his friend Kyle Brown. In the video, McKay utters racial slurs, and pre-deployment photographs showed him wearing a Hitler shirt in front of a swastika. A video taken by CAR soldiers shows Brocklebank making racist and violent remarks. Mike Abel, the only Canadian to die in the Somali operation, was allegedly a member of the Ku Klux Klan; colleagues disputed the evidence that racist literature had been found in his belongings, and asserted that it just floated around the camp and everybody read it. Airborne in Somalia The CAR was deployed in December 1992 as part of the Unified Task Force. It was accompanied by a helicopter squadron and a squadron of the Royal Canadian Dragoons. Although they were planning to deploy to the comparatively quiet port city of Bosaso, four days after arriving in Somalia commander Serge Labbé informed them that consultation with the Americans meant they would be moving to the southern town of Belet Huen, considered one of the more difficult areas to patrol. One of the Dragoons' first tasks, under command of Sgt. Donald Hobbs, was rebuilding a bridge that had been destroyed on the Chinese Highway linking Belet Huen and Matabaan. The loss of the bridge meant the only way around was through a partially cleared minefield. On January 2, Canadian forces seized an AK-47 from a local Somali who returned the following day with a machete to threaten the troops to give him back his gun; a warning shot was fired and ricocheted, hitting him in the foot. He left, refusing medical care. Also in January 1993, Lt.-Col. Carol Mathieu gave verbal orders allowing Canadian soldiers to shoot at thieves under certain conditions. On January 29, suspected bandits were found congregating on a roadway and as Canadian forces approached them, they began to flee. Warning shots were fired into the air to halt them, leading to a retaliatory shot from a Somali, and returned fire from the Canadian troops. On February 10, they fired on a crowd approaching a Red Cross distribution centre. On February 17, a demonstration of 50–300 Somalis crowded together on the Bailey bridge over the Shebelle River, and when some began throwing rocks at the Canadian Forces, soldiers fired two shotgun blasts, killing one Somali and injuring two others. A later investigation cleared the shooters of any wrongdoing; noting they were justified in their response. By the end of the