Silver Cross Mother to CFB Wainwright families: Canada is behind you

I would imagine when Wainwright happened, you already had the secret inside you that you would be a National Silver Cross Mother. Yep. Your daughter died in a training accident. Yep. You hear that Wainwright's happened, more lives taken. Yep. What happened within you? We were sitting on the couch, and all of a sudden, it was just like you had a cold shower. It was like, oh my God, not again. And I said to Brian, I said, well, I now have four more members of our club, and it's not a club we want to belong to. It is indeed the worst of clubs, for the families of four soldiers killed when a grass fire swept through a training area at CFB Wainwright recently, and for Virginia Hicks. At this year's Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa, she will represent all mothers who've lost a child serving in the military. And so, from one stricken mother to so many more newly grieving ones, a message. I'm hoping and praying that all of those young people who were burnt and are in hospital still make it through. But their life is going to be very hard and their families are going to be very busy taking care of them. But to know that the military is behind them, the people in Canada are behind them, and if their families ever need anything, just put a hand out and we're there. This is the sort of thing she doesn't just say, she means it. She's been to more than 150 repatriation ceremonies to do for all of them what they did for her family. Thousands showed up for the funeral of her daughter, Sapper Mary Beth Short, in September of 2002. The 22-year-old was killed when the light armored vehicle she was riding in rolled over twice during training at CFB Petawawa. Mary Beth was standing in the gunner's hatch. Now up here in the hatch is where Mary Beth was. Virginia explains it took 18 months of engineering and military investigations to figure out what happened. And she says she was told it all came down to a faulty weld. This is the wheel that came off. This was a slip trench that the front left wheel assembly hit. It would have gone down into the slip trench. But because the front left wheel assembly was not a proper weld, it actually gave way and they rolled. Virginia says because it was on a hill, there was no way to stop it. That part really bothered me because I trusted the military equipment. I've had to trust the military equipment in whatever deployment I've ever done. For your own life? Yes. Virginia is also a veteran, a sergeant in supply and logistics who served nearly 29 years in the Persian Gulf, the Golan Heights, and Afghanistan. So she's always understood risks and danger. But nothing prepares even a veteran for that knock on the door. A padre went looking for Virginia. And found Mary Beth's stepdad, Brian, first, also a veteran. This Padre walked up, and he said, I have to explain to her that her daughter, Saffron Mary Beth Short, was killed today in the Mattawa Plains in a LAV rollover. And our house in Halifax, you have to visualize it, was all brick. Brian turned around and hit the brick and actually moved the brick on the house. What do you mean? Like, he punched the house? He punched the house, and he moved the brick on the house. And then the Padre found Virginia in the kitchen. And I looked at him, and I said, you're an effing liar. Get out of my house, you're an effing liar. And he goes, no, my dear, I'm sorry, but I have to tell you that she has passed. She was killed in an accident on the Mattawa Plains during their exercise. I looked at him and I thought, no, that's not possible. I just talked to her. I talked to her this morning. Like, you know, what are you telling me? A training accident, impossible to wrap her head around. Her young daughter had been so excited that morning, all the morning, since signing up. The high schooler, looking for herself, found her purpose in uniform as a combat engineer. She found it. She found her niche. And what a different kid from the little goth. Yeah, the little goth girl. Oh girl. This is a treasure they keep in the house, a video made by Mary Beth's friends while she was training for bomb detection. She's happy, eh? And you can see all of her emotions, her concentration. People say, well, you can't enjoy a job like that. She did. Ah, it's the camaraderie, too, right? Yeah, it is. Short was shorty to them. 4'11", 95 pounds, and all in. I said, she was a go-getter. She never stopped. She never quit. And if it was something hard, get it out of the way. Let me prove to you I can do it. There were a whole bunch of things she could have done. Oh, my God. Yes, she could have. This is one of the particular cruelties of losing a child who's serving their country. They are inevitably just emerging, just at the cusp of potential. So that silver cross is heavy. At times, it's weighed even more. When I first got my silver cross, my memorial cross, I was on parades and I had senior officers asking me what it was. It's a memorial cross, silver cross. Well, how the hell did you get it? I said, well, my daughter was killed in the military service. Oh, I thought that was only a war medal. No. It's a medal for service to your country, whether it's in Canada or outside of Canada. As long as you are wearing your uniform and you were killed in the service of your country, you can wear this. And a lot of people don't understand that. Do people argue with you about whether, you know, being killed in training? I shouldn't have got it because she wasn't in a war. And it bothered me. It bothered me for a while. Had Mary Beth survived, she would likely have been deployed to Afghanistan. Her mother figures they would have been serving there together at precisely the same time. That thought won't be lost on her this Remembrance Day 25 years after the war in Afghanistan as she lays the wreath in Ottawa. That solemn duty of the National Silver Cross mother, one of those very public acts that swirls with very private thoughts. She'll be right beside you. I'm pretty sure she will be, or I hope she will be anyways. We've tried to do her proud. There are other, more private pilgrimages. Every year, on the anniversary of Mary Beth's death, they go to the precise spot at CFB Petawawa where she died and where the tiniest of shrubs has grown into a tree, her tree. And then, of course, Mary Beth's grave in Trenton, always close. That's a mother's duty.