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Documentary to capture 70-year history of paratroopers MILITARY: Moviemaker inte

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SOURCETAG  09071587066750
PUBLICATION:  The Kingston Whig-Standard
DATE:  2009.07.15
EDITION:  Final
SECTION:  News
PAGE:  1
ILLUSTRATION: 1. photo of Bill Dickson 2. IAN MACALPINE imacalpine@thewhig.com RetiredAirborne member Lt.-Col. Jay Lapeyre is interviewed at the Military Communications and Electronics Museum by director-filmmaker Dixon Christie for a documentary tracing the 70-year history of Canadian paratroopers. 
BYLINE:  IAN ELLIOT 
WORD COUNT:  97

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Documentary to capture 70-year history of paratroopers MILITARY: Moviemaker interviews more than 100 current and past paratroopers for 90-minute film

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There is perhaps no element of the Canadian military with as storied a history -- or as big an identity crisis -- as paratroopers.

Whether the defunct Airborne regiment represented the elite and the "pick of the army" or was a reform school for problem soldiers -- if not an outright dumping ground for them -- depends on who is talking and of which decade they are talking, as the paras' reputation waxed and waned.

A new documentary will take aim at those issues and others as it traces the 70-year history of Canadian paratroopers from the Second World War through Korea and the Cold War through Afghanistan. Paratroopers.The Canadian Storyis a 90-minute movie set for release next year.

The brainchild of retired Capt. Bill Dickson, a 69-year-old ex-paratrooper who lives in Edmonton, the movie will assemble more than 100 interviews with current and past paratroopers and attempt to both do justice to the history of Canadian paratroopers and predict what -- if any -- role they will play in the future.

"I think paratroops are an asset that will always be needed in Canada, if for no other reason than the sheer expanse of our country," Dickson reflected yesterday at the CFB Kingston Communications and Electronics Museum, where interviews were taking place.

"The days of Operation Varsity (over Germany in 1945), where you saw tens of thousands of paratroopers dropping from the sky are over and no one believes they are ever coming back.

"Paratrooping now is a means to an end, but it's still the fastest way to get soldiers somewhere they're needed."

The movie, produced and directed by Alberta-based filmmaker Dixon Christie and narrated by Martin Sheen, is a mix of interviews and archival and modern footage ranging from 1942 to present-day Afghani - stan.

It doesn't avoid the controversy with the Canadian Airborne Regiment, which was disbanded in 1995 following the brutal murder of a teen in Somalia by its soldiers and images of brutal hazing rituals within the regiment.

The Airborne was replaced by companies of parachutists at other regiments across the country.

The move still rankles many who wear jump wings and who view the regiment itself being sacrificed to conceal weak leadership and bad elements in the ranks that superiors did not address.

Moviemaker Christie says troopers in the regiment of the time speak bluntly about that episode and what followed, as well as the rest of the Airborne's history.

"We sit them down and ask them 10 questions and say they're free to say as much or as little as they want," he said, "but I found out later that some of them went to Bill and said, 'I can't believe I said as much as I did, or that I started to cry.'

"The bottom line is that I don't feel the story is mine to tell. It's their story, and I want them to tell it."

The history of paratroops may be rich in legends and medals, but their future is anything but assured. New technology, including unmanned aerial vehicles, threatens their traditional role, as do evolving methods of war. Dropping soldiers from planes to capture and hold ground is not a big element in counter-insurgency, when there often isn't even a front line to drop them behind anymore.

After doing scores of interviews from privates to generals, Christie sees paratroops being a key part of special forces, such as JTF2, as well as domestically valuable in tasks such as search and rescue.

He notes there remains a mystique of paratroops and Canada contains to train and deploy them -- although without the regimental identity, it's unclear whether soldiers will consider themselves paratroops first or another sort of specialist who happens to be trained in jumping out of planes.

"The Americans jumped into Iraq and they jumped into Afghanistan," he said, referring to the initial push into those countries. "We have many para-trained soldiers in the Canadian Forces, and every last one of them would love the opportunity to jump into a theatre." KEYWORDS=CITY AND
 
Hmm, tried it but it didn't work. Will shift location and keep trying!
 
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