Students of history will already know that we have distressingly few specific details about events such as those which I attempt to describe here. This is all the more frustrating when we know the importance of incidents such as the one that came to be known as ‘Operation Starfish’ to Canadian history.
For the first time, I have attempted to reconstruct this series of events based on archival documents and interviews with surviving witnesses. Where possible, I have verified particulars with corroborating sources, and the result has been what I believe to be a uniquely complete narrative of this remarkable moment in our history. However, at the same time, I hope the reader will understand and forgive that this necessarily involves a certain amount of inference and even conjecture on the writer’s part. In such cases I have attempted to indicate what is known and what is only very probable.
Here, then, is the story of these desperate and dangerous hours, as it was told to me directly by those who were there, and through the stories of those who survive only in fragmentary record.
0400, 16 January, 22 days after the launch of Operation Sovereign Eagle
Even the time above is an estimation; we truly know only that Captain Rohan Currie roused his command very early that morning, that it was still full dark, and that he ordered some of the last of the coffee brewed because of the early hour and the deep cold. There would have been the inevitable resigned grumbling of soldiers, but also a building excitement – when resources are scarce, a commander commits them only when it is important.
Currie liked his coffee, although not unreservedly. “In the mess, on manoeuvres, wherever, there was almost always something not quite right about it,” remembers Sgt. Eric Burgoine, part of Currie’s company throughout the events covered here. “Not the same as Mom’s. But always in a way that made the boys laugh, and in the end he always drank it anyway.” The stories told by Currie’s men suggest this is a fair metaphor for his style of command – he had high standards, but he loved the soldiers under his orders regardless of their flaws.
On that morning most of those soldiers would still have been elements of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, mostly Currie’s own company. However, his unit had already begun to collect various lost sheep: we can confirm at least eight from the Queen’s Own Rifles, a trio of combat engineers from the 34th, two 48th Highlanders rescued from an abandoned field hospital, and the Bison APC officially belonged to the Sherbrooke Hussars.
Under normal circumstances, all these men should have gone back to their proper places, but on that day no-one could say where those were right now, or even which units were still fighting. Eleven days after the invasion, every person in Currie’s camp had waited through long silent hours, waiting for word from the various places that orders, direction, and the sense of a plan were supposed to be given by. The words that eventually came were few: “Good luck. You’re on you’re own.” It was repeated in French.
After three weeks of action, therefore, most observers considered that the Canadian army – fragmented, bloodied, and scatteed – was well-beaten. Many survivors of the early stages of Sovereign Eagle had headed for home or tried to disappear, but here and there were some few still willing to contest the assertion that the war was already over. It was for that reason that Rohan Currie had his men up before the sun, getting ready to fight.
***
In those most desperate weeks, Currie’s plan for the day would have been just to find a way to survive: evade capture, avoid the annihilation of his tiny command, scrounge and scavenge for supplies and information that might enable them to take some kind of meaningful action against their country’s invaders. Information was a precious commodity during this time – cut off from any significant command structure, sometimes unsure if they were the only unit left fighting. Currie’s men needed purpose, and so it was as much a part of the morning ritual for him to ask if there was ‘anything on the radio’ as it was to brew the coffee.
“He really meant ‘anything we could use’,” recalls Cpl. Savita Palumbo, who took most of the shifts on comms. “There was always something, but most of it was bullshit or stuff we couldn’t do anything about.” Rumours inevitably abounded, many of them contradictory, most of them useless: The Prime Minister was dead. The Prime Minister had escaped to Scotland and established a Government-in-Exile. A NATO rapid response force would shortly land in New Brunswick. Canada’s membership in NATO would be revoked to prevent a wider conflict with the United States. The city of Windsor would be entirely emptied as a border security measure.
“The hard part was not getting too sad or pissed off trying to sort through it. It was fuckin’ endless, voices everywhere, most of which you had to ignore. Guys surrounded by a Yank battalion outside of Peterborough -” Even years later, she pauses in the retelling, shrugs in the end. “What could you do?” The reason to keep trying was that every so often there was something that should not be ignored. One morning, Palumbo received a repeated alphanumeric code on a military frequency. Their precious codebook listed it as valid, but without any indication as to what it represented. Currie had diverted the unit to investigate, and this had led them to David Prentiss.
By this time Currie’s troop numbered something like 120 effectives, including the hangers-on who were not, formally, in the army at all. Almost as soon as US troops had poured across the borders of Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, his unit had started to attract ‘volunteers’. Some were reservists or ostensibly retired military who took it upon themselves to join the fight. Currie made them welcome, since they brought with them various levels of experience and, in some cases, equipment.
Jay Argo, who had left the Armed Forces after a deployment in Haiti, explains his decision this way. “There was no fuckin’ way I was going to sit on the couch waiting to get arrested or whatever. Everyone thinks at least a little about the ‘fighting for the country’ shit when they join up, you know? This just seemed like it was finally the actual time.” Argo would go on to fight with Currie’s troop throughout the occupation, and was eventually awarded the Medal of Military Valour, despite officially holding no rank at all.
Other volunteers were pure civilians, and their utility was highly variable. Medical training, survival skills, experience as hunters – all these could be put to use. Some were simply enthusiastic or desperate, with nothing that would help them survive a grindingly brutal fight in the winter. As gently as possibly, Currie turned most of these away. “We still thought of ourselves as a fighting force, not a refugee camp,” explains Sgt. Burgoine. “We were always low on everything – food, fuel, bullets – and as bad as it sounds if we were going to take you on you had to pull weight somehow. We did our best for people who we couldn’t take on, direct ‘em to somewhere safe or whatever, but … it wasn’t a great time.”
It also wasn’t immediately clear, to anyone, which category David Prentiss fell into. He had sent the transmission Cpl. Palumbo had homed in on, but was also not obviously military; they found him dressed in winter gear that seemed to have come from a Mountain Equipment Co-op rather than an Armed Forces quartermaster and he never claimed any rank or offered any identification beyond a strange piece of government ID with his name, a thumbprint, and an ‘afford the bearer all possible assistance’ message on it.
Prentiss also carried a 9 millimetre Glock and claimed to have important information that would be of use to Captain Currie. He began by leading them to a supply cache hidden in a sewage pumping station that had replenished their stock of MREs, field dressings, and 5.56mm bullets. From then on, most of the unit concluded the new arrival was ‘something on the spooky side’, and Currie began to include the rather abrupt and supremely confident little man in his planning sessions. Confidence would have been as precious a commodity as information to soldiers so thoroughly abandoned in the chaos of the invasion.
It was information shared by Prentiss in one of these conversations that led to ‘Operation Starfish’. The source of Prentiss’ intelligence was unclear then and is unclear now; Cpl. Palumbo remembers him spending long hours listening to apparently meaningless strings of numbers on various radio frequencies, and he would sometimes send or receive texts on a collection of cheap looking flip phones, which often then went straight into a snowbank or under the tires of the Bison. Most of the time, whatever Prentiss was doing, whoever he was communicating with, turned into suggestions that also tended to pan out in some fashion.
Most recently, Prentiss predicted that a US Air Force convoy was making its way from Ottawa to the presumably-not-operational CFB North Bay, carrying equipment that would help convert the formed NORAD centre into a command and control centre for the US occupation. Given the predictability of the route and the importance of the material being transported, and given that Currie’s unit was already in the area, the suggestion was to interdict it.
Sgt. Burgoine and Cpl. Palumbo remember the final planning session well. Currie and sent a patrol out in the night to scout and prepare the proposed ambush site, and now this fresh information needed to be combined with the broader picture provided by Prentiss.
“Do we know exactly how many vehicles?”, Currie wanted to know.
“Not precisely.” This from David Prentiss. “No need to expect armour, but likely to be weapons on some of the Humvees. The target vehicles will be in the middle of the convoy.”
“Ok. Jowett, what’s it look like down there?” Cpl. Stephen Jowett had led the night’s patrol.
“First off, that road is narrow. Two lanes, but like no shoulder, either side. Then on the east, it drops off pretty straight down to the river. Like, you could climb down in places, but you’re not taking a vehicle.”
“Other side?”
“Steep as fuck hill. Like, trees, but mostly rock. You’re not driving up it. Maybe an ATV in some places.”
“Good. So: mine for the first vehicle. Beaudry, where are we on that?”
“I’ve got something that should go bang, Cap.” Sophia Beaudry was a combat engineer who should not have been under Currie’s command. They had encountered her in the chaos of the retreat from Pembroke; the civilians she had been with had stayed behind but Beaudry had been eager to get back in the fight. Her skills with how to effectively make large things into small pieces had been a godsend. “I set it up in a culvert, standard remote detonator. It’ll take out anything that’s not an MBT and might knock the tracks off of one of those.”
“Outstanding. Hard to say how spread out they’ll be so we’ll have to rocket the one in the back. Then they’ve got nowhere to go and we can hose down the rest of them.” Of course the engagement could turn into quite a firefight depending on how many combat personnel the American convoy included, and how well they reacted to ambush, but this was a moment where Currie had to appear decisive, calm, and confident about how the engagement would go.
“We’re at, uhh, six rounds left for Carl G and five of the LAWs, Captain.” Master Corporal Bilodeau kept track of most what could be shot, fired, or detonated in the troop’s possession. The ‘Carl Gustav’ recoilless rifle was the superior weapon against vehicles but it probably wouldn’t be needed to take out anything driving in a convoy. The LAWs were disposable weapons and at this point had mostly been disposed of.
“Carl G gets the day off. Hopefully we’ll have something on a resupply soon. Everything else, we’ve got ‘em to use ‘em. Questions?”
“What if,” Jowett asked hesitantly, “they don’t end up coming this way at all?”
“They basically have to,” Currie explained, not for the first time. “Between Ottawa and where they’re going, this is the only road unless they go … way the fuck out of their way.”
“And they were in Chalk River last night,” Prentiss said. “They’re coming through here.” This was the kind of information that tended to mystify Currie and his soldiers. Palumbo just shrugged at the questioning glances that went her way.
“Ok, so, forward observation point a couple klicks up the road towards the town,” Currie said. “Everyone else, minus one squad to secure the camp deploys along the road.” He did not need to specify that it would be the non-military irregulars who would not be asked to directly engage with the enemy. “Uh, I want Argo at the observation point; if they get cut off he won’t get lost in the woods.” The veteran had grown up in this part of the province and was used to navigating in the bush after moose or deer. “Anything else?”
“We don’t think there will be drone overflight,” Prentiss said. The precise nature of that ‘we’ was a topic of frequent, idle speculation on night picquet duties. Obviously a high flying drone, armed with Hellfire missiles, could change the balance of Currie’s proposed engagement in a hurry. There was also not very much his troop could do about it, and Burgoine recalls wishing the idea hadn’t been mentioned. In these circumstances morale could hardly be anything other than fragile, and if a slide into hopelessness started, it might be impossible to stop.
“If things start to go sideways, we’ll scoot into the woods like we always do and regroup at the rally point,” Currie said calmly. A retreat under fire through rough terrain in the winter would be far from a straightforward proposition, but Currie was certainly not going to admit that. “Now, lets get squared away to kill some Yankees, yes?
“Fuck yes, Cap,” Bilodeau agreed enthusiastically.
***
It was still fully dark by the time Currie’s soldiers were strung out along the slope, overlooking a narrow, partly snowed-over Eastern Ontario road that only the locals would really consider a ‘highway’. It was cold, but excitement and anticipation would have meant most of them weren’t noticing. Weapons had been checked, re-checked, and checked a third time. The jokes had all been told, giggling and chuckling quietly in the pitch black. Now they waited, mostly in silence, hoping that the convoy would arrive soon, and that it would never arrive.
No word came from the forward observation post until the eastern sky had started to lighten. Many of the Americans deployed during Sovereign Eagle were from the southern parts of their country and icy, snowy roads were among the many things they found difficult about a campaign in a Canadian winter. As a result, they tended not to drive in the dark. This was an endless source of derision and grim merriment among forces like Currie’s troop.
Finally, Palumbo’s radio came to life.
“Nilan, this is Odjick.” Currie’s company had to assume that all their communications were being intercepted by their enemy, and they did not have access to any kind of meaningful encryption gear. For this reason, when they were separated, each squad in Currie’s company referred to itself with the name of an NHL enforcer. It was considered that most American listeners would fail to recognize what was going on. “Rush.”
Elements of any given operation were referred to only by codewords that had no significance beyond pre-arranged meanings. In this case, various Canadian bands would indicate different developments on the battlefield and what actions should be taken next. ‘Rush’ was the signal that the convoy had been sighted. ‘Loverboy’ would indicate the unexpected presence of enemy air assets. “I think Pte. Rockfort wanted to use ‘Nickelback’ to mean abort mission and fall back,” Sgt. Burgoine remembered. “But the Captain said even the Americans would probably figure that one out.” It was considered unlikely that any American could try spoofing these kind of transmissions without quickly giving themselves away.
“Rush,” Jay Argo’s voice repeated. “And. Cohen.”
‘Cohen’ was the signal that there was a complication of some sort that was not otherwise covered by one of their arranged codewords. Currie’s fire team, at least somewhat forewarned now, would have to wait and see what was coming up the road towards them.
“Acknowledge, Odjick,” Palumbo replied. “Vanelli.” This directed the forward observation squad to head for the rally point. They were too far away to join with the main body of Currie’s troop unless there was a seriously prolonged engagement, and if that happened, it would be better for them not to join up at all. Everyone understood that their force could survive only through a hit-and-run style and were under no illusions about their ability to withstand sustained contact with the invaders. Many had seen how that played out at Pembroke.
“What the shit is going on?”, Cpl. Jowett wanted to know.
“We’ll find out in a minute.” Currie sounded bored, like he was discussing the weather with a fellow passenger on the bus. “Why don’t you get up on that rock cut with some binoculars so you can tell us.” Jowett prowled off to obey. “Beaudry, ready?”
“Aye, Captain.” Currie had given up telling her that they were not in the fucking Navy.
“LAW ready?”
“Ready, cap.” Bilodeau, who liked a good explosion, had of course made sure to be the one launching the rocket at the rear of the convoy.
“And now we wait.”
***
It was only a few minutes before Jowett called urgently from his perch. “Cap, there’s … school buses. Four, no, five of ‘em. Middle of the convoy.”
“School buses, the fuck?” Palumbo was as confused as the rest of them.
“Six Hummers, coupla vans, some kind of shitty APC.” Jowett finished his assessment. “Could be a lot of guys.”
“Mr. Prentiss, why are there school buses?,” Currie demanded. There was no immediate answer.
“Captain,” Beaudry said instead, “It’s got to be people going to the camps.”
“Fuck.” This was not said in disagreement.
Almost immediately after the invasion, American forces had started to seize control of infrastructure and especially the petroleum and mineral resources that were part of the justification for Sovereign Eagle. Just as immediately, they had started to track down and arrest ‘anti-American’ and ‘subversive’ elements in the Canadian population, most of whom were quickly transported to rapidly constructed prison facilities in remote areas. Pre-war American strategy considered that these detentions and the intimidation they would create would considerably reduce the extent of popular resistance to the annexation.
It was not hard to predict who the targets of these arrests would be. Certain politicians, of course, some figures in the media, but the scope broadened with great rapidity. Anyone brown, black, or yellow. Anyone queer. Anyone with a name that didn’t sound very Christian. None of these were people included in the America for Americans, so it was best to get rid of them now. There wasn’t enough military transport to move them all, so the invaders had quickly started to use anything that could transport large groups of people. Very often, this turned out to be the ubiquitous yellow school bus.
Currie had only the fleetingest shard of a moment to decide what to do; the convoy could only travel at the speed of an old school bus on a partly snow-covered road, and thus not very fast, but it was practically on top of them now and the decision had to be made before the lead vehicle reached Beaudry’s IED.
Given how vividly he recalls the rest of that day, I suspect Sgt. Burgoine remembers exactly who asked a question into that moment, even if he declines to give the name. “Cap, this looks kinda shady, does this convoy really fucking matter?” Whoever it was, they were not entirely wrong: the Humvees were all mounted with various weapon systems and surprise or no, an attack on the convoy promised to be bloody. The wider strategic significance of a single convoy, even if it was carrying the comms gear Prentiss predicated, was at best questionable. Did it matter enough to die for?
The identify of the person who asked that question matters less than Currie’s reply. “Soldier, didn’t your auntie tell you the story about the starfish on the beach?”
Before he could explain, Beaudry said happily, “It matters to these ones.”
“Truth. Sophia, blow that mine on your own time.” There was heartbeat’s pause, and then a gut-punch explosion that shook the trees free of their snowy burdens. The lead Humvee, meanwhile, was turned into a flaming mound of wreckage that almost entirely blocked the road. The one following it swerved and crashed into a newly created crater and was also immobilized. Without needing to be prompted, Bilodeau fired their LAW at the rear vehicle, knocking it out of action. Cpl. Palumbo is pretty sure she heard Bilodeau say ‘yay’ just before they fired.
***
Rohan Currie’s company lost 12 soldiers in the attack on what became known as the ‘Starfish Convoy’, plus several too badly wounded to travel with their comrades. They were concealed by the local population throughout the American investigation that followed, a complicated and entirely improvised covert operation that deserves its own story-telling. American records indicate that the troops in the convoy were killed almost to a man, although some of the dead must include those who were wounded and either froze or bled to death before the next US units arrived. Members of Currie’s troop remember that a small number also escaped down the breakneck slope on the eastern side of the road. Their ultimate fate is unknown.
The attack rescued nearly 200 prisoners from the school buses, with miraculously few lost to the crossfire and shrapnel that lacerated the battlefield. These people, underdressed, underfed, and mostly terrified, had to be led on a hasty withdrawal across rough terrain to Currie’s rally point, and then brought on a largely unplanned relocation that would quickly move the company away from the site of the battle while still moving carefully enough to evade detection. In this, they were undoubtedly fortunate that it was winter and that the local populace was willing to volunteer a large number of snowmobiles, 4x4s and other vehicles to help move everyone who wanted to travel along with Currie’s force. The iconic picture of Canadian partisans in Saskatchewan firing a machine gun from the bed of a truck advertising ‘Belanger Contracting, 250 Rue Bangs’ may very well trace to this act of generosity.
David Prentiss turned out to be almost entirely disinterested in the contents of the vans in the Starfish Convoy, the personnel of which appeared to be US Army and ICE rather than Air Force. Seldom having known him to get things wrong in the past, Currie later challenged him on whether he had known that it was largely a prison transport from the beginning. “The Captain was pissed,” Burgoine explained, “but it wasn’t really about the target. Cap was always glad we got those people out. He just hated being lied to. That was the one thing you couldn’t really come back from, in his books.” Prentiss and Currie continued to travel together for at least several months afterwards, so the rupture must have been at least partially repaired, in the end.
“Let me ask you this,” Palumbo also recalls Prentiss replying. They had been watching the survivors sorting themselves onto commandeered vehicles and sharing out the available coats and blankets. “If we went back even just a couple of months, how many of them do you figure had a pretty regular life? Probably nothing fancy, but: place to live, job, like that.”
“Most of them, you’d think.” Currie replied.
“Nearly all of them, right? So how hard do you think it will be to persuade even half of them that they should spend the rest of their life getting revenge on the people who took it all away from them?”
“Civilians? You want us to arm civilians?”
“There’s no civilians any more, Captain, not really. The army’s finished, but the fighting?” Prentiss flicked his cigarette butt into a snowbank. “It hasn’t even really started.”
“You serious about this? You’re going to use these people to fight?”
“The front line is going to be everywhere, Captain Currie, and these people are going to bloody well want to fight. The enemy? We’re going to look just like them, we speak the language, we will disappear into them. Give me a little time to organize? They have no idea what’s coming.”
“So you’re not coming with us?”
“You’ve got me for now. Like I said: got to get organized.”
“And after that?”
“Need to know, Captain. But I’ll buy you a beer when the Americans go home.”
“That part sounds all right to me, anyway. But Mr. Prentiss, just so you know – whatever you say and whatever you hear on that radio, my boys and me are not finished just yet.” Currie walked back to his soldiers.
***
Rohan Currie was posthumously awarded the Star of Military Valour, as was Sophia Beaudry. The identity of ‘David Prentiss’ has never been reliably traced; accounts that he died in an El Salvadoran prison facility do not appear in the records until many years later and cannot be substantiated.
The identities of most of the people on the school buses described here will probably never be known. However, the persistence of ‘did you ride the bus?’ as a means by which members of the Canadian resistance would recognize each other for years afterwards is the strongest testimony to their significance in the genesis of the movement.
(This is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while and finally got written up. I never know what to do with short pieces so here it is. Hope you enjoy. I am still working on a longer project and have entered into a Pact with some writer friends that will hopefully get that done sooner or later.)
