Afghanistan

Following the Korean War, Canada’s military shifted from a combat role to a peacekeeping focus. Over the decades, the Pats were dropped into tense conflicts in more than a dozen countries — Cyprus, Bosnia, Rwanda and Croatia among them.

Following the attacks on New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and the beginning of the battle in Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers were once again thrust into combat.

Soldiers from the regiment were sent into Afghanistan in early 2002, working closely with American soldiers to root out Taliban fighters in the rugged mountains on the eastern border of the country.

It would be months into the Patricia’s deployment before the regiment saw its first fatalities. In a shocking incident four Patricias were killed, not at the hands of the enemy, but from their allies.

The Pat soldiers unload supplies from a military helicopter in Afghanistan. (PPCLI Archive and Museum).

'All I could see was darkness...' — Tarnak Farm, Afghanistan

On the night of April 17, 2002, soldiers from 3rd Battalion PPCLI were training at Tarnak Farm, a former Taliban firing range outside of Kandahar that had been captured by NATO forces.

Unknown to the Pats, two American F-16s flew overhead. The pilots of the fighters were exhausted after finishing a 10-hour flight. One of the pilots, U.S. Major Harry Schmidt, saw the flashes of firing on the training ground below and thought they were the enemy firing on the two aircraft.

Schmidt requested permission to fire his plane’s 20 mm cannons (what he would later call a "warning shot"). Flight control denied the request, telling Schmidt to "stand by." Later, he was told to "hold fire."

Four seconds later, Schmidt radioed that he was taking action to defend himself. He then dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb onto the PPCLI forces.

PPCLI Sgt. Lorne Ford, who was on the grounds at Tarnak Farm, told the CBC in 2006: "At that time, I heard the scream of a jet. I saw a jet, didn’t know what it was. I looked up into the sky.

"Not more than three seconds later I heard the screaming of the bomb itself."

Although he could hear it, Ford couldn’t see where the bomb was. Until it detonated.

"Before I could get one sentence out of my mouth, the bomb impacted on the ground," he recalled.

"The force of the blast was like nothing I have experienced before. The heat. The light. The force just knocking me back was incredible."

Ford was thrown back, taking shrapnel to his arm and his left leg, and injuring an eye.

Seven other Pats were wounded. Four PPCLI members fared worse: Sgt. Marc D. Leger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith were killed by the bomb.

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"I couldn’t see anybody. All I could see was darkness and more or less the ground in front of me," Lorne said.

They didn’t know if the plane was coming around again."

Later the regiment learned that the bomb was dropped by an American pilot.

The deaths shocked both the Princess Pats and Canadians back home. These were the first combat deaths that the Canadian Forces had seen since the Korean War.

Surprise would turn to anger for many, when more details of the incident emerged. A Canadian inquiry determined that the weapons the PPCLI were training with posed no danger to the aircraft.

Schmidt apologized to the wounded soldiers, saying that he acted in what he thought was self-defence. He and the other pilot were charged with negligent manslaughter and aggravated assault, although many of the counts were eventually dropped.

In the end, Schmidt was found guilty of dereliction of duty and was fined.

"Blame’s too hard of a word," Ford said four years after the bombing. "Mistakes happen, it was a mistake, I have no doubt of that. It was a bad mistake."

The PPCLI would spend another decade in Afghanistan, both in combat and training local security forces.

Still, the Tarnak Farm incident remains one of the defining moments of the PPCLI’s time in the country. And it served as a shocking reminder of the dangers of war for a country that had long forgotten the tragedies that go along with it.