JIMÉNEZ o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-10-02 published
The sad smile of a dying soldier
After watching Pte. Josh Klukie die, the members of 4 Platoon,
Bravo Company, vow to finish their ugly little war, writes Graeme
SMITH
By Graeme SMITH with a report from Marina
JIMÉNEZ in Toronto,
Page A1
Kandahar, Afghanistan -- On the evening they said goodbye to
Private Josh
KLUKIE, there was clarity in the eyes of the men
who fought beside him.
They watched his casket hoisted into a cargo plane in the warm
afternoon light, snapped to attention and marched off the tarmac
to prepare for another mission.
Two days earlier, the soldiers of 4 Platoon, part of Bravo Company,
a unit of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, had seen
their friend thrown across a field by a huge explosion. They
heard the 23-year-old draw his last breath, and saw his sad smile
before he died.
After saying farewell yesterday, the soldiers knew what they
wanted. They felt a need to get back into those fields and keep
fighting. And when they finish with this ugly war on the other
side of the world, they intend to visit Pte.
KLUKIE's grave in
Northern Ontario to talk with his mother about the day he died.
"It will be very healing for his family to meet the soldiers
he served with and hear about the conditions of his last day,"
said Captain Piers
PAPPIN, the platoon commander.
In the hours before Private
KLUKIE's death last Friday, the platoon
had been marching southwest of Kandahar, through the fields of
grapes, wheat and marijuana where soldiers have hunted insurgents
for weeks.
"No patrol is routine, but we were just doing a foot patrol,"
said Corporal Mike
BLOIS, 24, of Exeter, Ontario He said one
of the patrol's purposes was to search for improvised explosive
devices in an area heavily mined by the retreating Taliban. They
hadn't found any explosives that morning, but they did recover
a unmanned aerial vehicle that had crashed on the battlefield.
"We got into a couple buildings, found a downed unmanned aerial
vehicle, a bunch of intelligence papers, so we were having a
really successful patrol," Cpl.
BLOIS said. "We stayed off the
roads as much as we could, going through the grape fields and
the vineyards and all that."
They knew the roads were dangerous, but they couldn't find any
other route as they trudged through a cluster of villages known
as Pashmul. About 1 p.m., they found themselves walking north,
toward a Canadian patrol base, on a makeshift track plowed by
bulldozers about two weeks ago to give them a safe route around
the booby traps on the main roads.
But the Taliban haven't abandoned Pashmul -- only disappeared
from sight. Soldiers say the insurgents appear to have dug into
the road's thick dust, which resembles brown talcum, and set
up several explosives -- perhaps an anti-tank mine combined with
smaller bombs -- and rigged them to detonate under slight pressure.
"When we went through, the first two guys didn't hit it," said
Cpl. BLOIS, who was walking at the patrol's tail end.
"The explosion went off, and my immediate thought was it was
the section commander who hit it, because he was the very first
guy in the patrol," he said.
In fact, the commander was unhurt, but in the haze of dust and
lingering shock of the blast it was difficult for the survivors
to tell who had been injured.
"I didn't get hit with anything," Cpl.
BLOIS said. "So I just
started yelling people's names, and guys started to respond."
One of those who didn't answer right away was Cpl. James
MILLER,
of Hamilton, Ontario, who was partly deafened by the blast.
"MILLER didn't respond but he came out of the smoke and dust,
and he was really disoriented. You could tell he was pretty messed
up."
Cpl. BLOIS paused. "
KLUKIE's name? There was no response."
Trailing behind the Canadian patrol, about 200 metres south,
was a team of U.S. soldiers who specialize in clearing mines.
Cpl. BLOIS threw off his heavy backpack and ran toward them for
help.
"They saw me coming, and they just started running," he said.
A U.S. medic joined the Canadian corporal and they started sweeping
the dense foliage of grape trellises, searching for the missing
soldier.
"The blast threw
KLUKIE about 50 metres off the road," Cpl.
BLOIS
said. "He landed in the vineyard. I think he must have hit one
of the walls. He was laying on his back when the American medic
and I found him.
He continued: "We immediately started working, without saying
anything to each other. He put a tourniquet on his right leg,
which was almost completely gone. I put tourniquets on his arm
and his other leg.
"You could tell he couldn't hear anything, but he could recognize
me, you know. I was looking right at him. He couldn't say anything.
I was just telling him to keep fighting, you know, keep fighting,
keep fighting."
Pte. KLUKIE's
Friends say he was a big, well-built soldier in
peak physical shape, who dreamed of joining the elite JTF2
special forces. But the blast that went off under his feet was
probably enough to destroy a vehicle, never mind a man.
"He was breathing," Cpl.
BLOIS said. "He had a pulse. His eyes
were moving. He looked right at me. It was just weird. He couldn't
talk."
This quiet, desperate scene lasted maybe three minutes, Cpl.
BLOIS said. "I had that last tourniquet on him, I grabbed him
by the shoulder, I'm like, 'This is nothing Josh, this is nothing.'
He just looked at me, smiled, and that was it. He died right
there."
He was the 10th soldier to die in September and the 37th since
Canadian troops went to Afghanistan in 2002 -- most of them this
year.
Friends say Pte.
KLUKIE was a sensitive soul who was always the
first to recognize when someone was troubled.
"He was a paramedic before he joined the army," said Pte. Wes
WHITFIELD of Markham, Ontario
Pte. KLUKIE grew up in Thunder Bay, the youngest of three brothers,
an athlete who played basketball and football. He always took
good care of his widowed mother and was helpful and kind.
"He was a selfless person," said a relative who didn't want to
be identified. "He had lots of close Friends from public school
and kept in touch with them all."
Before the Afghan mission, he'd had doubts about his military
career, and was uncertain how he would handle deaths and injuries
to his Friends. September's Operation Medusa, where Canadians
scored a conclusive victory over the Taliban, changed that. Four
soldiers were killed and more than 40 injured, but Pte.
KLUKIE
decided he could handle the suffering around him.
"A week ago, he came to me and started the paperwork for re-enlistment
and he told me this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his
life," Capt.
PAPPIN said. "It was good for me to hear, because
he was one of those soldiers who was going places, for sure."
Cpl. BLOIS helped clean up the scene and transport the body bag
back to Kandahar airfield. He didn't sleep at all that first
night.
He felt numb, he said, and initially he thought about quitting.
But he changed his mind, and now the death of Pte.
KLUKIE drives
him to continue. Despite the gravity of what he had witnessed,
the young soldier told the entire story with calmness and precision,
and he showed no hint of hesitation about returning to the battlefield.
"I want to get back out there," he said. "He deserves it. He
fought hard, and so he deserves everybody else who's here after
him continuing to fight hard."
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JIMÉNEZ o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-10-16 published
Impresario to the stars dies at 83
By Marina JIMÉNEZ,
Page
A13
Gino EMPRY, a legendary impresario whose status as the dean of
Toronto talent agents sometimes rivalled the celebrity of his
clients, has died at 83.
Mr. EMPRY, a fixture on the arts scene for five decades, called
himself the "father of publicity." He befriended and managed
Tony Bennett in the 1970s, and worked with more than 1,000 artists,
including Cher, Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald,
Bob Hope and Roy Orbison.
The eldest of nine children, he grew up in Little Italy where
his parents ran a grocery and butcher store. By the age of 14,
Mr. EMPRY was starring in drama shows organized by the Catholic
Youth Organization. After high school, he worked for a waterfront
trucking company and moved to the Toronto islands.
In 1964, he launched his own agency, and was working in show
business as a director, producer and promoter. That year, Ed
MIRVISH hired him as press agent for the refurbished Royal Alexandra
Theatre. In 1970, Toronto's Royal York Hotel hired him for the
Imperial Room, then considered the best nightclub in the country.
The self-described "little guy with the big mouth" was a flamboyant
character whose 2002 book I Belong to the Stars detailed his
relationship with 22 of the entertainers he represented.
The ultimate promoter, he was always coy about his own age, and
loved to tell and re-tell anecdotes about the stars he worked
with, including Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier, Petula Clark,
Hugh Hefner and Bill Cosby.
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