Wednesday, December 11, 2019

GOOD MEN AND TRUE

You can find them everywhere. The Armed Forces are thick with them. You just don't find them in Canada.


My mother always wanted a picture of me in uniform. I held off for obvious reasons. I mean, one could not die or get killed if there was no picture. Needless to say, she found my reasoning specious. I didn't cave but I did have reason to have a picture taken when the Navy decided, in its wisdom, that the only way to prove to a promotion board that one was not fat was a photo in the record of recent vintage. I had my brother do his worst with the hasselblad he loved and you, gentle reader, can still see it to this day, over there, on the right.

One should always be armed. It seems like only yesterday

4 comments:

capt fast said...

and not just men. women should arm themselves. armaments may not save you, but the assaulter may pay a price for the assault.
on the other hand, I would not care to be shot for a tip of the hat and a good morning with a smile simply because some woman is having a bad day. don't tell me that thought has never passed thru you minds; if not than you may want to rethink what you believe is polite greetings in public.
I wouldn't ever want to be in an elevator alone with some armed and delusional paranoid person without my having a plan to kill them myself with my own weapons. according to my analyst, that doesn't make me delusional paranoid, it makes me a realist.

Canada does not have the second amendment, among others. I think that is just plain nuts for so many different reasons Canadians wouldn't recognize.

Doug said...

Mmmm so ignorant on the differences. We had a wack-job invade our parliament, and the staff, raced to the scene and did him in then and there. The MAN who ended the wack jobs life was promoted to a diplomatic post in Ireland, where he publicly and physically straightened out an idiot at a government function. We got boys, we don't need them as often. BTW our "hero" was no spring chicken.

capt fast said...

I do indeed recall that incident. not one to say that canada has no credentials when it comes to standing upright as men should. a bunch of germans at normandy and dieppe felt their wrath.
my point was that one rarely hears about the citizen who does not have to wait for a response from government to defend his or her right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-sometimes called a "taxpayer relief shot".

HMS Defiant said...

You are right and I knew I was wrong but should have corrected it. Roughly half of my family are Canadian and like them, they live in Newfoundland and BC. I'm familiar with the Princess Patricia's own. I was still young at heart when the Canadian Army was sent packing from Serbia or Yugoslavia in a good way and then the Canadian government found most of it's army held hostage in mid Atlantic by the shipping company that they owed money to. I laughed out loud.

Troops seize cargo ship
JEFF SALLOT
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED AUGUST 4, 2000
UPDATED APRIL 4, 2018
PUBLISHED AUGUST 4, 2000
This article was published more than 10 years ago. Some information in it may no longer be current.

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An armed naval boarding party successfully descended by helicopter yesterday onto the decks of the GTS Katie, as the captain of the giant transport tried to make a getaway with the ship's military cargo.

The 14-sailor boarding team executed the risky mission without firing a shot and quickly seized control of the ship's bridge to end an 18-day standoff on the Atlantic. The Canadian sailors ordered the captain to take the Canadian military munitions and equipment without delay to the port of Bécancour, Que., on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, Defence Department officials said.

One by one, the sailors, carrying sidearms and other weapons, were hoisted down by cable more than 15 metres from a hovering Sea King helicopter to the deck as the Katie's skipper increased its speed and tried to violently weave to thwart the boarding, but to no avail, officials said.

"No responsible government can allow interference with its important military capability. . . . We had to take action," Defence Minister Art Eggleton said.

He was referring to the fact that the U.S. owners of the Katie threatened to keep the ship at sea indefinitely because of a financial dispute with a freight contractor.

"Having our equipment held hostage was not something acceptable to us," Mr. Eggleton said, noting that some of the cargo was highly sensitive military equipment.

The navy had two of its aging Sea King maritime helicopters on hand for this mission, dubbed Operation Megaphone. But one Sea King remained out of service on the flight deck of a Canadian warship because of a malfunctioning rotor head.