WESTLOCK — As Canadians stopped to recall the service and sacrifice of soldiers this Remembrance Day, Westlock’s Mathew Johnsen is one of them who has served the country by providing important military training for Ukrainian security forces overseas.
The 33-year-old Master Corporal with the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI), based in Edmonton, returned home last month after serving in his first overseas tour in southeast England, where close to 200 military personnel, including training staff and instructors from his battalion and logistics support from other units, were deployed in mid-August to assist with ongoing military efforts in Ukraine.
“We were training them on basic infantry skills such as camouflage and concealment, urban warfare, rural warfare and first aid was a large component as well,” said Johnsen.
Serving in the military since 2009, Johnsen first joined the reserves with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and has been with the PPCLI since 2019. He has also been a volunteer firefighter in Alberta for more than 10 years and has served with the Westlock Fire Department for the past year.
Johnsen was part of Operation Unifier, a long-standing Canadian Armed Forces training mission in support of the Ukrainian security forces, that first began in Ukraine in 2015. It was paused in February 2022 and resumed in a new location several months later.
“Around mid-summer the Department of National Defence decided that we’d continue training the Ukrainian partner force in the United Kingdom, so we ended up deploying mid-August,” said Johnsen, noting that Canada has coordinated its Unifier training efforts with the U.K. as part of the U.K-led Operation Interflex — a mission that has a goal of training 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers by November 2022.
“They’ve been training Ukrainians since March and they did two serials (rounds) before we started and then we jumped in on the third serial (in August),” explained Johnsen, adding he and his fellow troops took several Canadian lessons, condensed them because of a “very small window for training” and provided the most important details of those lessons to the Ukrainian forces.
“They take those essential skills back to Ukraine. Some had experience on the front lines, some didn’t, and some were going right to the front lines, and some weren’t,” he said. “In this capacity, it was my first time training a partner force like that. It hit me a little different, knowing that they were coming from a war zone and going back to a war zone.”
The Canadian mission is expected to continue until March 2023, but Johnsen was allowed to return home early in October, on compassionate grounds.
“My wife is pregnant and we’re having twins in January,” he said adding despite some complications with the pregnancy, his wife Megan, a veterinarian at Westlock Veterinary Centre, has been a steady rock of strength and support in both his role a solider overseas and as a firefighter.
“I wouldn’t be able to do what I do for the community and for the Canadian forces as well, without my wife,” he said. “She’s does so much and I’m away so much being in the military.”
Training soldiers
Johnsen said Canadian troops were honoured to be a part of the mission because they “knew the stakes were so much higher” and Ukrainians put forth a strong effort because they knew every little bit mattered. Many days were spent working and training from sun up to sun down, often starting at 5 a.m. and going past 9 p.m. in the evening.
“There was definitely a sense of urgency and importance of what we were doing too … but there’s always moments of levity,” said Johnsen, noting that although friendships formed, they never lost sight of why they were there. “I think those situations definitely brought it back into focus, that what we’re doing is really important.”
Ukrainian security forces were trained in groups in five-week intervals, many who were grateful for the professionalism of Canadian soldiers, their experience, expertise and the lessons they taught. Johnsen noted that as trainers, to help strengthen the bond between the two, Canadian troops would join in and mirror what their partner force was doing.
“It was trying to get them to be the best soldier that we could make them in five weeks. If they’re sleeping outside, we sleep outside — if they’re eating rations, we eat rations,” he said. “It builds that community.”
Johnsen noted the close ties that many Canadians and Ukrainians share and said that having the opportunity to help and support a partner force, like Ukrainian security forces — who are in the midst of war fighting for their country, was a profound experience as a Canadian solider.
“I think it reinforced everything I was taught growing up, about the greater community and helping everyone. It’s part of the reason I’m a volunteer firefighter as well,” said Johnsen. “Everyone there took a lot of pride in that because we knew what we were doing had a big impact and we were helping them. Being a firefighter, I can help a smaller community and being a soldier, I can help the greater community.”
