General Hillier new Chancellor of Memorial U.

[url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080702.wtopsoldier0... gives way[/url]

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Lt.-Gen. Walter Natynczyk formally took over as Chief of Defence Staff in a ceremony Wednesday at a military air base in Ottawa.

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Canada's new top soldier says the Afghan army is making “huge progress” and he sees the Canadian Forces leaving Kandahar as scheduled in 2011.

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Glad to see the Globe provide such accurate and hard-hitting reporting of the situation in Afghanistan, where Crusader casualties are higher than in Iraq.

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“What our soldiers are seeing on the ground right now is the Afghan army are stepping up, the Afghan leadership are taking ownership,” he said. “Those are huge steps. We should not underplay them.”

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My favorite part:

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A number of soldiers standing at attention for the long handover ceremony succumbed to the sun's heat, and either passed out or were taken away by medical staff.

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Huah. A private smashing his face into the pavement is a small price to pay to advance Hillier's career. God bless our fainting troops.

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Originally posted by Jingles:
[b]Huah. A private smashing his face into the pavement is a small price to pay to advance Hillier's career. God bless our fainting troops.[/b]

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It's called "thundering in." In being forced to stand erectly in one place, under oppressive heat for a long period of time, peripheral vision starts to close in until at the moment of collapse, all that is seen is a narrow and shrinking tunnel of light, often culminating in a direct nosedive into the pavement. The victim is then dragged away from public view, and the show goes on. These troop parades are a hold over from 18th Century battlefield maneuver techniques, where opposing lines of perfectly arranged soldiers would fire volleys at one another over relatively short distances. They maintain these archaic practices out of adherence to military tradition and heritage, without realizing that it also demonstrates to many people where their mindset still is. So much for the care and concern for the troops theme that formed part of the hand-over speeches.