In somber routine, NATO soldiers at southern Afghan base salute coffin of Canadian soldier

NATO soldiers bid farewell to slain Canadian

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — About 1,500 NATO soldiers saluted on Wednesday as pallbearers, some tearful, carried the coffin of a Canadian soldier slain in a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan toward a military transport plane for the journey home.

“Trooper Larry Rudd, at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember you,” said Carol Bateman, an Anglican priest in the Canadian military, reciting a line from “For the Fallen,” a World War I-era poem. A soldier slow-stepped behind Rudd’s coffin, blowing a dirge on bagpipes.

Elaborate farewells, or ramp ceremonies, for slain soldiers are routine at the Kandahar base, hub of the campaign against the Taliban, and a reminder of the cost of the war. Rudd was the 146th member of the Canadian military to die in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Britain has lost nearly 300 people, and the number of U.S. military deaths is approaching the 1,000 mark.

Rudd died Monday when a concealed bomb struck the vehicle he was driving while on patrol near Salavat village, 12 miles (20 kilometers) southwest of Kandahar city, the focus of a major coalition operation in coming months. The village is in Panjwayi district, where Canadian troops fought a major battle against insurgents in 2006, but did not have the numbers to secure many areas that they cleared.

Canada plans to end military operations in Afghanistan in 2011, despite U.S. hopes of an extension. It has had robust roles in peacekeeping in the Balkans and elsewhere, but public opinion is divided over the troubled mission and its grim cycle of combat deaths.

In a measure of Canada’s long road in Afghanistan, this reporter covered a ramp ceremony at Kandahar Air Field on April 19, 2002, for four Canadian soldiers who died when a U.S. F-16 jet fighter mistakenly bombed them during a nighttime training operation.

Since then, Canada has won praise from NATO partners for its dogged role in combat and reconstruction efforts in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban’s base. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, however, has said Canada does not have the appetite to keep soldiers beyond 2011.

Unlike American forces, the Canadians allow media to cover ramp ceremonies, though they do not permit reporting on the number of soldiers injured in a specific attack for fear the information could be useful to insurgents.

Top commanders deliver highly personalized tributes. Canadian Col. Simon Hetherington described Rudd, an entry-level soldier in the Royal Canadian Dragoons, as a “gentle giant,” and comrades remembered him as a lover of chewing tobacco who was raised by a single mother and his grandmother.

After arrival at a military base in Canada, Rudd’s body will be transported in a hearse along the Highway of Heroes to the coroner’s office in Toronto. Crowds often gather at overpasses when convoys carrying slain soldiers drive down the road.