Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, The Taliban and the Battle that Saved Afghanistan (Hardcover)

From May through August 2006, Canadian soldiers fought a running battle against Taliban insurgents in the Panjwayi district southwest of Kandahar, the Afghan provincial capital. In the most intense fighting the Canadian army has conducted since the Korean War, the Taliban offensive was defeated, checking their goal to break NATO’s tenuous resolve by occupying Kandahar, however briefly. Contact Charlie, by National Post reporter and army reserve officer Chris Wattie, recounts the Battle of Panjwayi, focusing on Charlie Company of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, with whom Wattie was embedded for eight weeks in early 2006.     Wattie’s book is an extraordinarily intense minute-by-minute account of the major engagements from the point of view of the Canadian soldiers who fought them. We tread familiar, but nonetheless inspiring, ground reading about courage, fear, determination, frustration, sorrow, and professionalism. Although clearly a battle narrative, Contact Charlie contains little history or true reportage, and is unrepentantly biased. Add in the breathless tone, and the book is, ultimately, a tribute to those Canadians who have chosen to fight on behalf of Canada.     Even a tribute, though, requires some sense of legitimacy, and Contact Charlie often strains credibility. The lack of annotation, and the apparently perfect recall of the soldiers, suggests that Wattie has amplified the tone, if not the facts, of the battle for dramatic effect. Nonetheless, the book will inform those interested about combat in Afghanistan, and about the lives and sacrifices of our soldiers.     But between the lines of heroism and professionalism is an uncomfortable truth: two years later, the Taliban are attacking Kandahar, NATO resolve is still tenuous, and Canadian soldiers are still fighting and dying in Panjwayi.

In the summer of 2006, a Canadian army patrol travelling through Afghanistan’s Panjwayi region—a densely packed maze of villages, fields and vineyards west of Kandahar—surprised an unexpectedly large force of Taliban fighters. The soldiers of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry had stumbled into a hornet’s nest, the largest buildup of Taliban forces in the region since their regime had fallen in 2001. The Canadians found themselves up against opponents who were suicidally brave, cunning at planting mines and roadside bombs, and experienced at disappearing into the scenery whenever they chose. As their commanders threw more and more soldiers into what became a gruelling, drawn-out struggle, the troops of the battalion's Charlie Company found themselves at the forefront of every firefight and ambush in what became a desperate, two-month pitched battle. The 150 soldiers of Charlie Company suffered more casualties and earned more decorations for bravery than any other Canadian unit since the Korean War and came into contact with the enemy so many times they became known simply as "Contact Charlie." In Contact Charlie , National Post reporter and embedded journalist Chris Wattie offers an intimate and harrowing look at the series of battles that would eventually take the lives of seven soldiers, including Captain Nichola Goddard, Canada's first female combat casualty, and veteran soldier Sergeant Vaughn Ingram, who died trying to save one of his young troops. Based on Wattie’s own experience in Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of post-tour interviews with the men and women on the ground, Contact Charlie is a rare piece of military writing, providing readers with a behind-the-scenes look at the stories that made headlines that summer—and continue to do so today. Praise for Contact Charlie: “In the summer of 2006 the Taliban were poised to take back their Jerusalem, Kandahar City. They didn’t figure on 1 PPCLI. Chris Wattie’s outstanding effort lets us eavesdrop on the intense battles that saved the city, the country and NATO itself, and should make every Canadian proud of our country’s sacrifice in the name of freedom.” —Lewis MacKenzie, Major-General (ret’d), Commanding Officer 1PPCLI, 1977–1979 “Way beyond the perceived access of embedded reporting, Contact Charlie brings the boots on the ground view in Afghanistan closer than anyone outside the Canadian Forces has ever seen it. Wattie’s account of the battle for the Panjwayi is reminiscent of war correspondence from such giants as Ross Munro, Matthew Halton or Bill Boss—as close to the sharp end as one can get." —Ted Barris, journalist and author "Many journalists try to write about military life but few possess the ability, eloquence and sheer grasp of the fleshy reality of war and soldiering that Wattie has in obvious abundance. This is reporting, military history and political analysis of the first order. Splendid and memorable—a book that should carve an honoured place in Canadian literature." —Michael Coren, Sun Media columnist, television and radio host and best-selling author “ Contact Charlie fills in the blanks between Canada’s military objective in Afghanistan and the dizzying transformation on the ground. It is a thorough, lucid account of how one company’s tour of duty altered so many lives. Like a magnet, Charlie Company is drawn into a fight behind every wall and Chris Wattie captures it all in meticulous detail. Each time they suit up for a ‘routine’ patrol, there is a sense of dread for what looms. Contact Charlie will survive as a testament to the soldiers who never came back and the friends who will never forget them.” —Lisa LaFlamme, National Affairs Correspondent, CTV News