Uprising. Douglas L. Bland
Читать онлайн книгу.
A cry of pain, then scuffling, and in the morning, bruises, scrapes, and sullen silence.
Demons in his house and in his dreams. His younger brother, Jimmy, crying himself to sleep at night.
Morning. Dad sleeping it off, and Will and his brother slouching about the house, exhausted, hating going to school, but afraid to stay home. Will feeling guilty leaving Mom alone with her abuser, but he was just a kid. What could he do?
Mom, worn out, tangled hair, face swollen from tears, fists, and lack of sleep, wandering the kitchen in a floppy pink track suit. “Now, boys, don’t wake your dad. Get yourselves ready for school. Will, make some porridge for your brother. Hurry now!”
Every day hoping to come home and find Dad had run off. Relieved when his “ways,” as Mom called them, got him another thirty days in jail, and guilty for feeling it. The shame of the “drunken Indian” followed Will all his days on the outside. “Are we natives,” he asked himself repeatedly and without answer, “doomed to be our fathers’ sons?” Will had never had a drink of alcohol in his life. He’d never dared to.
“Sunday, we’ll go to church,” Mom said as if it would help. But the only good the priest ever did for him, Will recalled, was to keep him in school and send him running from the village.
Three weeks after leaving Chisasibi, Will had wandered off the street into the army recruiting office on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal and signed up. That decision he had never regretted, and he served for fifteen years with distinction. Right from the start he was recognized as a first-class recruit. Coming from his background, fieldcraft was as natural as walking, and weapons were second nature. His peers, mostly city boys, admired their “crafty redskin” comrade. Leather-tough, he was impervious to weather, long marches, heavy loads, and the purposeful harassment of his instructors; once he’d left home, no insult from outside could touch him on the inside. But what really set him apart – a natural gift for leadership, for being in front, for commanding – wasn’t truly evident until he was promoted to infantry corporal, then, in just five years, to sergeant, and warrant officer in five more.
Warrant Officer Will Boucanier: stone cold, emotionless, dedicated to the army no matter the mission. He could look at the battlefield with a dry eye, as great captains must. He just focused on the job and got it done, and expected the same of those under him. In command, he took no back talk, no malingering, accepted no excuses and gave none. His “people” – though the word carried a profound ambiguity to his native ear – he treated with the utmost care. Everyone equal, everyone his prized responsibility. But he followed the rule: mission first, men second, myself last. He was never nasty, but never soft. That was his code, and the pride it engendered kept him going.
Will Boucanier, as everyone of experience in the army knew, “walked the talk.” He won the Medal of Valour during the Battle of Medak Pocket – the night-long battle in the former Yugoslavia in which, on September 15, 1993, the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry – the Patricias – stood and fought a much larger Croatian force that was threatening four Serb villages with “ethnic cleansing.” It was the first major battle for the unit in the post-Cold War era, and one the Liberal government hid from Canadians for years. There were no news stories, no ceremonies, no homecoming welcome or remembrance for the casualties, just officially imposed silence, lest Canadians discover the consequences of the “decade of darkness” which had starved the Canadian Forces.
But soldiers across the army knew what had happened in the Medak Pocket and then-Sergeant Boucanier’s part in it. That night, he had led a six-man Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) detachment attached to the Patricia battalion tasked to protect the four Serb villages isolated in the midst of the hostile Croatian population. In the darkness and chaos of that September night battle, Will watched through his powerful night-vision scope as Croatian infantry, supported by two T54 tanks and intent on slaughtering their neighbours, worked their way around the Canadians’ right flank.
Will had reported the situation to the Patricia battalion commander, but he knew no one in the unit, already under heavy fire, could slow the assaulting force in time to save the villagers. However, he figured that his little force, off on the flank of the Patricia companies, might be able to surprise and distract the Croatian infantry. Will had stood up, gathered his soldiers, and led them in an attack on the enemy company in the valley below his position. The citation to his decoration read:
Sergeant William Boucanier MMV
Chisasibi, Quebec
Medal of Military Valour
On September 15, 1993, Sergeant Boucanier, commanding a JTF2 Detachment allocated to peacekeeping duties in the area of the Medak Valley in Krajina, came under heavy Croatian mortar and small arms fire. During the ensuing engagement, he observed these same forces preparing to attack an undefended village inhabited by women, children and old people. Without regard for his own safety and under heavy fire, he led his small detachment into the village and there successfully defended the villagers from further assault. During the night, he was wounded twice, once seriously by mortar fire, but maintained command of his soldiers, encouraging them and adjusting their deployment to defeat the Croatian assault. Sergeant Boucanier’s courageous and skilful actions helped prevent a massacre of the villagers and secured the battalion’s exposed flank until reinforcements arrived at daybreak the next morning.
All of that seemed a long time ago, though. Now, he was slipping and sliding slowly into his hometown as the pilot dodged the rain clouds and fought the high winds bouncing the small aircraft around above the bare, grey, granite hills of the James Bay basin. It was the end of a long hip-hop flight from Montreal through Val-d’Or and Waskaganish to Chisasibi. Some homecoming – a flight from modernity to cultural calamity and personal trauma. But Will had steeled himself. The mission brought him here, not family or home. Indeed, his family had disappeared: his brother to Montreal, drink, and jail; his father long ago lost on the land; and his mother in despair to the grave. He was home today because he was Cree, because he knew the land, the language, Chisasibi and Radisson, and who he could count on. The right man for the job. Still a soldier, he told himself. Not a mercenary. A soldier and a man of honour.
Only last month, Will had abruptly taken his release from the army, despite persistent, heart-felt urging from his superiors to stay, and unanswered pleas from the sergeants’ mess for reasons. He was sick at heart to leave the only home he’d ever known, a home made safe by order, merit, and predictability; a home where things made sense. After a childhood of chaos, of feeling worthless, he’d found a real home among soldiers, a special group set aside by society for a special purpose. But just as he had fifteen years earlier, he felt relieved as well as homesick. Across the country, he knew, were villages like his, full of homes like his, and getting himself out of there, no matter how successfully, had always felt a bit like running away. Like going to school and leaving Mom alone with that man. Well, not any more. He had fought the white man’s wars, “for peace and freedom,” they had told him. Now he was coming home to fight for the same things, to fight the only way he knew against the despair he’d escaped so long ago.
* * *
Boucanier, too, had been identified by the Movement. Its leaders had reached out to him several times early in his career and as he advanced in it, only to be rejected. But Will’s gut-wrenching, mind-bending experiences in Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Afghanistan changed him profoundly. His sympathy for the people he helped in those places, people forced by history’s whims to surrender their culture to the tyranny of the majority, affected deeply his sense of himself and his people and his homeland on James Bay. The political jumble that was Yugoslavia, which the UN and the Western allies had turned into the even bigger Balkan region mess, convinced Will that nationalism, not federalism, saves lives and cultures.
He learned also from watching certain Serbian patriots and Afghani communal leaders that strong leaders can achieve a great deal if they have the strength and determination to unite people around their own traditions. The key lesson Will took away from his experience, however, was that the people’s success and security depend on one thing: cultural unity, protected by one unchallenged leader, and set free from distracting entanglements in other people’s causes.
Will