Hillier's memoir shows general fought on many fronts
Last Updated: Monday, October 19, 2009 | 7:26 PM ETCanada's former top soldier says in his new memoir that he argued for Canadian troops deployed to Afghanistan to be kept in the relative safety of Kabul, and he rebuffs claims he was responsible for getting the country mired in the bloody battlefields of Kandahar.
The decision to send Canadian soldiers to southern Afghanistan was largely made before Rick Hillier became the country's military commander, the former chief of defence staff says in a provocative new memoir, A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War, which is now available.
Blunt, hard-hitting and often cheeky, Hillier lays out his side of the story through the tumultuous early years of the war, including his strained relationship with former defence minister Gordon O'Connor and an attempt by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office to limit his public profile.
Book Description
In the
summer of 2008, General Rick Hillier retired as Chief of the Defence
staff of the Canadian Forces. You could almost hear the sigh of relief
in Ottawa as Canada’s most popular, and most controversial, military
leader since the second World War left a role in which he’d been as
frank, unpredictable and resolutely apolitical as any of his
predecessors.
Born and raised in Newfoundland, Hillier joined the military as a young man and quickly climbed the ranks. He played a significant role in such domestic challenges as the ice storm that paralyzed much of eastern Ontario and Quebec in 1998, and quickly became a player on the international scene, commanding an American corps in Texas and a multinational NATO task force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But it was his role as General Rick Hillier, Canada’s Chief of the Defence staff, that defined him as a Canadian icon.
In Afghanistan, Canada faced its first combat losses since the Korean War, with every casualty becoming front page news. A country formerly ambivalent, or even angry, about its role in the conflict suddenly became gripped by the drama unfolding not only in a war zone halfway around the world but in unfriendly conference rooms in Ottawa. There, as everywhere, Hillier pulled no punches, demanding more funding, more troops and more appreciation for the women and men fighting a war on foreign soil. This hard-hitting, honest account of Hillier’s role—told in his own words—will be one of the most important books published in Canada this decade.( Mosaicbooks)
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