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Here's a very moving and history making event regarding the Memorial Cross for a recent casualty in Afghanistan:
Saturday, Dec 09, 2006
Fallen soldier's daughter now youngest Memorial Cross recipient
(CP PHOTO/Frank Gunn) ST. CATHARINES, Ont. (CP) - Eleven-year-old Danika Storm was bestowed a tragic yet historic honour at her father's funeral Friday when military brass informed her she had become the youngest-ever recipient of the Memorial Cross.
Cpl. Albert Storm, one of two soldiers killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan last week, lost his own mother years earlier and was divorced from the mother of his two children.
The Memorial Cross, a military memento previously granted only to mothers and widows, fell to Danika at a private ceremony held just hours before Storm - "Stormy" to his friends - received a full military funeral in this southern Ontario town.
The blonde-haired youngster broke down in tears as one of her father's colleagues eulogized the 36-year-old soldier, telling Danika and her brother Joshua, 13, to "be proud of your daddy, a hero."
"Stormy . . . (was) clearly able to face the devil without fear . . . finally paying the ultimate sacrifice," Storm's commanding officer, Maj. Peter Scott, told hundreds of mourners gathered in the city's armoury.
Storm and Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Girouard, his battalion's regimental sergeant major, were in an armoured personnel carrier when a civilian vehicle drove alongside and detonated explosives on Nov. 27.
The Fort Erie, Ont., native was a decorated soldier who had served in trouble spots around the globe, including Bosnia and Croatia.
On Friday, Col. Denis Thompson presented Danika with the cross and "told her the she was the youngest recipient," said a military spokesman.
The spokesman confirmed it was the first time the daughter of a fallen soldier, rather than a wife or mother, had received the honour.
Colleagues, friends and family recalled the "brute force strength" the burly Storm often displayed, whether squatting nearly 160 kilograms of weight in the gym or moving a military water trailer by hand when no truck was available. "Albert was wonderful with his rough, strong hands," his older brother George told the congregation through tears.
"Amazingly, he was gentle with his hands and his children. I've seen him cuddle his son and his daughter with compassion in his hands and eyes."
Storm, who was three years from retiring from the Forces, was the "kind of guy who when asked to dig a hole, would probably dig all the way to China if you didn't tell him to stop," Scott said.
"That was the way Stormy was: quiet, but a force to be reckoned with."
Storm, who was an army cadet prior to enlisting in the Canadian Forces in 1990, was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Mourners heard that Storm had been waylaid last year with a knee injury serious enough that his superiors told him his military career was over.
"He had just received a letter from Ottawa stating that he would be released from the military because of medical reasons," said Scott.
"It was clear that Stormy was having none of this, and it was pretty clear he was going to go to Afghanistan no matter what." An intensive year of weight training proved to his superiors he was fit for the mission in Afghanistan, Scott said.
Following the funeral, Storm's flag draped casket was carried past an honour guard and into a waiting hearse as his family looked on in the chill air. He was to be laid to rest of the foot of his mother's grave during a private interment ceremony Friday afternoon.
Forty-four Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002. Thirty-six of them died this year.
© The Canadian Press, 2006Attached Files
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