Lest We Forget

With so much going on in Canada and around the world, it is hard to figure out what to blog about.  However, with November 11^th fast approaching, let’s talk about remembrance.

In my calendar, there are three remembrance dates.  There is November 11^th, the actual Remembrance Day.  Being Navy, there is also the first Sunday in May, Battle of Atlantic Sunday.  And for me and a few other survivors, there is October 23^rd, the anniversary of the explosion and fire aboard HMCS Kootenay in 1969.  That latter remembrance day is probably the most important for me.  I don’t always get to the memorial service in Halifax, but I always remember.

But let’s look at the other two remembrance days, in particular, what they remember. 

November 11^th, of course, came out of the carnage of World War 1, and the date was made to coincide with the date of the armistice of that war.  The remembrance was expanded after the Second World War to include that conflict.

The Battle of Atlantic Sunday was added to the roster of ceremonies after the Second World War to honour the Navy and Air Force veterans who fought the longest battle in any war.  Without victory in that battle, and it was a near run thing, Great Britain would have lost that war, possibly even before the United States entered it.  It was the biggest and longest battle that Canada fought during that war.

It is good to remember the man and women who participated in those wars, particularly those who sacrificed their lives.

But there is a problem when those remembrances of yesterday linger as the realities of today.  It is true of far too many Canadians that those remembrances are all that they know about our armed forces.  They still think of our army as fighting their way across North-West Europe or up the boot of Italy. And they still think about our Navy as escorting convoys across the Atlantic Ocean.  More than the people of any other country that I know, Canadians really don’t understand their armed forces in the modern world, and this has been true for most of the past one hundred years.  We remember soldiers, sailors and airmen during wars and then forget about them except on one set-aside day.  But we don’t know what they do or why.

We likely are more attuned to the army because of Afghanistan and their peacekeeping past.  And we recognize the air force because of things like the Snowbirds aerobatic team and the controversy over the F-35 acquisition.  But the Navy . . . that is another story.

“Why do we need a Navy?”  “Why do ships cost so much?  Can’t we just buy them from the Koreans?”  What does our Navy do?”  You see these sorts of questions in the press every time there is a mention of a Navy story.  What has our Navy done recently?  Just last week, one of our Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDVs) intercepted two vessels carrying drugs on their way to North America.  This was part of an operation that the RCN has been carrying out with the United States over the past several years.  Most of the operations take place in the Caribbean, but this one was on the Pacific Coast.  Canada was one of the first nations to send warships to fight pirates off the coast of Somalia.  We have had a continuing presence there for well over five years.  HMCS Charlottetown was a key component in supporting the no fly and interdiction flights over Libya during that country’s civil war to ouster Mohamar Khadafi.  Canada also sent two warships to Haiti after their tragic earthquake, and these ships provided immense help to the Haitian people in the first weeks after the tragedy. Your Navy is busy doing all kinds of things around the world.  Too bad more of us don’t recognize and support that.

By the way, the ships used during these operations were all designed and built in Canada.  In all cases, they are doing things that they were never designed to do.  But the flexibility built into them has allowed them to excel at these tasks.  Canada is bracketed by the roughest parts of the world’s two greatest oceans.  The stories of the bad weather conditions encountered by our escort corvettes and frigates during North Atlantic convoys are well known, but the North Pacific can be even more difficult to survive.  Our ships need to be rugged and seaworthy.  They have to be able to survive and work (fight) in the worst conditions.  Not many countries build frigates and destroyers that can do that.  There was a time when I was in the Navy when US Navy ships were not allowed to go north of 40⁰ in the Atlantic, which is well south of Halifax, during the winter months. We do it all the time. I have seen situations when the only ships, out of a multilateral force, that could successfully refuel at sea were Canadian ships. 

We need ships that are tough enough to meet our needs.  We need ships that are adaptable enough to undertake the unknown tasks of the future.  And yes, we do need a Navy!