BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
A young man from Capreol returned home safely last week after completing a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Pte. B.J. Marshall, 26, was greeted by family and friends at a welcome-home party at the Capreol legion Saturday afternoon.
He was too shy to speak to Northern Life himself, but his mother Kelly, and father, John, said they were grateful to have their son back.
“It was the worst six months of my life,” says Kelly. “You worry steady.”
She says B.J., an infantryman who drives a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV), spent time in both the mountains and the desert. He hasn’t spoken much about his experiences in Afghanistan yet, says Kelly. Military counsellors have told her not to push him to talk until he’s ready.
“He’s definitely changed. He’s very quiet. He says his hearing is not good. He wasn’t exactly talkative before, but he was more outgoing than he is now,” she says.
“He’s only been home for three days, and we don’t want to ask him too much because they recommend you don’t. I am worried about what he might have seen.”
B.J. was able to call his family by satellite phone every 21 days when he got back into the base camp.
“He would say to us, ‘You don’t know how good you have it.’ He didn’t realize how good he had it here until he got there,” she says.
“All the soldiers eat over there is out of packages. The first thing he said when he was coming home was ‘Make me anything that’s not in a package’.”
B.J. is a graduate of St. Charles College and Cambrian College’s police foundations program. He joined the military two years ago this April, and is stationed at CFB Petawawa. The young man is an avid hockey player and plays on the base’s hockey team.
Kelly says it’s extremely important to support the country’s troops because they’re putting their lives on the line, even though she thinks “it’s not our war.”
She and her relatives sent 30 boxes of toiletries and small gifts to the troops stationed in Afghanistan at Christmas.
To cope with her son being overseas, Kelly joined the First Support Deployment Group. The group was started in Greater Sudbury last fall by Denise Lecuyer, an Azilda woman who has a daughter in the Canadian Navy.
Kelly says she met several new friends through the group, including Sandra Amyot, a Val Caron woman who
has two sons, Kyle and Glen, who recently served in Afghanistan.
For more information about the support group, phone Lecuyer at 983-0708.
