Bringing a bit of home to Afghanistan
Kim Burke recounts time working at Kandahar Airfield's Tim Hortons
Kirsten Fenn
Northern News Services
Friday, November 11, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When Kim Burke put in an application to work as a Tim Hortons employee at the Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan in 2009, she wanted to better understand the work of front-line soldiers.
Kim Burke completed two tours at the Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan, where she served up sandwiches and poured fresh coffee as a Tim Hortons employee. - Kirsten Fenn/NNSL photo |
Although she'd met many while working as a bartender at the Stadacona Navy base in Halifax, her two tours in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 gave her an up-close look at the kind of pressure military personnel face every day on the job.
"I've seen second-hand the stress and the fatigue," Burke said. "These guys are trained so well to do what they do and they're very passionate about it."
They didn't talk much about the things they saw or heard in the field, "and I never asked," Burke said. But she does feel she gained a new appreciation for them by sharing in their experience.
"They prepared us for absolutely everything," Burke said about her pre-tour training. Before heading out to Afghanistan, she went through two weeks of military testing in Kingston to make sure she was prepared for the reality of the job.
She learned how to react in the event of midnight rocket attacks and was suited up in protective gear before being sprayed with mustard gas.
"It scared a lot of people but that's what that whole process was about," Burke said, adding that she figured if the soldiers could do it, she could too.
Once she arrived on the ground, daily life was often "boring," Burke said. She spent seven days a week pouring coffee and serving food to soldiers.
When things did heat up, she took note. A calendar she kept during her two six-month stints in Afghanistan shows more than 200 rocket attacks took place during her time at the airfield, she said.
"The first week or so, you were scared," Burke said, describing how she was required to drop to the ground each time the rocket warning sirens went off.
After a while, it became routine.
"It was more of a pain in the ass, especially when you're in the shower," she said. "That's why I wanted to do this ... to go find out exactly what soldiers are going through."
People tend to forget what soldiers have sacrificed when conflict takes place so far away, she said, but added that people still need to remember.
"Just because it happens away from home and nobody really has a hands-on idea of what soldiers actually train and go to war for, doesn't mean it doesn't happen."
The hardest part of her time abroad was seeing fallen soldiers sent home to be buried.
"It's hard for them," she said, explaining that many men and women leave young families behind.
"(They're) just doing their job."
When asked whether people who serve behind the scenes of conflict, like cooks at Tim Hortons, deserve recognition on days like Remembrance Day, Burke said she was simply thankful for the experience.
"I found out subsequently that less than 500 people actually got the opportunity to do what I did," she said about working at the coffee shop during the five years it was open in Kandahar. "I was honoured to be one of the chosen people."
