Then the firefight slowed down, says Hillier. Larochelle’s platoon commander went to check that they still had some cover.
“Jess popped up and said, ‘Hey, sure, I’ll provide you some covering fire. Come on in. When his commander said he was going to replace Jess because he wouldn’t be able to send someone else till later in the evening, Jess said, ‘Sir, look, I’ve got it now. You know, don’t impose this on somebody else. I’ve been in the fight. I’ll stay in the fight.’
“The platoon withdrew early the next morning, handing over to another platoon. Jess went back to Kandahar with his platoon. He participated in the ‘ramp ceremony,’ carrying the body of his best friend, Private Blake Williamson, onto the plane for his last trip back home to Canada. It was only after that on the ramp that he went to the medic said, ‘Hey, I’m hurting a little bit.’
“What we discovered was that when that rocket-propelled grenade detonated inside of the tower it knocked him unconscious, broke one of his eardrums, detached the retina in his right eye, broke bones in his neck and in his lower back, and left him with shrapnel cuts over a good portion of his body. So, here was the guy with a broken neck, a broken back, half deaf, half blind, still back in the fight carrying on.”
Larochelle was subsequently awarded the Star of Military Valour, which is Canada’s second-highest award for valour.
“With the rest of detail that has come out since that citation was discussed in early 2007,” says Hillier, “we believe there should be the appropriate recognition, and we believe it’s worth a look to determine if the Victoria Cross is right.” Larochelle suffered from medical complications caused by his battle injuries for many years and died on Aug. 30, 2023, at age 40, near Nipissing, Ont. Hillier says he is among 24 Star of Military Valour recipients from Afghanistan that could be Victoria Cross recipients.
“Now we think, actually, we should do something as a nation, officially review something independently from the military honours and awards commission, which in Canada, moves this through to the Governor General. And that’s where we are now.”
Hillier says that one of the issues involved in bestowing military honours is understanding what can happen on the battlefield. He recalls when he chaired the Canadia Forces honours and awards board and was reviewing citations. Board members would be “a little bit on the fence” about whether a particular citation deserved the Star of Military Valour or Victoria Cross.
“Here’s what I would say looking back. Number one, we were new to war, right? We had not been at war since Korea, and this was all new business to us.
“We were kind of saying, hey, you know, this is really powerful citation, however, what if one comes along, you know, next week? That’s, you know, even greater. What do we do then? And I think we were kind of hedging our bets just a little tiny bit. We wouldn’t have described it that way, but I do believe that is what happened.”
Another factor, points out Hillier, was the detailed “richness” that arise from subsequent battle stories. In Larochelle’s case, he says, “We had a battle group that was in combat, that was at war. And they’re trying to recognize their own individuals. They’re trying to write up the citations. They’re trying to do justice to everybody.” Now, years later, he says, there are several citations that many think “should be changed, or at least looked at.”
