"Richmond, a member of the Canadian Armed Forces since 1988, is a geomatics technician currently employed at the Integrated Personnel Support Centre in Ottawa. He has also worked with the Mapping and Charting Establishment.
Richmond has told the media that he was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and that he has done six overseas tours in Afghanistan and other conflict zones.
One mission in which he took part in Afghanistan involved collecting “unclassified high-resolution colour stereo imagery.” He wrote a first-person account of the mission for the 2009 edition of Canadian Military Mapper, a newsletter published by the Mapping & Charting Establishment.
The mission began around the Easter long weekend in 2009. Richmond writes that advance teams set up instruments to aid in the mapping process throughout Afghanistan, including Kandahar Airfield, Camp Bastion and three southern districts: Tarin Kowt, Qalat, Lashkar Gah
“I carried seven knives and got to fire an American M-60 (machine gun) from a Chinook . . . and we get paid for this!” he said.
Richmond writes that teams were in the air for up to 13 hours, collecting images approximately every 10 seconds. Their efforts helped in the mapping of 100,000 square kilometres of Afghanistan.
“They say when you do a job well, no one remembers, and if you mess it up you will never be forgotten,” he concludes. “The crew that made up the mission did what should be forgotten, but hopefully will be remembered. We were critically short on training and preparation time, deficient in equipment, but with more morale than we knew what to do with; we surmounted every obstacle as they arose.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...mber-of-canadian-armed-forces-pending-review/
Page 18 of the 2009 edition of Canadian Military Mapper. Richmond's account.
http://www.ibet.asttbc.org/documents/2009_MilitaryMapper.pdf
Richmond has told the media that he was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and that he has done six overseas tours in Afghanistan and other conflict zones.
One mission in which he took part in Afghanistan involved collecting “unclassified high-resolution colour stereo imagery.” He wrote a first-person account of the mission for the 2009 edition of Canadian Military Mapper, a newsletter published by the Mapping & Charting Establishment.
The mission began around the Easter long weekend in 2009. Richmond writes that advance teams set up instruments to aid in the mapping process throughout Afghanistan, including Kandahar Airfield, Camp Bastion and three southern districts: Tarin Kowt, Qalat, Lashkar Gah
“I carried seven knives and got to fire an American M-60 (machine gun) from a Chinook . . . and we get paid for this!” he said.
Richmond writes that teams were in the air for up to 13 hours, collecting images approximately every 10 seconds. Their efforts helped in the mapping of 100,000 square kilometres of Afghanistan.
“They say when you do a job well, no one remembers, and if you mess it up you will never be forgotten,” he concludes. “The crew that made up the mission did what should be forgotten, but hopefully will be remembered. We were critically short on training and preparation time, deficient in equipment, but with more morale than we knew what to do with; we surmounted every obstacle as they arose.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...mber-of-canadian-armed-forces-pending-review/
Page 18 of the 2009 edition of Canadian Military Mapper. Richmond's account.
http://www.ibet.asttbc.org/documents/2009_MilitaryMapper.pdf
