The unforgettable Capt. Nichola Goddard

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

Murray Brewster/CP

SUNRAY: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF CAPTAIN NICHOLA GODDARD
Valerie Fortney
Canadian soldiers stationed at Kandahar Airfield sleep in huge white structures known as BATs (big-ass tents). Each one boasts dozens of bunk beds—and zero privacy. Which is why, in February 2006, Lt.-Col. Ian Hope issued an order that seemed reasonable enough: hang up some tarps to create a “women’s only” section for the few females inside each tent. Nichola Goddard was livid. An artillery captain serving her first tour of duty, she had spent months undergoing the same gruelling training as the men under her watch—and sleeping in the same trenches. “We’ve taken a benign situation and created a fantasy,” Goddard complained to her fellow troops. She even worked up the nerve to write a memo to Hope, reminding the boss that the days of “objecting to mixing genders in combat is over.” Her words weren’t enough to change the commander’s mind; the tarps were staying. But Hope would never forget the name Nichola Goddard.

“This is an officer with guts,” he thought to himself.

Three months after sending that memo, the 26-year-old captain was killed by Taliban insurgents—the first female Canadian soldier to perish in combat. Not surprisingly, that tragic fact became the focus of every news report. But what most Canadians don’t know is that a few hours before she was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade on May 17, 2006, Goddard was at the centre of another historic first: she was the first army officer—male or female—to direct artillery fire against an enemy force since the Korean War.

As Fortney makes abundantly clear, Goddard would be horrified to know that her gender became the focus of her obituaries. Charismatic, tough and forever loyal, she was such a standout officer that the men under her command had long forgotten that they were answering to a ma’am, not a sir. “First female, first female,” says Sgt. Dave Redford, Goddard’s second-in-command during their Afghanistan tour. “That would have driven her absolutely berserk.”
Thankfully, Fortney uses dozens of detailed interviews—and, most importantly, Goddard’s own dispatches from the front lines—to tell the complete story of a woman who was so much more than that.

- Michael Friscolanti

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Your family is being watched 24-7

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 131 Comments

To passing tourists, catching yet another government poster apprising you of electronic surveillance looming in the distance, the initials “CCTV” can be oddly reminiscent of “CCCP,” the Cyrillicized abbreviation for the U.S.S.R. CCTV is the United Kingdom’s ubiquitous acronym. Nobody needs to be told what it stands for. It accompanies you as you make your way to work, whether by car, bus, train, or taxi. And it’s there waiting for you at the end of your shift, as you go to buy your groceries or head to the movies. Last year, when David Davis resigned from the shadow cabinet because of the remarkably bipartisan insouciance about the “erosion of fundamental British freedoms,” he said there was “a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens.” The British, according to another well-retailed line, are apparently the most video-monitored people in the world other than the North Koreans. In an aside in his new novel The Defector, the American author Daniel Silva lays out the background:

“ ‘So how are the British so certain about what happened?’

“ ‘Their little electronic helpers were watching.’ Continue…