The flag-draped casket of Cpl. Beauchamp of the 5th Field Ambulance in Valcartier, Que., was first to be loaded onto a waiting Hercules transport plane.His common-law wife Cpl. Dolorès Crampton carried his beret as she walked behind the coffin and later boarded the plane for the long journey home. For the past three years, Beauchamp and Crampton, an ambulance technician in the Armed Forces, had lived in Pont-Rouge, near Quebec City. Pte. Lévesque, of Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment at Valcartier, leaves an 18-year-old pregnant fiancée in Rivière-Rouge, a small village north of the Laurentians. Just last week, the young couple became engaged while Levesque was on a two-week leave.
The bodies of Levesque and Beauchamp were to be flown to Canadian Forces Base Trenton in eastern Ontario. Their deaths bring to 73 the number of Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 2002.