Kruse family to return to area despite tragedy
Published Saturday January 3rd, 2009
Coping | Mother says friends and family waiting for them back in New Brunswick
Family photos posted online show the world that Sgt. Gregory Kruse was a proud father and a family's hero.
Towering over everyone, he's smiling widely when at least one of his three daughters or their mother is by his side.
"He loved us all," said his wife Jill. "He loved his little girls, he loved me, he loved his brother and his mum, and his comrades."
The father of three was among three Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the days after Christmas.
Greg Kruse, a military engineer who used to live in New Maryland with his family, was called out to defuse a bomb when he was killed in an explosion that also claimed the life of Warrant Officer Gaetan Roberge of Sudbury, Ont.
Jill, who had been writing a regular column about the deployment for an Ontario newspaper, said her husband was committed to the cause of helping the Afghan people rebuild their country.
"He wanted to change the world by what he was doing, making a difference."
Jill said her husband told her of seeing dams being built and schools for children roughly the same age as the daughters he holds so close in family pictures - Kari, 11, and twin six-year-olds Victoria and Megan.
"He was a good man. He took care of us," she said.
The family, who left its New Maryland home when it was posted to Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in Ontario, longed to return to the Fredericton region.
It was Greg's thoughtfulness that touched his wife and others.
"I had a Christmas present arrive a week before Christmas. A soldier showed up with it," Jill said.
Inside was a precious stone he had bought his wife while he was home on leave in the fall.
He waited for Christmas Day to phone his wife and daughters to tell them he had been posted back to CFB Gagetown. It was a transfer he had known about it for days, but he waited for the holiday to reveal it.
It was the news all five of them wanted.
"So we went from the greatest happiness ever to the greatest sadness two days later," Jill said.
"I had no idea it was going to happen. We were talking after breakfast. I heard the doorbell, I looked out and I wanted to run."
At the door was a military padre.
"I said 'Tell me he's just hurt. Please, tell me he's just hurt,'" she said.
Jill said she and her husband had talked about the possibility he might not come home.
"I addressed it with him. He didn't tell me not to talk about it. He said he didn't want me thinking like that," Jill said.
"And nobody does. But you always have it at the back of your mind."
The family had planned to return to its New Maryland home later this year, and that plan remains in place.
"We're planning on coming home still, when the girls are done with school," Jill said.
She has family and friends nearby and in Miramichi.
"My friends, my neighbours and my family are all there waiting for us."
"They'll help me raise my little girls," she said, describing friends and neighbours in New Maryland as "angels."
She also has a member of the military on call to support her family and a padre just a call away.
She's addressing things head on with her children.
"I tell them the truth. We're coping by talking to him out loud and praying to him, saying good night to him," said Kruse, adding she's relying on her faith.
"We tell them the truth whenever they ask."
Seeing the outpouring of support ordinary Canadians gave as the bodies of her husband and two fallen comrades were carried on the Highway of Heroes was inspiring, she said.
"It was unbelievable," she said.
On overpass after overpass, average Canadians, firemen, policemen, veterans and soldiers stood atop to salute her husband.
They were all there for her husband, Roberge and Pte. Michael Freeman, who died Dec. 26 in a separate roadside bombing.
"Along the road, people got out of their cars and saluted - thousands of people," said Jill.
"I'll never have another bad word about Toronto. And my husband, he'd be thrilled. He's going down the 401 - nothing is stopping us. There's no traffic. Nothing's in our way."
The Highway of Heroes - the stretch of the 401 running from CFB Trenton to the Toronto hospital where military autopsies are conducted - is a stretch of road Kruse had avoided.
While her husband was overseas, she couldn't bear the thought of driving on the 401.
"I was really apprehensive about going on the Highway of Heroes. I avoided it a month ago. I was supposed to go to Toronto."
Jill said she will rely on her faith, family and friends when she returns to New Maryland. And they'll remember their father.
"He's our hero. We have to learn to pick up and go without him," she said.
"He won't see them grow up, and that just breaks my heart ... There's got to be some good out of this, I have to believe that."
On the net: www.gregkruse.com
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but why do we still cater that war bring them back they do not want help it is forced on them
GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS AND THEIR FAMILIES, IF WE CHERISH OUR FREEDOMS AND DEMOCRACY, THANK A SOLDIER AND HIS FAMILY. THANK YOU, MERCI.
K2000 TROOP SUPPORT, MONCTON NB, JOE BONNEVIE
And JOE BONNEVIE you are one of our hero Thanks we are proud of you
PS i cant wait to see this war end so all of our troops can come home safe