OTTAWA — It was once a verdant garden nestled between two palaces, but then it became a battlefield, the garden was reduced to dust and the palaces were turned to ruin.

In the spring of 2003, Canadian military engineers moved onto the site on the southwest edge of Kabul, levelled it, gravelled it, and began turning it into Camp Julien, the envy of every military in Afghanistan.

On Tuesday, the last of the Canadians left.

They turned Julien and much of its infrastructure over to the Afghan government, including water and sewage-treatment plants, a water bottling facility and hundreds of kilometres of underground pipe and wires.

The last of the 680 troops are on their way south to Kandahar, the new centre of Canadian operations in Afghanistan -- a far more dangerous place.

It's a little hotter there in the summer, a whole lot dustier, and - except for the Pizza Hut and Burger King -- the food at the U.S.-run base in the desert 20 kilometres south of Kandahar not nearly as good.

The fast-food outlets notwithstanding, the U.S. military's pre-processed, ready-to-eat trays are "a significant shock to the system after what we enjoyed in Camp Julien," said Lt.-Col. Dave Anderson, the mission's chief of staff.

With its gymnasium, big-screen TVs and European kitchen fare, Julien became known by many as Club Med -- an oasis amid the poverty and destruction that is Afghanistan.

Camp Julien was named in honour of Cpl. George Patrick Julien, an aboriginal soldier of French-Canadian descent who was awarded the Military Medal as a private for his actions at Hill 187 in Korea in May 1953.

At its peak, Julien was abuzz with 4,000 soldiers from the world over - Britons, Americans, Mongolians, Belgians, New Zealanders and up to 2,000 Canadians.

Then there were the dozens of foreign troops who found reason to stop by for lunch or dinner -- meats and pastas and cheeses, real fresh-frozen vegetables and fruit, cakes, pies and cookies.

They could take in the mountain vistas, work out in the gym or run the gravelled perimeter. There was even a paved street-hockey arena.

But it's all business in Kandahar, where Taliban and al Qaida insurgents still conduct their hit-run tactics and Anderson says the American base is "very operationally focused."

Indeed, one of the first grim tasks the full contingent will undertake is a memorial service for Pte. Braun Woodfield, killed Thursday in a road accident while on patrol 45 kilometres northeast of the base.

Sometime after, they will erect the transplanted memorial from Julien -- a stone and two pillars with plaques honouring all eight Canadians to die in the southwest Asian country since they first launched operations there in 2002.

Already there is an Inuit-style Inukshuk erected three years ago in memory of the four Kandahar-based Canadians killed by friendly fire in April 2002.

Canadian operations changed after that first fighting mission. They joined the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, securing the Afghan capital and ushering in presidential and parliamentary elections.

Through five rotations of troops - more than 6,000 individual soldiers -- the bulk of the Canadian military overseas called the 2,100-metre-high city and Camp Julien home.

Early next year, the first of 2,000 new fighting troops will begin filtering back into Kandahar and the base will be transformed again.

The focus now is on building the facilities to house them -- two-storey hard-sided barracks, an ammunition dump, showers and toilets, all worth close to $30 million.

In March, Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser will assume command of the Kandahar-based multinational brigade for nine months.

While NATO will take over responsibility for the region from the Americans and most U.S. forces will move east to the even more volatile border regions with Pakistan, the chow at Kandahar will still be American.

Anderson said as bad as it might be, food is the least of their worries.

"When you're living far away from your home, a tent is a tent and food that hasn't been prepared at home is food that hasn't been prepared at home," he said.