JELAWAR, Afghanistan - There's a breed of Canadian troops who are in a league of their own -- adrenaline junkies who feed off the energy they get from embracing the world's most perilous jobs.
In war-wracked Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers risk life and limb on a daily basis. But some of them are specialists in jobs considered dangerous even by Canadian military standards, and go way beyond a simple trip beyond the safety of Kandahar Airfield's barbed-wire fences.
Some of the busiest are members of the explosive ordnance disposal unit, also known as the bomb squad -- the men and women whose principal job it is to defuse and disarm the countless improvised explosive devices and land mines that litter the Afghan countryside.
The majority of Canadian soldiers who have died in the line of duty have been victims of IEDs, which remain the preferred weapon of the Taliban because they're cheap and easy to make, and yet can exact a terrible toll.
It's Capt. Dave Solaux's job to mitigate that threat.
Solaux is based at CFB Gagetown and has just wrapped up his third tour of duty in Afghanistan. There are safeguards in place when he climbs into the sweltering, heavy-duty cocoon that is the standard-issue bomb suit and inches towards an IED, but one never knows what can happen.
"It's a lonely walk because you're by yourself and you've got your bomb suit on, you're inside your helmet and you're by yourself. You're just going down toward that IED and the adrenaline is just pumping," Solaux said.
"Every time we defuse one of those bombs we save lives, so it's a good feeling knowing we just got another one. These guys, when they get calls -- they're going to brag about their IEDs."
Still, flying a Chinook helicopter at 190 km an hour over rough terrain and into the middle of a firefight isn't exactly for the faint-hearted.
Maj. Darryl Adams, who flew over 60 missions and transported thousands of troops during his rotation, recalled one particularly harrowing encounter with Canada's often-invisible enemies in Afghanistan.
"We had 40 some guys in the back, pitch black dark, and the aircraft in front of me starts taking tracer fire and it's about 200 metres off my nose ... and this was about 10 minutes before our objective," Adams said.
"Then about a half-hour later we went back into the same area and I'm looking at where we were going to land and I see bullets coming out to our helicopter from that area. There were guys on the ground already and we had to drop these guys off."
Master Cpl. Pierre Desrosiers was also flying high over the Afghan desert but on board a Black Hawk helicopter as part of a U.S. medevac team.
Desrosiers, a medic from Valcartier, Que., was one of two Canadians involved who spent his days transporting wounded NATO soldiers from the field of battle back to the relative safety of Kandahar Airfield.
"You have to be a bit of a junkie because when the 9-liner (an emergency medevac frequency) comes in, it's the rush -- the adrenaline rush," said Desrosier, 39.
"I think you need to have that desire -- that will to help and to have that rush at the same time. You don't really think about the fear. You think about the patient."
It may be difficult to return to everyday life back in Quebec without the same level of excitement, he admitted with a smile.
So why do so many soldiers seem impervious to fear when they're on the job? It's all a matter of perspective, Solaux said.
"I'm not afraid. It's the same as infantry -- why would infantry go in front of the enemy when they're firing? I think these guys are crazy, but we're all crazy in our own little way."
Indeed, the humble infantryman is no shrinking violet, routinely travelling by light armoured vehicle over bumpy roads with the risk of an IED or a skirmish with the Taliban an ever-present threat.
Maj. Tim Arsensault spent six months in the perilous Zhari district, where he and his men spent the bulk of their time doing little else besides hunting Taliban. In the heat of battle it amounts to organized mayhem., he conceded.
"Although it may look like an all-out gunfight -- sort of Rambo-esque -- it's actually very co-ordinated, very precise, very deliberate. We focus a lot on our own safety while we do it so it's a very precise application of force," Arsensault explained.
"I'm definitely not an adrenaline junkie, but absolutely you can't control that. Especially when you get into fights and stuff like that I definitely have had some adrenaline rushes, that's for sure."
Canadian soldiers tend to feed off each other during the worst moments, he added, not unlike the interplay between soldiers in the Second World War miniseries "Band of Brothers."
"It's not about what you're doing -- it's about the guy fighting next to you. In our worst moments, that's pretty much what the guys latch on to."
