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I spent almost six months on four tours (short reporter-type tours of about six weeks each) in Kandahar over the last half of 2006, and later wrote a book about the Canadians I met and got to know a little.

It was easily the most significant experience of my life.

Much of the art in my house shows that.

I have two proper Louie Palu photographs (Palu became one of the great photographers of that war, and was with me on my first trip, when we both worked for The Globe and Mail) and a collection of lesser Palu prints.

These are of so-called rock and shitter paintings, drawings and graffiti done by Afghans and Canadians respectively on local rocks and plywood loos. My favourite of the lot is from a loo, and reads, “I wish my girlfriend was as dirty as this place!!”, with the answering scrawl of a smart-ass, “I wish your girlfriend was dirty too.”

I have a giant numbered war print of a Gertrude Kearns’ portrait. Kearns is for my money (and she has some considerable amount of it) the best war artist of her generation. Her show of this work, called The Art of Command, was most recently in Calgary.

I also have in my office a large map of the Task Force Kandahar battle space, snapped up on my behalf by a military friend when it was declassified.

I digress, but the point is that my time with soldiers was and remains important to me.

I never found the troops to be uneasy, awkward or intimidated by reporters. Rather the opposite: They were ridiculously open, including about any army’s propensity to screw things up, and they swore with enviable proficiency, if not quite as well as I do.