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Duh: Of course, the soldiers with whom I was either travelling or embedded knew I was a reporter, though trust me, whatever faint “celebrity” attends the print journalist wears off pretty fast.

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We are in short no Mike Duffys, but scruffy practitioners, with faces for radio.

And of course, being with a regiment for a few weeks isn’t the same as being one of the regiment for life.

And of course sexual harassment and assault are hidden, as crimes of the night and the darkness of heart always are.

But what Deschamps described was a poisonous and pervasive culture so hostile to women it was outright dangerous.

That’s not the sort of thing you can just tuck under the bed when a visitor pops by: Pervasive means the poison is everywhere, and even a retrograde dolt like me would have sensed it or smelled it, and I didn’t. In fact, in some units, it was just the opposite: In some soldiers, men and women, I could actually see them struggle with the instinct to protect any unarmed civilian within 100 miles, including me.

And that’s my real point — the military, like the CBC, like the House of Commons, like newspapers and factories and radio stations and high schools, has its share of men behaving badly (and, dare I say, women behaving badly too). I don’t think anyone is in denial of that. But it’s a hell of a reach to move from that obvious observation to declaring the whole lot disreputable, worthy of contempt and requiring a big fix.

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