‘This was not a career soldier’: Fallen reservist honoured with living memorial
CALGARY — Rachel Herbert’s two children never had a chance to meet their uncle before he was killed in Afghanistan nearly a decade ago.
Her brother, Cpl. Nathan Hornburg, a 24-year-old reservist with the King’s Own Calgary Regiment, became the 71st Canadian soldier to die in the Middle Eastern country on Sept. 24, 2007. The Canadian Forces reported he was killed after being hit by a mortar while he tried to put a track back on a Leopard tank under fire.
Herbert says her son William Nathan Herbert, 9, and her daughter Avery, 7, have grown up hearing about their uncle.
“They’ve grown up knowing stories about him as a big, soldier-hero figure and they get to know his friends, so they have soldier uncles … that are still part of our lives,” said Herbert from her ranch near Nanton, Alta. “In between school and their hockey practice, we went to the Nanton cemetery where Nathan and my mom and my family are interred. That’s where we had our snack.