounded in relation to reality. Although Afghanistan is a dangerous place, the truest thing that can be said for reporters (and a little less so for soldiers) is that you’re statistically safe.

I had imagined this place where bullets and rockets flew overhead and the roads were strewn with IEDs. And I suppose that’s what a lot of Canadians probably imagine based on media reports and quick glimpses through the rare footage NATO doesn’t consider a breach of operational security.

The truth is that the military base of Kandahar Airfield is so vast that living there feels a lot like going to summer camp, only the perimeter fencing is kilometres away from the centre, and there are multiple perimeter fences. When we went out in the Cougar AFV, we had been driving for about 10 minutes when a soldier informed me we were still inside the wire.

The (perhaps false) sense of security one gets in KAF is so palpable that within a day my fears had ebbed away and been exchanged with a strong desire to do something that involved being on the other side of that wire. My previous morbidity had been supplanted by a need to get outside of the immediate safety of 40,000 armed soldiers and see what was going on.

DND had scheduled to have us flown in by helicopter to the forward operating base in Kandahar City, Camp Nathan Smith. As the logistical difficulties of securing a helicopter for a VIP tour shifted, we went from being told we were going to fly there in a Black Hawk to the choice of going in LAVs.

The number one killer of NATO forces, by far, has been improvised explosive devices buried under the road by Taliban fighters at three in the morning. The sudden opportunity to jump into an armoured vehicle and face that same risk as the soldiers brought me temporarily to that initial panic I felt when I first received the email from DND.

The panic lasted for a few brief moments and then I turned to the group and said I wanted to do it. One of the other journalists was also quick to sign on, while the other two were mulling it over. The Globe and Mail journalist would need permission from home, since he wasn’t initially authorized to do road travel outside KAF.

When we geared up for the trip, I felt nervous excitement. My military escorts grabbed ammo from the depot and loaded their weapons. When we met up with the convoy there were at least 20 soldiers who would be travelling to the FOB. It was then that I realized this whole squad was going to act as the protective team for the VIPs — us.

This was significantly different than being an embedded journalist observing soldiers going on missions. I didn’t want somebody to get hurt because they had to ferry a bunch of journalists to a powerpoint presentation in CNS. The very thought made me queasy.

But the moment that really changed my perspective on this trip took place while riding in the Cougar. The rear of the AFV was manned by a 23-year-old male soldier and a 20-year-old female reservist from Nova Scotia. She had joined the military at 16 and this was already her fourth year. A 20-year-old woman (with pigtails, when she took off her helmet) whose job was to kill anything that tried to attack this convoy. Her job.

I always felt like I could relate to the soldiers as a working class kind of guy, but I never really put myself in their shoes until that ride. All of the worrying and sleepless nights and fear over a four-day trip to Kandahar, and these kids are putting in six month tours. Some of the older ones are on their third and fourth tour, the most senior guys were even in Kabul in 2002.

The thing is, even though I know the soldiers respected the journalists for going outside the wire, it isn’t possible for us to understand what they do by living one day in their shoes. It isn’t possible to do parachute journalism, interview a few soldiers, ride in an armoured car and then fly back to Canada a week later. The embedded journalists — like Matthew Fisher, Louie Palu, Jake Wright — who actually stay for a while and get a sense of what it’s like are the ones experiencing the real Afghanistan. I saw but a shadow.

But what inspired me was seeing our professional soldiers, some as young as the 20-year-old in our convoy, carrying on inside the military bubble of operational procedure. Despite the bad press at home, the lack of interest from regular Canadians and the difficult working conditions, we have nearly 3,000 Canadian soldiers doing their jobs in an efficient and professional way. Day in and day out, until they’re finally called home.