Joël Richard wounded when vehicle he was driving struck a roadside bomb in Afghanistan

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BY ALAN COCHRANE
TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF

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A Metro Moncton reservist solider wounded two years ago when the armoured vehicle he was driving was destroyed by a roadside bomb will be among the first to receive Canada's new Sacrifice Medal from Governor General Michaelle Jean.

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Local soldiers from the 8th Canadian Hussars rest on a Nyala as well as another soldier that was part of their Force Protection Platoon. In front are: Cpl. Mathieu Jacob from Cap-Pele and Cpl. Martin Cormier from Bouctouche. In the back are MCpl. Joel Richard from Grand-Barachois and Cpl. Adam Duffy of the Regiment de Hull from Gatineau, Qc.

Master Corporal Joël Émile Richard, 22, will be among 46 Canadians to receive the medal during a ceremony in Ottawa Monday. The Sacrifice Medal is a new Canadian decoration presented to members of the Armed Forces who are wounded or killed in action.

Of the 46 to be presented Monday, 21 are being awarded posthumously to Canadians who have been killed in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scheduled to attend the presentation.

Richard, a self-described army brat who has lived around the country and graduated from Moncton High School in 2005, says the incident is still cloudy in his memory and he considers himself lucky that he survived the bomb attack with relatively minor injuries.

"I got a back injury, a fractured jaw and some cuts and bruises, so really I got out of it pretty good," Richard said in a telephone interview from CFB Gagetown, where he is stationed with the 8th Canadian Hussars, New Brunswick's armoured regiment.

Richard trained in Quebec and Texas before he was deployed as an army reservist to Afghanistan in June of 2007 as a driver of the RG31 Nayala armoured patrol vehicle -- possibly one of the most dangerous jobs in the country since supply convoys are the preferred target of Taliban insurgents who plant bombs along the roads.

"I was there about two months before I got hit. It's safer to do convoys at night so we usually leave at dusk and drive all night."

Richard was the driver of the lead vehicle in a convoy of big transport trucks carrying food, ammunition and other supplies to forward operating bases near Kandahar. He was driving an RG-31 Nyala armoured vehicle, which is specifically designed in South Africa to protect soldiers from mines and other explosive devices. Canada purchased the vehicles for use in Afghanistan after other vehicles were being blown apart by improvised explosive devices. As of this week, a total of 133 Canadians have died in Afghanistan and 78 of those deaths have been attributed to IEDs or land mines.

The Canadian convoys travel through the night, watching the road for any signs of trouble. On this night, they had to stop in a small village for about an hour and a half when one of the vehicles broke down. As they sat quietly in the darkness, Richard says he watched a man stumbling around, perhaps drunk or on drugs, or perhaps a spotter for the Taliban.

As they got back on the road, they were travelling along when a small bomb went off, but it caused no damage to any of the vehicles so they kept moving.

"Just after that, we heard on the radio that the last vehicle in the convoy was taking machine-gun fire, so we kept moving faster." By now it was around 3 a.m. and totally dark.

"We were about five minutes outside of Kandahar City. We went over a culvert and it just went boom. I woke up a few seconds later and there was nothing left of the front of the vehicle. The engine block was about 30 metres away and the gun turret was thrown to the side. And then a big heavy transport with a trailer, fully loaded, hit us from behind at about 60 kilometres per hour."

Video footage taken after daylight shows the damage to Richard's vehicle. The whole front end was blown off and the truck fell into the crater left behind by the bomb. The rear end of the Nyala was smashed when the transport truck rammed into it from behind.

"I don't really remember anything for the first couple of hours. It's very cloudy. I can't remember how I got out."

He says there were five people in the vehicle that night and all survived with a variety of injuries, including broken legs. They were evacuated from the scene by armoured ambulance and taken to Canada's base hospital.

"I was back driving in convoys two and a half weeks later. I was still pretty sore but able to perform my duty. There were a few days when I couldn't get out of bed because I was in a lot of pain."

Joël's father, Norm Richard of Grand Barachois, was asleep when the phone rang that night. A veteran himself who served in Canada's air force for 20 years and is now a captain with the 8th Hussars, was apprehensive when he picked up the phone. On the other end was the base chaplain in Afghanistan.

"They let me talk to Joël and he told me he was wounded but he was all right and being taken care of."

Norm Richard admits it was very difficult to watch his son leave for a tour of duty in Afghanistan, but he says a father must be able to stand aside and let his son follow his own course of action.

Joël Richard was able to finish out his nine-month tour of duty in Afghanistan without any more major incidents. But the convoys are always targets.

"Looking back on it, there was nothing I could do. There was no way to know it was there. If it is gonna happen, it's gonna happen."

After returning to Canada, Richard spent some time in Nunavut and then back to Gagetown. He's now considering putting his name in for another tour of duty in Afghanistan.

"I would definitely go back again."