Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/171618
h ssion BY CATHERINE CLEMENT | PHOTOS CLAUDETTE CARRACEDO AND RICK MADONIK Photo: Rick Madonik/Getstock/Toronto Star p14-17_Mission-Mentor.indd 15 January 15, 2006: a Sunday in the dead of winter. But for Canadian soldier Captain Trevor Greene this was a winter day like nothing he had experienced before. Rather than cold winds and blankets of white snow, the winter he stepped into was blazing hot and dusty – a monochromatic landscape of brown. The 41-year-old had just arrived in Afghanistan, stepping off the plane at the Kandahar air base and straight into a barn-sized, corrugated-metal building with holes in the roof from rocketpropelled grenades. He was attending his first briefing. "It felt like walking into a sauna, but with lots of dust," Greene recalls. Despite the hostile surroundings, the need to wear hot, protective gear and lugging around heavy weapons, Greene was enthusiastic about his mission. He had come not to fight, but to help Afghans rebuild – one village at a time. A former journalist, Greene was fulfilling a lifelong dream to do humanitarian work with the armed forces. He would be forced to leave Afghanistan a mere 48 days later – his brain split in half by an axe – unconscious, clinging to life and seemingly defeated, his mission cut short. Six years later, I'm perched at a dining room table in a modern, tidy little house outside Nanaimo. Greene is sitting across from me in a wheelchair, good-looking, fit and alert. Debbie, his pretty wife with a megawatt smile, is running errands and popping in and out of the conversation while their daughter Grace gets ready for ballet lessons. I've read the many newspaper articles and watched the documentaries about what happened to Greene on his last day in Afghanistan. It's a story familiar to many Canadians. It was March 4, 2006, and Greene and his platoon were meeting with village elders. It was their third meeting that day, although this one was not planned. The villagers and soldiers gathered in one of the few shady spots available. Spring 2012 I Vancouver Foundation l page 15 6/6/12 10:55:00 AM