He's not the only one asking those questions. 'So, you're thinking, 'What did we do for 20 years? What did we do there for the whole time that we were there?'' he said. Ten years later, he is left with a sense of dismay - and futility. Guevremont recalled being asked by locals to respond to a report of a rocket strapped to the underside of a bridge - only to discover that he'd been led into a minefield. While he worries about the ordinary Afghans caught in the path of the advancing Taliban, he said he also remembers the insecure feeling of being an outsider among Afghans - of not knowing who could be trusted. 'There were two where IEDs were prepared to go off when the kids came out of school and we got there in time and dismantled those IEDs.' 'Once, we got there too late where an IED had actually detonated on a school, so a lot of children had died,' said Guevremont. He said the news brought back vivid memories of the three times his team was called in to defuse bombs at schools. The city and its surrounding region was their spiritual home, birthplace and first seat of power, a place from which they projected their own brutal version of Islam in the 1990s. The Taliban desperately wanted control of Kandahar City, the second largest in Afghanistan, and spilled a lot of their own blood trying to get there - mostly with the Canadians standing in the way. The Taliban - the enemy that Canadian soldiers managed to keep at bay but never quite defeat - swept through Panjwaii last weekend, handing Afghan Army troops a significant defeat and delivering a major psychological blow in the wake of the American withdrawal.ДЇollowing up on their victory in Panjwaii, Taliban insurgents reportedly penetrated Kandahar City late in the week. When soldiers referred to the killing fields of Kandahar, more often than not they were talking about Panjwaii - where Canadian troops did most of their fighting and dying amid endless fields, mud-walled compounds and empty villages.ДЄgainst an often-unseen enemy, they fought for the place over and over again throughout the five-year combat mission, which formally ended a decade ago this week. In many ways, both men left a little bit of themselves behind in Panjwaii - a sprawling, once-prosperous checkerboard of sand, farmland and ancient, dead volcanic hills that rise steeply out of the desert floor.

Shadow of war the fall