Celebrating Easter at Kandahar Airfield

U.S. and Canadian soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force leave after Easter prayers at the Kandahar air base on Sunday. (SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images)

Celebrating Easter at Kandahar Airfield
JAMES MCCARTEN

Canadian Press

March 23, 2008 at 10:31 AM EDT

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It's a tiny, unassuming but immaculately maintained church, with thin plywood walls, a modest flower garden — and a gun rack where soldiers can check their rifles at the door.

Perhaps nowhere else is the notion of faith more important than in a war zone such as Afghanistan, where life itself can be a fragile commodity and a day's work is often shrouded in violence and death.

On this Easter Sunday, the pews at Kandahar Airfield's Fraise Chapel were filled with a multinational cross-section of Catholic and Protestant faithful as American padre Rev. Jim Connolly reminded the congregation that the work they do is for a greater good.

“You're living on the edge of life and death, and you've got to ask some hard questions,” Rev. Connolly said after Sunday's Easter service.



“On many occasions, people are saying, ‘Is it really worth it? Is it really this important?' My basic hope is that I can help them come to a sense that yes, it is important, it does matter, because every single one of us counts.”

Sunday's services capped a difficult three weeks for Canadian forces in Kandahar province where three Canadian soldiers lost their lives in three separate incidents.

The ramp ceremony commemorating the most recent death, that of Sgt. Jason Boyes of 2 Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was one of four this past week alone for the multinational NATO coalition known as the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. Two Americans and a Romanian also died.

“Every time that we lose soldiers ... the whole coalition is losing soldiers,” said Rev. Bastien Leclere, who's originally from Edmonton and who assisted in Connolly's Sunday service.

“We're all in this together, and we all pray together, and we keep up each other. It is important that we support each other in this journey. It's a marathon, not a sprint.”
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I still say that if the troops were not sent to Iraq, I doubt there would be all of this still going on in Afghansitan. What happened to finishing the mission in Afghanistan? Do any of the elected even talk about it at all anymore?