About the Author

Derrick Nearing is a retired Petty Officer who served 13 years as a Field Engineer in the Primary Reserves, followed by another 22 years in the Canadian Forces Medical Branch as a Medical Technician and Physician Assistant. His military career included missions to Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia where as a Medic, he witnessed the brutal results of war and its impact on local civilian populations. As a Physician Assistant, he would deploy to Afghanistan as medical support to front line combat troops, caring for the deadly and devastating injuries resulting from improvised explosive devices. Two decades of bearing witness to trauma and suffering saw Derrick eventually leave the military with PTSD, depression and other physical injuries. In Walking Them Home: A Soldier's Journey in Postwar Rwanda, he attempts to share personal and intimate details from the journal he kept throughout his time deployed. His first book, Anchor of My Heart: Memories of a Cape Breton Childhood was published in 2017. He presently lives with his wife, Maureen, and their children, Hannah and Reilly, in Pembroke, Ontario.