Janice Madigan's dad liked to tell her the story of the day she was born.

"A wrinkled, red-faced little scrap of a thing, you were." He always paused and grinned as Janice squirmed with embarrassment. "You looked so tiny and helpless, lying there in my arms. Then I bent closer to look at you, and pow! That little baby fist snapped out and clipped me square on the jaw." He laughed uproariously. "We got ourselves a fighter here, that's what I told your mother. This little girl is a Madigan to the bone."

The story mortified Janice every time her dad told it. But it gave her a warm, happy feeling as well. Madigans had been fighters for as long as anyone could remember. Her father was a lieutenant in the Canadian Armed Forces, and her mother had been one, too, before she left the services to raise their family. Her grandfather had been an infantry sergeant in World War II, and had a chest full of medals to prove his valour. One of his sisters had served as an ambulance driver and been decorated for it. Her great-grandfather had died at Vimy Ridge, his younger brother six months later at Passchendaele. Their family tree included records of Madigans at war in the British Isles as far back as five hundred years ago. The family crest even had a knight's helmet on it.

Janice always knew she would be a soldier when she grew up. She was proud to think she'd be carrying on the Madigan tradition. She couldn't understand her older brother Jim, who had no interest in being a soldier at all. He hated having to move all the time, never being able to hang on to the few friends he managed to make in each new posting. That didn't bother Janice. She liked meeting new people. She had always been good at thinking up exciting games to play, and there were always other kids who were ready to join in.



Being an army brat suited her just fine.

Janice wasn't enthusiastic about school, but she did OK in her classes, mostly because her mom was so good at explaining how the boring stuff in her textbooks would actually be useful in the Forces. Science helped to understand how weapons and fighter planes and rockets and bombs and stuff worked; anyone in the artillery had to really know their geometry, and history, of course, had lots of interesting stories about wars and famous generals and military strategy. Even Phys. Ed and Health were useful. A soldier had to be in good physical shape.

By the time she graduated from high school, Janice was eager to start the career she had prepared for all her life. She joined up with the Canadian Armed Forces the day she finished school, and after her basic training, went on to take occupational training as an equipment operator.

It was exciting to prepare for her first tour of duty to Bosnia in 1997, where she was sent as part of the UN peace-keeping force. By the end of the six months, excitement had given way to uncertainty and disillusionment. Being a soldier no longer seemed heroic and exciting, and certainly not the slightest bit glamorous. It was dangerous, dirty, back-breaking work; sometimes gut-wrenchingly frightening and far too often mind-numbingly boring.

There were no simple rights and wrongs to it, either, as she had once assumed. Even peace-keeping missions had dark moments where it was hard to be sure that what you were doing was right. Sometimes there seemed to be no point to the NATO troops being there at all. How could any amount of force correct the horrible injustices that existed, or stop the mindless cruelty that people inflicted on one another?

She talked to her father for a long time after she returned to Canada from that first tour. Out of earshot of the rest of the family, he told her different stories then, the ones even her mother didn't know. In the end, he gave her a piece of advice that surprised her.

"Go back. You've had time to digest what you saw, get over the first shock of it. Go back again and see how it looks to you now. If it still seems pointless, you can always quit the army and find some line of work that makes more sense to you."

She went. This time, it surprised her to find that she was able to see past the ugliness and misery to the progress that was being made. Slow, painful and lurching, to be sure, but there was no doubt that the UN Forces were making a real difference to people in the war-torn region. As she slogged through that second tour, her conviction grew that there was real purpose and nobility in a soldiering life after all. It just took courage and steadfast commitment to find.

In 2001, Janice married a fellow soldier, a construction engineer several years older. In 2005, he left the military and started a home-based business near Borden, Ontario. A devoted father, he has committed to being the primary parent to their two young sons for the next six months. Janice has just signed up for her third tour of duty in Afghanistan.