Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

Lcol Borne concentrates on his Tagalog greetings.

I have to admit that up until today when we went to fire a rather long salute (8 shots) to commemorate Philippines independence, we've been pretty lucky with the weather. But sooner or later our luck had to run out and we'd get weather that made us all hark back to our active days in the military and our annual visits to Gagetown. As luck would have it, that turned out to be today where from the moment things got rolling, we received a steady, if not overwhelming drizzle that lasted pretty much all afternoon. As a consequence, the two most thoroughly useless things I did this weekend were to:

A. Spend two hours pressing and starching my uniform and:
B. Put on sunblock this morning, for fear I might catch another nasty sunburn as I did a couple of weeks ago.

No chance of that happening today....none! NFW!

Our first shot of the day.

Anyway, despite the rain, and our having to spend pretty much all afternoon in it, everyone kept their pluck, and spirits remained high with absolutely no complaints or griping. We had a few humorous moments to boot. Lcol Borne, who by virtue of rank was selected to address the crowd on our behalf and speak a few words in Tagalog, was introduced as "The Commander Of The Canadian Armed Forces." Congratulations on your promotion, sir.

Also, despite the miserable weather, we had great fun posing for photos with members of the Filipino community, often loaning them our hats or pulling out a WWII tin hat for them to wear. All good fun, but also good publicity for us and the regiment as many of those photos taken by spectators today will invariably end up circulating around the internet through Facebook and other social media. I was very pleased to see how well other 3BAM have taken this practice to heart.

Lcol Borne samples some of the cuisine.

Participating today for 3BAM were Lcol (ret) Borne, Ocdt Ouellette, CWO (ret) Aube, Sgt (ret) Castonguay,  myself, and Lsgt (ret) Rocheleau. Not a big detachment, but we got the job done due in no small part to Sgt Castonguay, who served both as our artificer in which he was aided by Lsgt Rocheleau, and also serving as #1.

As I've already mentioned, the weather just plain sucked. It sucked enough to constantly fog my lens and ruin a number of shots and I was constantly wiping off my camera, lens and flash. Fortunately, Nikon professional gear has very good weather sealing, but that doesn't help with fogging. Drats!

In between the first five shots and the last three came a long period of inactivity, probably a couple of hours, during which most of us grabbed some lunch in the form of tasty Filipino dishes that were being served all over the place. We spent the rest of the time either posing for photos, waiting for an interminable mass to end, or just standing under the cam net (with a blue tarp stretched over the center) trying to stay dry and recounting old Gagetown stories. It was during this time that former Liberal cabinet member and current Montreal mayoral candidate Denis Coderre wandered around to our position and came to speak with the detachment. By this time the foul weather had convinced me to pack away my camera in waterproof Pelican case, so I had to rapidly go dig it up again and get it ready so that I could take a couple of group photos.

Members of the detachment with mayoral candidate Denis Coderre

Sgt Castonguay

After the religious service was finally over, we tried in vain to find the organizers, who were also supposed to be our VIP gunners for the last two shots. We really wanted to fire those shots, get paid and get the gun and gear back the armoury, where we still had a fair amount of work to do. Marc Castonguay took charge of the situation just then, suggesting that since we still had three rounds left and only two VIP's we fire one shot immediately, and this would surely bring our organizers running. Sunray agreed and so a quick BOOM later, Marc's prediction came true. Our organizers appeared out of nowhere, cheque in hand and wanting to make they got to shoot before we headed back to the barn.We had here something of a repetition of something that had happened in February with "Les Amis de la Montagne" shoot and our gunner either not understanding how the firing lever works or not pulling back with sufficient force, but the gun didn't boom when the order to fire was given and it took rather a while to get the shot off. The second shot went a little better and with that, we packed up and headed for home...well, CDN Armoury to stow the gear or hang it up dry any rate.

One of our VIP's

It's a pity that the weather was as bad as it was. The event would have been a lot better for the participants if it had been, and I'm quite convinced that in better weather a lot more of the participants would have come to pose for photos with us, thus increasing our exposure. This is the very thing Gilles brought me into 3BAM to do. but you win some, you lose some. Everyone did their part, got wet together and made the best of it. I saw nothing but smiling faces. Even my KD service dress cap, better suited for wear while chasing Rommel in the Western Desert or while sitting in hotel lobby in Cairo sipping gin-and-tonics then to wearing in the rain held up better than expected. And I wasn't the only one dressed for the desert!

When it's all over, June will have been a very busy month for 3BAM, and so a month's stand down in July will be a welcome break and I will I hope, give me to opportunity to spend my weekends shooting pin-up photos and my weeknights editing said photos rather than ironing my uniform, shining my boots and posting this blog.

Ubique!

Gary Menten
Photographer-Correspondent
3BAM