Hey look: Thousands of American soldiers can sure change your summer

From the print edition, the promised account of my latest week in Afghanistan. A four-LAV convoy of fine men and women from the Canadian Forces hurtled me quite a distance forward, for a few days, from the cushy confines of Kandahar Air Field, where I was mostly confined on previous trips. A medic from Quebec City showed me how to perch my feet on a little rail hanging down from my seat so that if anything untoward happened, there’d be an extra six precious inches between the floor and my boots. The view, and the objective strategic circumstance, are radically different this spring. I did my best to tell you how.