Cpl. James Dalton, 20, of the Canadian Scottish Regiment in Victoria was deployed to Afghanistan on Thanksgiving weekend. He will be writing monthly dispatches from the Canadian Forces base at Kandahar. This is his second column.

Saying goodbye to your family before getting on a plane and going to Afghanistan is a picture we all imagined many months ago when we decided to take on this challenge. It's a day nobody looks forward to.

A lot of guys asked their families to stay home to make the process a little easier on everybody. I heard a story of a guy telling his mother that he was just going to a base in the Arabian Gulf for six months to stand at the front of some gate guarding it all day.

She believed him, when in fact he was actually going to Afghanistan for a six-month tour.

He got unlucky and was wounded in action, and his mother received a very confusing and all of a sudden terrifying phone call saying her son had been wounded in Afghanistan but was in hospital making a full recovery.

That was a situation I wanted to avoid, so I was honest and said if my family wanted to see me off that was perfectly fine.

The flight from Edmonton to Afghanistan was very long and it gave a lot of time for people to think and wonder what life is going to be like for the next six months. Maybe you wonder how you got in this position in the first place.

The good thing about the military flights is that they actually feed you lots of food and don't fleece you for cash like we've all experienced on those cross-country flights with some commercial airlines.

All that food makes you what we call "lunch drunk" and you tend to fall asleep faster.

Then all of a sudden you wake up, the engine stops and you're in Kandahar province, the wild west of the Middle East.

Kandahar Airfield is home to thousands of troops from all over the world. There are Americans, Brits, Dutch, Danes, Aussies, Slovakians, Germans and Canadians all working together trying to get the job done. With so many different countries, you definitely feel that sense of pride with your own flag on your shoulder.

This is the place you want to be if you're going to be in Afghanistan. In the middle of the base there is a boardwalk where you can shop for rugs, electronics, suits, jewelry and fast food.

We put our Canadian stamp on it with our beloved Tim Hortons coffee shop and a ball-hockey rink right beside it.

You'll be happy to know our coffee is very popular with the other countries.

As we all know, Remembrance Day is coming up Nov. 11. This has been a rough year for Canadian troops -- we've taken a lot of casualties in the line of duty.

Since entering this war we've lost the third most of any country and the largest per capita.

On the news, you'll hear the generic "he/she died for their country."

A country is just rock and dirt and nobody wants to die for that. It's the people that make a country great. They are what make Canada great. They are who we're fighting for.

I would encourage everyone who can make it to a Remembrance Day ceremony to do so.

Having participated in a few, I know it feels great to have a big crowd cheering you on as you march by.

Many veterans of Afghanistan will be in the parade and I'm sure thinking back to their experiences in this hot and unforgiving country.