Private Andrew Grenon of 3 Platoon A Coy 2PPCLI during military duty in Afghanistan, Feb. 7, 2008. (Doug Schmidt/Canwest News Service)

In February, 2007, the Windsor Star interviewed several local Afghan mission veterans from the Windsor, Ont., area who were promising to return. Among them was Cpl. Andrew (Drew) Grenon, who was among the three Canadian soldiers killed today when their vehicle came under attack by insurgents in the volatile Zhari District of Kandahar province. In this archived feature, then-Private Grenon tells the harrowing tale of an attack on his convoy in Masum Ghar, which his platoon narrowly escaped:

When they rolled into Masum Ghar, Grenon said, he was disappointed when he heard firing on the south side of the mountain. He felt they'd gone to the wrong spot and would miss any contact with the enemy.

"And then they started coming up over the ridge and they were hammering us from the top and we were soon getting it from three sides," he recalled.

Cannon fire, mortar rounds, grenades and bullets filled the air. Grenon said he fired 1,600 machine- gun rounds in one two-hour stretch. The next morning, despite the usual effort by the Taliban to remove their dead, the Afghan National Army pulled 72 insurgent bodies off the ridge, which was now in Canadian hands. The Canadians suffered only a few minor injuries.

Grenon was injured twice during his Afghan tour. Once, he was struck deaf and covered in scratches and bruises from thrown-up gravel after a mortar landed in the middle of a patrol base. Another time his LAV III drove over a double-stack of anti-tank mines and his vehicle was enveloped in a fireball. He had to be pulled to safety by his comrades. That led to another bout of short-term hearing loss and a chipped knee bone.

But the worst incident was when the platoon ran a harrowing 8.5-kilometre gauntlet through hundreds of Taliban fighters along Ambush Alley on an Aug. 21 night convoy.

"That was the closest I came to dying," said Grenon.