Bandwidth be damned

[Kip Powick]

KANDAHAR — There was only a sliver of moon.

A feeble light — not enough for a soldier to see his hand in front of his face, much less the ground underfoot.

At 9 p.m. on Saturday night, Capt. Jonathan (Jon) Sutherland Snyder stepped into . . . nothingness.

The platoon leader fell into a well 20 metres deep while leading a foot patrol in Zhari District, west of Kandahar. Despite frantic efforts to extract him as quickly as possible — search and rescue assets rushing to the scene from various points of departure — the captain did not survive the dreadful accident.

He was pronounced dead upon arrival — by evacuating helicopter — at the multinational hospital at Kandahar Air Field: the 85th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan.

A member of the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, Snyder had been on his second deployment to the country. That battalion is extensively involved in the mentoring of Afghan national forces.

Snyder was on a night foot patrol, likely leading his troops at the point as platoon commander, when the accident occurred, tumbling into a kariz, the deep wells connected by underground channels that carry water through Afghanistan's farming irrigation systems.

"I spoke to his patrol this morning," Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, commander of Task Force Afghanistan, told reporters. "They related how desperately they worked to extract him from the well while at the same time calling for help.

"Medical, engineer and search and rescue assets were rushed to the scene and Jon was lifted out of the well."

It is still unclear whether the captain was already dead or the nature of the injuries he suffered. Cause of death — drowning, head trauma, perhaps a broken neck — will be determined by an autopsy.

Snyder was recently engaged. He was raised in Penticton, B.C. but had been living in Edmonton.

"This tragic accident has deeply impacted us all," said Thompson. "The thoughts and prayers of the entire Canadian Task Force are with Capt. Snyder's fiancée, Meghan, his parents, and all those who loved him. To you, we offer our deepest condolences. And you are not alone in your grief.

"We are deeply saddened by his death and we will not forget his commitment to his fellow soldiers, to the Afghan National Army with whom he worked, and to this mission."

No one either could or would say how long it had taken to remove Snyder from the well or what time the rescue professionals arrived at the remote area. But news of his death reached KAF before midnight.

"The rescue effort commenced immediately," Thompson emphasized. "We're thoroughly investigating all aspects of it. But I can tell you the response from both the quick response team, the platoon on the ground and the helicopter medivac were well within our expectations.

"It's just a tragic accident."

There would have been immense logistical difficulties, in a rough and restive environment, in darkness, to reach and retrieve Snyder.

"The platoon on the ground has to make sure there's security in place," Thompson explained. "But at the same time, these wells are deep, 20–30 metres deep, occasionally half full of water — the water level depends on where the water table is — and the embankments are very soft.

"So you can imagine scrambling around the edges of one of those at night. And last night, the moon was a sliver and it was quite dark."

It was the third officer casualty suffered by Canadians in the past week: Two captains killed, Snyder and Capt. Richard (Stevo) Leary, who was felled by small arms fire on a patrol in Panjwayi, and a major who lost both legs when allegedly going down on one knee to rest, as soldiers on foot patrol commonly do, and setting off a roadside explosive device.

That means a significant gap in the leadership hierarchy being hastily filled by younger troops in the field and other officers shifted around.

"Regardless of the rank of the soldier or officer that's injured, every one of these hurts fairly deeply," said Thompson. "On the leadership side, we are built to have redundancies — it's terrible to say that but that's just the way the military is structured, to make sure we can take casualties.

"So as tragic as each of these are, they're no reason to put down our tools and not carry on, which is precisely what we're doing."

Thompson described Snyder as "a quiet professional", an officer that "any commander would dream of having under his command". His recent leadership in the field "likely saved both Canadian and Afghan lives."

During an interview with Canadian Press in March, 2006, at distant Forward Operating Base Robinson — where Pte. Robert Costall had just become Canada's first firefight casualty in Afghanistan — Snyder, then a lieutenant, made light of the primitive living conditions in the outpost.

"You can’t beat the weather out here. In Edmonton, it would probably still be snowing."

Later that summer, about to finish his first tour, Snyder advised incoming Canadian troops to be vigilant but also relaxed with dealing with the local population.

"The people here aren't much different from the way people act back home in Canada, if you're dealing with teenagers and little kids. There's a lot of similarities. I'd say, go in there with an open mind and treat people as you would back home in Canada and go from there."