Soldiers who served in Libya honoured

TRENTON (16/11/12) Cpt. Sophia Polwin recieves her medal from the Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Lieutenant-General Yvan Blondin. Photo by Kristen Oelschlagel.

By: Kristen Oelschlagel

Decoding messages and planning missions might sound like something out of a movie, but for Cpt. Sophia Polwin it was real.

“I’ll remember lots of planning. Having to get up in the middle of the night and plan missions and decoding some messages we got,” said Polwin.

“They’re called tasking order, like ATO is an air tasking order. We’d have to decode that and go and fly the mission based on the coded message we got.”

Polwin is one of 166 military personnel from C.F.B. Trenton who were deployed in support of Operation Unified Protector. The NATO operation, which was a military intervention in Libya in response to events during the Libyan civil war, formally began on March 23, 2011 and ended on October 31, 2011.

On November 16, Polwin along with 58 other members of 8 Wing Trenton, were awarded the Non-Article 5 NATO Medal for service. The medal is awarded for 30 consecutive or 60 cumulative days of honourable service under NATO Operation Unified Protector.

Polwin was deployed in Sicily for 64 days, flying the airbus in air-to-air refueling missions. It was her first real deployment and she said it was it was exciting to be able to put all her training to use.

“It was a real wartime situation so we it was pretty intense at times. Taking off in the middle of the night, having fighters come to you that were on their minimum fuel and needed to get to the hose right away to fuel and go drop their bombs over Libya,” said Polwin.

Lieutenant-General Yvan Blondin, the Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was at the medal ceremony to present medals to those in attendance.

Blondin said what the medal symbolizes mean more than the medal itself.

“It’s just a piece of ribbon and medal, but it means so much for us. It’s what you do, you get the recognition from Canadians, that’s what it means,” said Blondin.

“It’s something you can put on your uniform and wear proudly, it’s a symbol of the sacrifices you need to make to serve Canadians.”

Polwin, whose dad was there to watch her, said the ceremony was nice for those receiving the medals, as well as their families.

“It’s my first medal, so it’s nice to have the general come here and give it to us in a formal setting with all our spectators here. It’s nice for the families because obviously some people were away for a long time so it’s nice to have the parade and recognize them and their families as well,” she said.

Polwin said there are some memories from her deployment that she’ll never forget.

“Working with all sorts of different nations. We were working with the Spaniards, Italians, Brits, UAE (United Arab Emirates), French, and the Canadians of course. So it was a big multi-national operation and that was one of the best parts I think.”