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Contact Charlie: A Canadian Infantry Company and the Battle of Panjwayi

by Chris Wattie

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.

 

Reviewer: Michael Clark

Publisher: Key Porter Books

DETAILS

Price: $32.95

Page Count: 304 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-1-554700-84-4

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: 2008-10

Categories: History