The Night Nobody Saw Me Coming

With Remembrance Day here, I've been thinking back to my years serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. One night during training at Wainwright, Alberta, has always stayed with me.

We were conducting a nighttime exercise. Our objective was to get as close as possible to a defended position without being detected. A whole truckload of us had been dropped off together. I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew I wasn't going to take the same route as everybody else.

I decided to flank far to the left. And I mean really far.

The defenders had binoculars, radios and watchmen patrolling with flashlights. Flares were going up, lighting entire sections of the landscape. Whenever they spotted someone approaching, they'd direct a patrol toward them. One by one, the other guys were being caught. The whole thing felt like something out of a Vietnam War movie.

Meanwhile, I was on my own, way out to the left. At one point I found myself wading through water so deep I had to hold my rifle over my head to keep it dry. I was absolutely soaked, but I was treating the exercise as if it were real. So I kept going.

For the longest time, I was completely alone, moving through the trees and wondering whether I was even heading in the right direction. Every time a flare lit up the sky, it felt like something straight out of a Vietnam War movie.

Eventually I worked my way back toward their position, staying low and using the terrain for cover. When a flare lit up the sky, the whole area suddenly became bright. I kept moving carefully until I was close enough to hear the defenders talking.

I reached the barbed-wire fence and crawled along it, inch by inch, until I was practically within arm's reach of them.

Here's the part I'll never forget: they were facing me. They were looking in my direction the whole time, but they were scanning farther out, looking for people approaching. I was already right in front of them, camouflaged in the grass, and they couldn't see me.

I remember thinking, What the fuck do I do now?

So I stood up and started firing blanks. “YOU'RE ALL FUCKING DEAD!”

I swear I nearly scared the shit out of them. One officer initially thought someone on his own side had started shooting, until he realized that a young reservist from Regina had somehow made it right up to their position.

I was the first one to get through. And, as it turned out, the only one.

For the longest time afterward, those guys treated me like royalty. I was getting high fives and congratulations. They kept asking how I'd managed to get past everybody. They genuinely couldn't believe it.

Years later, I still smile thinking about that night.

Looking back, there was a lesson that went beyond military training. When that truck dropped us off, I didn't know what was ahead. I just knew I wanted to try a different path. It meant going farther, getting soaked, being uncomfortable, and trusting my own judgment without knowing whether it would work.

Sometimes the obvious route isn't the right one. Sometimes you have to trust yourself enough to take a different path.

That night remains one of my proudest memories from military training. And while it's a story I can laugh about today, Remembrance Day is about something much greater: those who served before us, those who served alongside us, and especially those who never came home to tell their stories.

Lest we forget. 🇨🇦

— Dre Erwin Royal Regina Rifles Canadian Armed Forces

Illustrations accompanying this story are AI-generated recreations, not documentary photographs.

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I also wrote When the Sky Danced, a children’s story inspired by the Northern Lights and the hope we can find in difficult moments. Watch the short book trailer below.

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