Bodies of 2 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan head home

More than 1,000 Canadian, U.S., Dutch and British soldiers turned out in the bright Afghanistan sunshine for a ramp ceremony Monday at Kandahar Airfield to pay their respects to two fallen Canadian comrades.

The soldiers stood quietly as the flag-draped coffins carrying thebodies of Maj. Yannick Pepin, 36,andCpl. Jean-Franois Drouin, 31,were loaded aboard a C-130 for the long flight home.

Pepin andDrouin were killedSunday when a roadside bomb hit their armoured vehicle in the Dand district southwest of Kandahar city around noon local time.

Bothwere members of the 5 Combat Engineer Regiment and were stationed in Valcartier, Que.

Five others were injured in Sunday's attack, but their conditions are not serious. Onehas beenreleased from hospital.

Deputy task force commander Col. Roch Lacroix said bothPepin and Drouinembodied "patience and determination."

"Today, the entire task force is mourning our fallen comrades,"Lacroixsaid,with the cenotaph marking each of Canada's fallen soldiers clearly visible in the background. "Saying goodbye to Yannick and Jean-Franois so prematurely is hard for me. It is hard for their friends, and it's hard for their families."

He said the military's engineers"put in a great deal of effort in Afghanistan where they're denying the ability of the insurgents to kill innocent victims on a large scale or simply reconstructing a bridge, roads, schools with their Afghan partners."

Pepin father of 2

Pepin, a native ofVictoriaville, Que., had been in the Canadian Forces for a decade and took great pride in the mission and was devoted to helping and supporting his troops. He leaves behind his partner, Annie, and two children Alexandra and Charles.

Pepin possessedremarkable compassion,Lacroix said.

"Proof of this was when he was on patrol once and stopped his vehicle to take a kite out of the antenna from his vehicle," he said. "He handed it to the small Afghan child who thought it had been lost. That day he carried a big grin."

Drouin, a native of Quebec City, was already showing great promise with his military career. He was known as "Big Drou" to his friends and remembered as someone who liked to make others laugh.

"Jean-Franois was a very generous man with a big heart," Lacroix said. "As big a heart as the three pieces of steel he liked to lift in the gymnasium."

Drouin, he said, had received an accelerated promotion to corporal "just before coming out on what was sadly his last mission."

Drouin is survived by his partner, Audrey.

It has been five weeks since a roadside bomb attack in the Zhari district claimed the lives of two other Canadian soldiers. Sapper Matthieu Allard, 21, of the 5th Combat Engineers Regiment and his friend, Cpl. Christian Bobbitt, died in a roadside bomb attack.

Allard and Bobbitt, both combat engineers, were in Afghanistan with a battalionof the Royal 22nd Regiment, based in Valcartier.

Pepin, who was their commander, said at the time of their deaths, "The loss of these two is very difficult, but the work will continue."

Sapper Alexandre Beaudin-D'Anjou, one of the survivors ofSunday's blast, told reporters, "I think the majority of the Afghan population benefit from what we do here. Sadly there are dangers in this from what you saw yesterday. All the soldiers here feel that we will finish our work for one another."

Since 2002, 129 Canadian soldiers have been killed serving in the Afghanistan mission. One Canadian diplomat and two aid workers have also died.