April 26 - Day 6 of my trip to Vancouver Island
The morning of April 26 past swimmingly. I helped unwrap a Navy hammock from 1943 with my dad’s name upon it. I also toured the Esquimalt Navy Base with an informative guide.
By 12:30 my emotions ran high and my brain felt ‘full to over-flowing.’ But, because of an afternoon appointment, I also felt I shouldn’t pause to reflect or dawdle.
My journal for the day says, “When done, off I walk to nearest bus stop. Esquimalt 6 (bus), downtown in 10 - 15 minutes, easy kap-easy, (dropped off) 100 meters from hostel! ...Shite! App’t at Maritime Museum of BC @ 1:00-ish. I change gear (warm it is) and go. No lunch.”
Fortunately, the museum was only two blocks away from the hostel and I arrived at 1:10 p.m., hardly late, just in time to learn the yellow tape surrounding the entrance had been put there by police due to a robbery at a store nearby. It was soon removed, however, by the museum employee I had agreed to meet in order to see certain rooms pertaining to the Navy. How convenient, I thought at the time, but things did not go as planned.
My journal says, “Cuyler Page, the man I am to meet, doesn’t recall my emails or his note to take me on tour of ‘closed for reno’ RN and RCN exhibits. (I’m) disappointed to a degree but I make headway in 2 ways. 1. I tour (museum’s) storage area. I love backrooms (off limits to general public)!! 2. I slip thru gate and curtains and tour RCN (exhibit) by myself... very quietly.”
Left to my own devices, I succeeded in finding several items worthy of attention.
One of the first was a Navy rum ‘tot’ measure. It reminded me of an opportunistic quality in my Dad, who, in mid-July, 1943, at the age of 23 and off the coast of Sicily, helped unload - then carefully hide - a shipment of ‘Officers Rum’ aboard his landing craft.
In a column he wrote for The Norwich Gazette in the early 1990s (his hometown weekly paper), he describes the episode, in part, in the following way:
"One day, about day three, a large net full of wooden cases landed on my landing craft. Stencilled on the side of each case were the words NAVY RUM; destination Officers’ Mess. I decided that the Officers’ mess was in the engine room of our LCM. I never worked so hard and enjoyed it so much in my life."
In another version of the story, submitted to publishers of books related to Combined Operations, he added the following details:
Question: Did the rum reach the Officers’ Mess?
P.S. I certainly did not help drink the Officers’ rum and I never will again.
Though I appreciate the mischievous humour in his last line, I do know there is some truth to it as well, because in the early 1970s he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and I never saw him ‘touch a drop’ for the rest of his life.
["Only a sign and curtain in the way? Step aside!"]
Another item at the museum caught my full attention. In the RCN room, closed to the public by means of a laminated sign - “Closed for Refurbishment” - and one black curtain, was a poster used by the Canadian Navy to draw new recruits into the service.
Though the once red and black printer’s ink had faded greatly, and it was not illuminated by overhead lights (I didn’t dare turn them on; I didn’t want to get turfed from the closed room) the message was clear enough:
DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE
NAVAL SERVICE
MEN WANTED
FOR THE
ROYAL CANADIAN NAVAL VOLUNTEER SERVICE
Details concerning ‘Pay and Allowances’ followed, e.g., (in part) Canadian Naval rates of pay will be paid to men of the Reserve Force whilst undergoing annual training at Naval bases... An extra $5.00 will be paid each year to Reservists on completing 40 or more drills during the year.
Though ‘Navy pay’ and bonuses might have caught my dad’s eye as a 20-year old in 1940, I was aware, having typed up his memoirs into book form just a few months earlier, that he was drawn to serve in the navy for other reasons too.
More to follow.
[Photos by G.Harrison]
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Please click here for “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN”: Chasing my dad Part 14
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