Sterling Witt

It’s time for another update. In the 2 weeks since the incident in Wainwright that cost 4 soldiers their lives along with some 3 dozen who were wounded, some of who are still in critical condition much has happened. The 3 initial soldiers who reached out to me turned into several more who were able to give me perspectives from various points of view about the training that was underway & the incident itself. I’d again like to point out that I don’t reach out to anyone, they come to me knowing the risks involved. I have assured each of them, their anonymity is safe with me & will be respected. For those who unaware, when you sign the dotted line, you forfeit many things including the right to publicly speak or criticize the military & the gov so it’s become a time honoured tradition for serving soldiers to rely on trusted journalists or veterans to inform the public. Over time, & in the SM era, there are fewer trusted journalists & a whole lot more veterans keeping the tradition alive. Let me set the stage & explain what training was being carried out & why. The 3 PPCLI battle group will soon be deployed to Latvia to take up the duties associated with being Canada’s only forward deployed combat unit assigned to NATO. They were carrying out the individual, section, platoon & company training requirements prior to deployment. Unit level training is now carried out in-country because the CAF doesn’t have duplicates of the additional equipment required in Canada to complete that level of training. Pitiful, I know but reality. The specific training being carried out that day was, firing the Carl Gustov 84 mm recoilless rifle (medium platoon level antitank weapon) that requires to 2 soldiers to effectively load & fire. It’s been the primary anti-armour weapon in infantry platoons for almost 50 years. The weapon has been modernized several times & can fire several types of ammunition. It is as straightforward as it gets. On the day of the incident, the troops were firing the cheapest & most basic live round (HEAT or High Explosive Anti-Tank) at targets (old armoured vehicles) roughly 250-400 metres away from a static purpose built firing bay made of cement. This allows 2 teams in separate bays with a safety NCO/Officer in between them (also in a cement bay) alternating fire between bays. All 3 individuals who initially contacted me were on that range when the incident happened. At the same time, at a nearby range that shares some of the impact area with the Carl G range, grenade launcher training using the C16 close area suppression weapon were firing 40 mm grenades at targets some 1000-1,500 metres away. 2 soldiers from that range contacted me. Last but not least was dry & blank ammunition training being carried out by some 60-80 soldiers roughly 1 km to 1,200 metres from the grenade range who were practicing house clearing in 3 x 2 story wooden buildings & were also carrying out section attacks using blank rounds to simulate the noise of firing rifles & light MG’s. Several soldiers from this group reached out. The initial 3 saw a HEAT fired from a Carl G malfunction at about 150 metres, nose diving into the ground & within milliseconds felt & then heard a loud explosion. Initially all 3 assumed it had to be the round striking NG infrastructure because of the scale of the explosion. Later they admitted the explosion might have happened just as the HEAT round nose dived & had nothing to do with NG infrastructure that is deeply buried. On the grenade range as firing of several 40mm grenades was ongoing a very loud explosion was also heard. These soldiers assumed a grenade had struck another unknown type of unexploded ordnance (UXO) that was already in the impact area. They also noted that around the same time that either their firing or the explosion had started a fire. It & its location was reported to range control on a radio frequency that everyone in the training area monitors.