Bunting Tosser QL3 – A Radio?

15 12 2025

So here is a funny thing, when I joined the navy there were two different communicators, the radiomen and the signalman. One would think, by the name, that radiomen spoke on the radio. You would be wrong. Actually talking on a radio was the prevue of the signalmen. All the radiomen did was allow the ship to talk to the shore base, and thus to the rest of the world. Funny old world it is.

I needed to be able to talk on a radio.
I needed to be able to talk clearly on a radio.
I needed to be able to talk clearly on a radio to an ally who might not speak English as a first language.
Thus I had to learn radio procedure. The tone of my voice, the proper enunciation of my words, the proper way to tell another ship where to go in such a way that there was no ambiguity in my signal.
And no, “Breaker, Breaker this is the Bandit, what’s your 20?” does not count as proper radio procedure.

Did you know, that in the English language, there are there are 9 different letters that make the sound of E? First lesson was the phonetic alphabet – Alfa, Bravo…….Zulu. That part was easy. Then you had to enunciate each character with a precise cadence. A 20 character signal could become a bit of a tongue twister by the time you got to the end of getting it all out.
The last big challenge was to remember who each signal was from. The moment you sent a signal out it was taken that the signal came from the most senior officer aboard. God help you if you sent a signal from your Commanding Officer across the circuit when you had the Admiral aboard. In my career I managed to mess that one up a few times.

Once you managed to get all of the parts together, the whole system worked rather well. I could get on a ship to ship radio circuit, tell my German speaking counter part to tell his CO to go over yonder and look for the bad guys, without a whole lot of difficulty. Heck, I could even do it with an Auzzie. The only times I tended to have problems was when it was with an US ship.

A last point about radio procedure. In movies or TV you can often hear people saying OVER AND OUT. Don’t
Just don’t
In radio procedure
OVER is a code word for I have finished speaking, I expect a reply from you.
OUT is a code word for I have finished speaking, I do not expect a reply from you.
More that once, my classmates and I got our knuckles wrapped for uttering this contradictory phase

OUT


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OSQAB – Ceremonial and the Divisional System

30 11 2025

There is a lot of ceremony in the military. Who salutes who, where you salute, where you don’t salute….. the list goes on and on. During our time doing OSQAB we got drilled in it daily.
The other big thing that was drilled into us was the Divisional System (DS). The biggest part of the DS was that there is always someone whose job it was to see that I was properly taken care of, my medical, administration, did I receive a letter from Mom….. all of that important stuff. One thing that really stood out about this whole thing was that I was given the right to ask to speak directly to my Commanding Officer, and that request could not be refused.

Imagine that, the greenest behind the ear ordinary seaman/private could talk to the CO. The only real caveat to that was it had better be something worth talking about but that is a different story all in itself. It is a good thing to know that you can talk to the boss about something that is going awry, back in the good old days before Lord Nelson created the DS you weren’t allowed to dream of speaking to the Captain unless it was to say Yes Sir or No Sir.

Not only were you permitted to ask to speak to the Commanding Officer, in the navy there was a tradition where the CO would call up all of the lower deck crew and speak to them, one at a time.
Everyone would be lined up and marched forward one at a time. You would salute and the Coxswain, the senior non commissioned officer on board, would state your name, rank, last course you completed and any other notable thing about you. The CO would then ask you how you felt you were doing and then dismiss you.

During my time in the military, I have had a fair number of different commanding officers and any of them who were worth their salt interacted with their crew.

The most interesting ceremonial thing I learned was what happened to someone when they became the CO of a ship, when that person signed on the dotted line, that person became the ship. At times they would be referred to as the name of their ship, or command. Pretty heady stuff. You may have hear the phrase “Captain going down with his ship”….. it is really just the ship going down.

ps. I don’t believe that very many Captains actually go down with their ship anymore, unless they are a submarine


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CFB Naden – West Coast Bound

19 11 2025

Friday, week 10 at CFB Cornwallis.
I had graduated basic training, I was a real live member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Now what?
I had been given an envelope with a whole lot of paperwork and my plane tickets to the West Coast. I was told to report to Ships Office at Nelles Block, Monday morning at 0800.
And that was that.

I got on the plane, had a layover in Toronto, and then to Victoria International Airport. A 45 minutes taxi ride from the airport to Nelles Block at CFB Naden. I think it was something stupid o’clock on Saturday morning by the time I arrived. I marched up to a desk and said “I am here”. The look I got back was very clearly “and I should care why?”. They hadn’t been expecting me until Monday morning, that meant they didn’t have a place for me to sleep, they didn’t have my meal card ready and to top it all off it was raining. I was given a temporary ration card and pointed at the mess hall and told lunch was 1100 to 1400. They then decided that if I was going to eat there, I should sleep there so they sent me down to the basement in what was called Transient Quarters. A bunk, a foot locker and and a stand up locker. It was enough to store all of my kit until Monday morning.

After I got settled in I made my way to the mess hall and…..
Just walked in. No marching, no waiting for the senior classes to go first, no one yelling at me. After 10 weeks of recruit school, this was heaven. I got my tray and was asked what I wanted and they made it for me. What a mind fuck that was. I didn’t have someone timing how long I was there, I didn’t have to inhale it, I went up for seconds….
Bliss
If this is what being in the Navy was all about, I could see myself doing the full 20 years for a pension.

My delusions where shattered Monday morning.
I still did my 20 though, if you have come this far in my journal, hang on tight, there is a lot more to come.
Now it gets interesting


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[blank canvas]

26 10 2017


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[key held]

28 08 2017


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True Grit

14 08 2014

small grain of sand

it ground against her soul

she stood fast to it

 

slowly it wore

digging deep into her soul

she would not yield

 

sand wore down at last

ground into minute powder

flushed away with tears

 

the years past

pain was not yielded to

true grit held fast


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A thousand needles

23 01 2013

5am, Monday morning, Sept 28, 1987.

There we were all lined up, ready for breakfast. Our platoon babysitter was haranguing us for taking so long for getting our sorry excuse of misery out and lined up. We were out there for twenty minutes, freezing to death, before we were marched to the mess hall.

 

The mess hall was very loud and the food was pretty mediocre but there was a lit of it and the building was warm. We were given a whole 20 minutes to get food, sit down and inhale it, bring the dishes to the sc

ullery and get lined up again outside. I made it, just.

“alright, who here hates needles?” This thought greeted us as we were marched across the base hospital. The remainder of our day was spent up there. I had my eyes, ears, skin (inside and out) poked at, prodded and examined. I saw three doctors, a dentist, a shrink (a little late to decide I wasn’t mentally stable), four nurses and the needle line. Both arms, both butt cheeks, small fistful of pills and a cloud if delousing powder- okay, the delousing didn’t really happen but it sounded good.

My head was is that they were doing their best to make me sick and if they failed, I was good to go. I managed to remain alive through all of this so I was permitted to carry on with the rest of the abuse.

 

That was day 1, week one.

10 weeks to go


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Digby Harbour

18 01 2013

This shanty is a continuation of the “three hour tour” across the Bay of Fundy.

 

0300. There it was, the red light bouy that marks the entrance to Digby harbour. I was cold and wet and tired and was really glad to know the trip was done. Limping in at four knots we got alongside. Berthing hausers put out and secured.

The CO called us all together and praised us for ourcool heads and professionism. Then he opened up the ships bar for a round of “potatoe juice”.

 

Our sister ship, the Rally” was give the task of night watch as they actually had a three hour trip across the Bay of Fundy. With that happy knowledge, I surrendered to the siren call of my pillow. I am sure I remained awake up until the moment my head hit the pillow – though i have no proof. Sleep caught up to me swiftly.

Some time later my body awoke, mind refused to follow suit. I stumbled up the ladder and through the hatch leading to the upper deck.

Blinding white light streamed from a clear blue sky. I stumbled back against the bulkhead and looked around. The first thing i saw was a heavily tarred pole – support structure for the jetty. Then i looked up, i looked up some more, i kept looking up until i found where the jetty deck actually was.  It was 30′ up. And 30′ up there was a very lovely sun dress, lit up by the bright sunshine.

 I hadn’t ever heard of the great tides of the Bay of Fundy. 30′ of tide, it was awesome. And that was a small tide, the really big tides hit 50′.

And that my friends is the end of that little shanty

 


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A day in the life of a Master Seaman

3 12 2012

This post was originally written Mar, 2011 – This was a typical day in the office I worked in

Enjoy

Okay, so here is the run up to the fun start of my day.

I am currently a Master Seaman in the Canadain Navy, that means I have subordinates that I am supposed to know where they are and what they are doing. I am also in the process of retiring from the Canadain Navy, so I have paperwork to do with that.

Okay, it is 0745. I am at my desk, ready and roaring to go. At this exact moment I have 2 subordinates to take care of. One is at the passport office, the other one is supposed to be escorting a civilian contractor through our building. Some time this moring I am supposed to have food order arrive at the office and at 0900 I need to be on the other side of the base to begin my retiring routine.

At 0800. One subordinate is at the passport office, where he is supposed to be – good. The other one is not to be found – not good as I can see the contractors truck outside the building. Damn. Okay, I can find someone else to do the escorting if I need to. I call the front office to tell them to call me when the contractor makes an appearance.

0805. An email shows up, branch meeting at 0830 – BE THERE! SO SAYETH THE CHIEF. Right, its only 15 minutes. I can do the meeting and still get to my 0900 appointment – good. The missing subodinate is still missing – definatly getting worse. I wander the halls to see if I can find the missing one – no success – getting worse.

0815. A winger askes me if I can do a video confrence for him. Oh? When is this supposed to be. 1030. Yeah, right, and just what do you want me to do about it? Yes, I know your section is down to minimum manning – welcome to the club. I do some quick thinking, I will be back in the office by 1000, if all else fails, I can do it for you. I am hoping my passport guy will be back by then so he can do it (I love having subodinates).

0820. Finally found the missing one. It turns out he was with the contractor all the time. Fine, you will live another day but next time when I tell you to report to me first thing in the morning, DO IT! (sometimes I hate my subodinates)

0825. Phone rings. My food order has arrived. Great. I have time to get that sorted out and then off to the appointment – ah damn! I gotta miss the meeting at 0830 (great sadness)

0826. The CHIEF shows up. “Why aren’t you at the meeting, what part of be there by 0820 did you not understand?”  I let him know I am previously engaged. So sad, I wont be there.

0830. I bump into the previously missing one, find out he can do the video confrence and that the contractor was only going to take 40 minutes. Great! Two crisis dealt with. I run down, get the food order and try to get out of the building before anything else jumps out at me.

0835. Out of the building, running for dear life and….and…. MADE IT!! I am free! I wander over to my 0900 appointment and life is groovy.

And that was my first hour of work this moring. All of this and I am supposed to be mellowing out. Ah well. It will interesting to see what they do when I walk out the door because they still haven’t decided who to replace me with.

Life goes on

41 calander days until my sentence is up……..


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Censorship, let’s be consistant

27 09 2012

Censorship, one of the great evils in todays world. 
What is it “they” are so afraid of us to hear/see?
Hells Kitchen. In a one hour episode of that semi reality show you hear the censors hard at work, every other word out of Gordons mouth is “BEEP”. Why is it so bad to hear the word fuck? Granted, listening to it being said as a stready stream of words is boring but what the hell is the big deal?

Movie time, lets see what is on the prime time movie… Commando, with Arnold “I’ll be back” Schwarzenegger – a beautiful example of a body count flick. How many ways do the bad gugs get to die? Well lets see… apart from the basic multiple bullet holes through the chest there is…

  1. A thrown saw blade that slices off the top of some guys head.
  2. An axe swung up and into the groin – that one hurt just to watch
  3. Some guy catching a rocket with his teeth
  4. The final dead guy gets a hollow pipe rammed through his guts and into a steam pipe giving Arnie a great line “…let off some steam”

All of these deaths are complete with full sound effects and lots of bright red fluid everywhere. This is less harmfull to impressionable minds than hearing some lunitic brit screaming at a kitchen full of people who are paying to be berated in front of the whole world.

How about cartoons? Does anyone remember the original Bugs Bunny show? You know, when the anvil actually hit the coyote? Why is it that when you watch the very same show that the part with the anvil/coyote impact is edited out? What is with that? Especially when they can flip the channel and watch Homer choke out Bart, or Brian Griffin spanking Lois? 

These people who are running the CRTC really need to retract their craniums from their rectal cavity and start applying the same rules to everything or stop with the Mickey Mouse attempt to protect us from ourselves.



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