http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=a317a503-8599-485e-972c-c5eaf421824f

Canadian soldier ends successful Afghan mission with a heavy heart

Stephen Thorne

Canadian Press

August 8, 2004

KABUL (CP) - Maj. Andrew Zdunich and his armoured reconnaissance troops will never know if they saved a lot of lives during their six-month tour in Afghanistan, but there's one life he didn't save that he'll always remember.

On April 5, the commander of the Canadian contingent's reconnaissance squadron spent two frantic hours up to his neck and over his bald head in black sewer water trying to save the life of a three-year-old girl who'd fallen in.

He failed.

"The only thing I could think about was holding my little girl," Zdunich said Sunday after returning for the last time to the spot, a six-metre-wide ditch and 15-metre-long culvert filled with oily black sewage and garbage.

"When I left Canada and came overseas, my daughter was the last little girl that I hugged. Then all of a sudden there was this little girl that I had my arms around and she was dead.

"I wanted to have a live girl in my arms again that I could hold that close."

The 36-year-old grandson of Croatian immigrants returns home to Ottawa later this week, his mission a success but his heart heavy.

Of all the lives lost in this war-torn country, and of all the ones he'll never know he saved, there was one he knows he couldn't save.

"I don't want to think about how long she was in that water before I got there," he said. "I don't want to think that it just happened and I just missed her. I don't want to think that."

Zdunich's 150-member unit from 12 Regiment Blinde du Canada in Quebec are trickling home.

A larger reconnaissance, or recce (pronounced REK-ee), squadron from Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) in Alberta has begun the transition process, after which they'll take over operations across Kabul and beyond.

On Sunday, Zdunich took some of his replacements on a foot patrol through one of his areas of responsibility, walking eight kilometres in sweltering heat and overwhelming stench along back alleys, past cemeteries and through village markets.

When it was over, Zdunich took his Coyote armoured vehicle on a detour, returning to the scene where witnesses summoned him to save the little girl who had been kneeling by the sewage ditch when she lost her balance and fell in.

People were standing at the sides of the ditch when Zdunich and his crew arrived that April day. They were combing the water with sticks. Zdunich couldn't understand why no one had gone in after her.

Still wearing his uniform and combat webbing, the son of a Canadian soldier jumped in to the chest-deep sludge and began searching, reaching out with his arms, diving under in futile attempts to find her.

When he'd surface, he kept looking up and seeing her uncle staring at him, searching his face for some sign of hope, all the while clutching the little girl's flip-flop in his hand.

After 15 minutes, Zdunich came out, knowing that if the girl was in there, she had to be dead. But he couldn't stay away.

"It was a little girl, for crissakes. You couldn't just leave her; you couldn't leave a little girl in that filth."

The fire department came. Firefighters began draining the ditch but the sludge was too thick to do much good.

When the water was barely low enough, Zdunich entered the far end of the culvert, swimming the entire length with only his nose above the surface. A metre-and-a-half from the other end, he found her.

"I put my hand on her head," he said. "She had black hair and a pink sweater. I found her before sundown. We sent her back to her family."

He'd been in the sewage for two hours. The pictures he kept of his daughter, three-year-old Trinity Zdunich, were soaked and stained with raw sewage.

After the tragedy, Zdunich asked NATO's International Security Assistance Force to erect a fence around the ditch. The project's been approved.

During his six-month tour, Zdunich took his recce squadron on long missions into Taliban country north and south of Kabul. By their presence, the Canadians like to think they deterred Taliban activity and perhaps saved lives.

But they'll never know for certain. Those are the intangibles the 18-year army veteran has learned to live with in four overseas tours.

All he really knows is his squadron went where they wanted to go, when they wanted to go without enemy resistance, and his troops got through their tour without casualties.

"As happy as we are to go home and as happy as we are to be finishing our tour, there's a little sense in there that there's no closure, that we haven't finished it, that we haven't completed the job," he said.

"You can't fix everything in six months, so you have to look for the little things to get that satisfaction."

Zdunich said he cannot even attempt to reconcile his mission's success with the tragedy that happened that day.

"We didn't succeed with the little girl. I failed. I didn't save her."

The soldier was devastated after finding the lifeless little body. As he stood there in shock and grief that April afternoon, Afghans crowded around him and silently began picking the sludge off his body.

The operator of a service station adjacent to the scene saw Zdunich falling deeper into grief. He shooed the crowds away to give him privacy, then took the Canadian soldier by the arm, led him inside and began washing him off.

Through it all, Zdunich just stood there; he didn't know what to say.

On Sunday, as he knelt by the ditch alone and lost in thought, Afghans began gravitating toward him.

The service station owner came up and embraced him. City police officers who'd been there that day left their outpost to greet him. An old lady came up and asked: "Is this the soldier who tried to save the little girl?"

Someone said yes. She looked at Zdunich with warm, knowing eyes - eyes that have seen 23 years of war and seven years of drought and all that they have wrought - and she nodded, then walked away.

Zdunich thanked the service station owner, Saliman Khan, for his kindness and told him he was leaving soon for Canada.

"Have a good life, my friend," Zdunich said. "Inshallah (God willing), we will see each other again."

Replied Khan: "We will always remember you and what you did. Nobody would dare dive here. You did your best."