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Canada’s push to euthanize veterans with PTSD is ‘disgusting, unacceptable and infuriating’, says female artillery gunner who spent six months on the front line in Afghanistan


Army veteran Kelsi Sheren was a fresh-faced 19-year-old when she first set foot on the combat field in Afghanistan. It proved to be a life-altering experience.

Six months later the Canadian artillery gunner was ‘still shaking’ on a military helicopter heading home after witnessing one of her comrades being blown to pieces after he set off an IED in the field as their battalion moved from compound to compound.

‘That was my first exposure to watching someone die. And that was my first exposure to having to clean up what was left of someone,’ Sheren told DailyMail.com.

The experience, she says, ‘broke part of my brain’. It took witnessing that horrific death ‘for the reality of what we were doing to hit’. She was plagued by the memory of scrubbing her comrade’s remains off her hands – all the while ducking heavy fire.

Once home, she turned to therapy – and realized she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sheren made it her mission to help other veterans and has been an outspoken critic of the Canadian government’s relaxed attitude to euthanasia – including its push to make it available to veterans plagued by PTSD.

‘It’s disgusting and it’s unacceptable,’ she said, arguing that authorities would rather euthanize a soldier than foot the bill for their recovery.

Read more: Canada’s push to euthanize veterans with PTSD is ‘disgusting, unacceptable and infuriating’, says female artillery gunner who spent six months on the front line in Afghanistan