Toronto Star -- Just five weeks ago, a stoic Maj. Yannick Pépin was bidding farewell to two of his fallen soldiers.

"The loss of these two is very difficult," he told reporters on Aug. 3, two days after the two men under his command were killed in a roadside ambush. "But the work will continue."

This weekend it was the major's turn to be eulogized.

Pépin, 36, and Cpl. Jean-François Drouin, 31, were killed Sunday when a roadside bomb smashed their armoured vehicle.

"Today, the entire task force is mourning our fallen comrades," an emotional Col. Roch Lacroix, deputy commander for the Canadian-led Task Force Kandahar, said when announcing the deaths late Sunday.

Pépin was the highest-ranking Canadian soldier to die in combat in Afghanistan.

"Saying goodbye to Yannick and Jean-François so prematurely is hard for me, it is hard for their friends, and it's hard for their families," Lacroix said, standing in front of a cenotaph marking each of Canada's fallen soldiers.

Yesterday, the mournful trip home for Pépin and Drouin began after an emotional ramp ceremony at Kandahar Airfield.

The two men were killed when the powerful roadside bomb blast hit their armoured vehicle on a road southwest of Kandahar, bringing to 129 the total number of Canadian soldiers who have died as part of the Afghan mission since 2002.

Pépin and his battalion were finishing up a six-month tour, where their duty was to seek out and defuse the very bombs that killed them.

Prior to Pépin, only two other majors had died while posted to Afghanistan since 2003; neither involved combat.



Both Pépin and Drouin were members of the 5 Combat Engineer Regiment based in Valcartier, Que. A military official said Pépin was a native of Victoriaville, Que., and Drouin was born in Quebec City.

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the deadliest weapon facing NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. They have been the cause of death in the majority of Canada's casualties. Sapper Matthieu Allard, 21, and Cpl. Christian Bobbitt, 23 – the two soldiers Pépin paid tribute to last month – also died in a roadside explosion.

IEDs are cheap, easy to make and allow the Taliban to exact a high price on NATO troops without having to show their faces.

Five others were wounded in Sunday's IED attack. Their conditions were described as not serious. "I want to say part of the population of Canada views negatively the work that we do here," Sapper Alexandre Beaudin-D'Anjou, a survivor of the latest blast, told reporters.

"I think the majority of the Afghan population benefit from what we do here. Sadly, there are dangers in this from what you saw yesterday. All the soldiers here feel that we will finish our work for one another."

Mercedes Stephenson, a defence and security affairs analyst, told CTV Pépin may have been targeted by the Taliban given his important role in foiling their efforts to detonate dangerous IEDs, though it was unclear if the Taliban knew he was out on patrol on Sunday.

Battle Group Commander Lt.-Col. Joe Paul told reporters he was proud of both Pépin and Drouin.

"Maj. Pépin and Cpl. Drouin were basically a fine example of what the Canadian soldier can be, somebody who is extremely courageous. We should be extremely glad of everything they did," said Paul.

"Combat engineers are doing an outstanding job here," he said. "It's one of the most difficult jobs that any soldier can do."

Pépin had been in the Canadian Forces for a decade. He leaves behind his partner, Annie, and children, Alexandra and Charles.

Drouin was showing great promise with his military career. He was known as `Big Drou' and remembered as someone who liked to make others laugh.

Drouin was an exemplary soldier, said Lacroix. "He received an accelerated promotion to corporal just before coming out on what was sadly his last mission."

Drouin is survived by his partner, Audrey.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered his condolences yesterday to Pépin and Drouin's family and friends.

"Be reassured that an entire country stands behind you at this difficult time," the prime minister said in a written statement.

Harper said the tragedy of the soldiers' deaths will not deter Canada from continuing to help Afghans rebuild their country.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the two deaths were a "tragic loss" for the Canadian Forces and all of Canada.

"Major Pépin and Corporal Drouin were helping to bring back hope to a population that has seen much hardship and turmoil," he said in a written statement.

Later yesterday, the Netherlands defence ministry said a Dutch soldier had been killed by an improvised explosive in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan.

A ministry statement said three other soldiers and an Afghani translator were wounded yesterday after driving over a roadside bomb 9 kilometres northwest of the main Dutch base, Camp Holland.