25-pdr QF gun and original 3BAM crest.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Salut McGill / McGill Salute

                                 JOUR DU SOUVENIR À L'UNIVERSITÉ McGill 
                                                  L'ARTILLERIE Y ÉTAIT,
                              
                              COMME TOUJOURS




Texte: Adjuc (ret) Gilles Aubé, MMM,CD.
Photos: Lcol (ret) Yvon Bégin, CD.

La 7e Bie prépare les pieces pour le tir
En appui au 34e Groupe-brigade du Canada, le 2e Régiment d'artillerie de campagne de Montréal (2RAC   ARC) avec sa batterie affiliée, la 3e Batterie d'artillerie de campagne de Montréal (3BAM) ont animé la cérémonie.  Le maître de la cérémonie était le Lt Christophe Leong,  officier du tir, appuyé par le SMT, Sgt Robert Étienne Cases.  Il y avait sur place l'Adjuc João Barros  actuel SMR du 2RAC ARC et plusieurs anciens membres du régiment (RGT).

Caission et obusier de 25lb de la 3BAM a gauche de la batterie.
La  cérémonie a débuté par un foudroyant coup d’un canon de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, un obusier de 25 lb,  appartenant à la 3BAM, et tiré par le Lcol (ret) Steve Goldberg, CD.  La 3BAM est composée de bénévoles très motivés essayant d'égaler les artilleurs du 2RAC ARC.  Le RGT a continué à tirer les autres vingt coups protocolaires avec leurs redoutables Howitzer C3, de 105mm.  Comme convenu le tir a cessé après que la 3BAM eut tiré le magistral dernier coup de la cérémonie.

C'était la première fois depuis longtemps que la 3BAM tirait avec son RGT, car habituellement elle anime la cérémonie au Champ d'honneur (Mémorial national de guerre canadien) à Pointe-Claire dont la cérémonie a été annulée cette année.

La 3BAM est en période de recrutement perpétuel, si vous êtes intéressé à nous joindre SVP, communiquer avec l'Adjuc (ret) Gilles Aubé aux: (514) 249-6164 ou par courriel à: adjucgaube@hotmail.com.

                                     

                           REMEMBRANCE DAY CEREMONY AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY
                               THE ARTILLERY WAS PRESENT ON HAND

                                                                  AS ALWAYS


Acting In support of the 34th Canadian Brigade Group, the 2nd Field Regiment, Royal Canadian
CWO Barros of 2RCA joins members of 3BAM for a photo

Artillery, (2RCA) along with its affiliate battery, the 3rd Montreal Field Battery of Artillery (3BAM), led the ceremony at McGill University. The master of the ceremony was Lt. Christopher Leong, in command of the gun position, assisted by the TSM  Sgt Robert Étienne Cases. Also present were CWO João Barros current RSM, 2 Fd Regt, RCA and several former members of the regiment.



The ceremony opened  with a thunderous cannon shot from a Second World War 25-pdr howitzer  belonging  to 3BAM, and fired by LCol (Ret'd) Steve Goldberg, CD . The 3BAM is composed of highly motivated volunteers seeking to equal the high professional standards set by the gunners of the 2nd Field Regiment. Thereafter the regiment fired the remaining twenty shots required by protocol with their powerful C3 105mm howitzers. 3BAM then fired the closing shot of the ceremony as previously arranged.
CWO (ret) Gilles Aubé










It was the first time in years that 3BAM participated in a mission alongside 2RCA chiefly because 3BAM traditionally participates instead in another ceremony at the Field of Honour (Canadian National War Memorial) in Pointe- Claire, which was cancelled this year.

The 3BAM is in a perpetual recruitment mode.

If you are interested in joining us please, contact CWO (ret) Gilles Aubé at: (514) 249-6164 or by email at: adjucgaube@hotmail.com 



Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Common Objectives

Lcol Garon and CWO (R) Aubé prepare to lay a wreath on behalf of the 2nd Field Regiment
A few weeks ago, 3BAM had the honour of being accompanied on one of our missions by the 2nd Field Regiment's RSM, CWO Joao Barros. This past weekend, it was our honour to have the regiment's CO, Lcol Richard Garon join us for a Remembrance Day salute in Terrebonne. Now when I say join, I don't mean that he came by for a visit and watched we we do. I mean that the CO participated in the even, both as a guest of honour, as well as a gunner on the 25-pdr detachment.

Lcol Garon at the head of the parade
This was a great thing for 3BAM. First, to have the CO show his deep interest in what we do by participating in the event is a great morale boost for the membership of 3BAM. Not that our morale is low; it was already quite high, but it's a bit higher still knowing how deep an interest the CO takes in 3BAM. I had myself been repeatedly telling our Sunray, CWO Aubé and anyone else in 3BAM who would listen just how important it would be to invite Colonel Garon to one of our events, pretty much from the day he assumed command of the regiment. Not that Gilles needed me to tell him this; he's been around for quite a while.  It's simply that I have a particular gift for stating the obvious.  Neither was  there was much doubt that Colonel Garon would accept our invitation at the earliest possible moment, since he has shown a keen interest in 3BAM since assuming command of the regiment. For what it's worth, I would be very happy to have ANY serving members of the regiment accompany us on missions, provided of course they have permission from their chains of command.

Colonel Garon's presence was fortuitous in another way. Providing detachments to fire salutes in four different locations on this weekend, we were stretched a bit thin on manpower in Terrebonne on Saturday, and the CO, ever the gunner, agreed to be our #3 on the gun once we got to the ceremony.

3BAM members Gilles Pelletier and Denis Dumas are both old 2RCA members
Though the regiment and 3BAM have completely different missions (3BAM is not a not a real military unit, much less real combat unit tasked to provide combat-ready soldiers) we have common goals, and 3BAM basically lives under the regimental umbrella. The regiment helps us enormously by allowing us space on the parade square to park our guns and vehicles and we do our best to support the regiment in any way we can, including firing salutes at regimental events. We all recognize the importance of honouring and supporting Canadian service veterans and I think it's understood that supporting the regiment's affiliated cadet corps, an important source of recruits to the regiment, is also important.

Lcol Garon, serving as #3 fires a shot.
Freelance gun batteries are rare in Quebec; we are pretty much the only one, and I mostly see 3BAM as publicity tool for the 2nd Field Regiment and for teaching and promoting the history and traditions of the artillery in Quebec and Canada. Drawing attention to ourselves at public events is something we do pretty well. Focusing that attention back towards the regiment is something we need to do a bit better. For instance, having serving members of the regiment participate in our missions from time-to-time to talk to spectators about the regiment, opportunities in the reserves, or their service to country might be away we can achieve this. However hard we try, 3BAM are a sort of old guard and many of us have been out of the military for over 20 years. Serving members are in a much better position to talk about the regiment today than we are.

Again, having the CO and RSM accompany us on a couple of our recent missions and 3BAM's recent

O Canada
participation the the regiment's Remembrance Day salute at McGill this past Monday are important steps in the process of learning how we can better help one another out.  After recent events, I am convinced that this is the way of the future.



Ubique!


Gary Menten
3BAM Photographer-Blogmaster,
Ex-Sergeant, 2RCA,  etc, etc.








Sunday, November 10, 2013

Having a Blast: Canada Company Fundraiser, November 7, 2013


It's frankly almost impossible to refuse any opportunity to photograph artillery firing at night. If you have the right gear, know what you are doing and get the timing right, the shot will be more spectacular than most any you can do in daylight. It's the nature of the beast. There is a tiny split second, the decisive moment, when a linear stream of orange flame expands into large ball of gas before contracting and vanishing altogether. Only still photography does anything like a passable job of capturing the moment. At normal speeds, be it the human eye or film, it all happens much too quickly to properly take in the moment and in all its splendour.

But spectacular as it is, the 25pdr howitzer in the photo is a tool of war that was designed for the sole purpose of killing men. Whenever 3BAM fires one or the other of our guns, it's always as a solemn salute to those who serve or have served our country, and most especially to those who've lost their lives in the service of our country. But you don't have to be dead to be a hero. As Patton once remarked, "there are a hell of a lot of alive ones."

Dinner guests listen attentively as the procedure for the military toast is explained
Canada Company fundraising events are are held with the aim of helping the families of Canadian veterans and helping Canadian veterans reintegrate into the civilian work force after serving their country. 3BAM is all about supporting Canadian veterans, it's always an honour for us participate in the event, and we generally do so by providing one of our guns and giving contributors to the event the opportunity to fire a shot. We fired six this night, and all our VIP gunners seemed to truly enjoy the opportunity to pull that firing lever. Some of our gunners that night had military backgrounds, others didn't, but all were eager and excited to sit on that #3 stool and pull that firing lever when the order came to fire.

Bgen Lanthier saying a few words.
The guest of honour or the event was Brigadier-General Jean-Marc Lanthier, commanding general of the newly reconstituted 2nd Canadian Division. Other guests included Brigadier-General (R) Ernest Beno, whom I met once briefly before, more than twenty years ago, Colonel (H) Charles de Kovachich, the 2nd Field Regiment's honourary colonel, Lieutant-Colonel Richard Garon, the regiment's current CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Dubreuil of the Royal Canadian Hussars, and various officers and NCO's of Montreal area reserve regiments, and of course members of the business community who constituted the majority of the guests. It should be mentioned here, that many reserve members ARE leaders in the business community, and so these last two groups are not mutually exclusive.

A caterer prepares the entré.
The main dish.
3BAM members who participated in the event included Lcol (R) Yvon Begin, CWO (R) Gilles Aubé , WO (R) Gilles Pelletier, myself, Lsgts Marc-Antoine Gervais-Hotte, Denis Dumas and William Gallant. Both Gilles Aubé and Gilles Pelletier were dinner guests, I suppose having paid some steep sum of money, all of which is for a good cause, while the rest of us, contented ourselves with rubber chicken dinners eaten on the fly wherever we could, in typical gunner style. This is how I prefer it, incidentally, as it's much more typical of army days of years gone by than having formal dinners in the officer's mess, which I was not a part of at any rate. As gunners, this is what we are used to, especially those of us who were once gun-detachment commanders or RECCE TSM, or both. In any case, I've never had much patience for sitting through long dinners or listening to speeches.  It was more fun to slip away when I could and chat with Will Gallant and Denis Dumas who both spent most of the evening downstairs by the armoury's side door, keeping an eye on the gun, the truck and the ammo, and oh yes...my photo gear. How is it you can pull sentry duty on a cold night more than 20 years after leaving the army? Easy...join 3BAM! I volunteered for a shift myself in Terrebonne two days later so that the guys who did all the real work while I stood that day while I just stood around shooting the occasional photo, could go and eat. Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not that surprisingly, it's actually kind of fun.

After dinner and the speeches guests were invited downstairs (and outdoors) to either participate or witness what was for me, and I suppose the other 3BAM members, the best, most important part of the evening; the gunfire! Everything went without a hitch, and having learned from previous experience to prepare everything in advance and not to wait until the speeches were over to get myself into position, I was pretty happy with the outcome, though a few points still need to be smoothed out with the team about properly posing the guest gunners for a photo prior to firing the shot, and especially afterwards, to pose with the still smoking shell casing. This is largely being forgotten in the high of the moment, but we'll get the hang of it sooner or later. It would be easier if I had a second camera body with different lens on it as most event photographers and photojournalists do, but I'm neither, so I'll just have to make do with what I have.

Lcol Garon shares a laugh with some of the guests
After the shots were fired, the crew packed up the gun and brought it back to the barn as I packed up my gear and disappeared to the mess for cocktails, which again from my perspective, were the SECOND best part of the evening. After all, I can have a cocktail most any evening I want to, but I don't get to photography gunfire at night all that often. It was a lively evening, especially after Colonel Garon rang the bell to declare an open bar.

Most of the other members of the detachment came up to the mess as well, and I was once again surprised to have people, some of whom I don't know personally but who obviously follow the blog to come up to me and tell me how much they like it, and of course, this is
One of the guests recounting a lively story.
what it's there for; for all members of the regimental family to be able to follow what 3BAM is up to. And with five salutes to fire between the Canada Company fundraiser and the 11th of November, 3BAM is up to quite a lot.

From where I stood, the Canada Company dinner was very successful and it was an pleasure to lend our service to the event, chat with old friends, and just have a good time.  But however fun it was, however much liquor was consumed, what has to be remembered is that this is event is all about helping Canadian service veterans. The world outside continues to be a dangerous place, and the international demand for Canada's military participation in missions ranging from peacekeeping to combat operations is unlikely to end any time soon and there are a hell of a lot of living heroes we need to be thinking of.


Ubique!


Gary Menten
Photographer-Correspondent, 3BAM

Some Thoughts On Remembrance

A Canadian veteran's chest full of medal defines a lifetime of service to our country.
Sometimes I wonder what's going on in some people's heads. White poppies for instance. What's that all about? Well, it seems that some people today believe that Remembrance Day is all about celebrating peace. It isn't really, though it is celebrated on the anniversary of the armistice that ended the Great War To End All Wars, (WWI).  It's all about commemorating the sacrifices that Canadians (and our allies) had to make in order to benefit from that peace.It's not about glorifying war either, and  We don't need  special day to celebrate peace because we reap its benefits EVERY day that we live in peace. But that peace did not come cheaply. Nearly 100,000 Canadians died in the last century alone so that we can enjoy that peace. That's a steep price.

The red poppy was chosen as a symbol of remembrance by the UK and Canada, precisely because it of its attachment to the battlefields of Flanders where tens of thousands of our soldiers lie buried. It is a symbol of the terrible cost of war, and has deep meaning to anyone who has ever worn a Canadian uniform, including myself. A white poppy on the other hand is symbol of nothing at all.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
  Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard amid the guns below."


I have a second, perhaps deeper connection to the red poppies of Flanders insofar as both my parents, indeed, my entire ancestry hails from Belgium. My father's father Alexander Menten served in the Belgian Army for four horrible years in the trenches during the Great War, being wounded twice, gassed, and though he survived, his health was ruined by the exposure to poison gas, the effects of which plagued him for the rest of his life.

My parents lived through the Nazi occupation of Belgium 1940-1944, and my mother's father, Guillaume Mommaerts fought the Nazis first in the regular army in the spring of 1940, then in the resistance after Belgium's capitulation. He and my mother's cousin were arrested by the Gestapo. My grandfather spent six weeks in solitary confinement before being released, if my memory serves, with a case of pneumonia.* The cousin was not so lucky and was tortured, being eventually released on the intervention of a German military doctor. His mother was taken in his place and sent to Ravensbruck and Mathausen concentration camps. She and my grandfather survived the war, her son did not.
 
My parents both lived through the occupation and were on hand when the British 2nd Armoured Division liberated Brussels on Sept 3, 1944. My parents met after the war, married and came to Canada in 1956, and I was born here, in freedom, in 1962. But many, many young men, a lot of them Canadian,  died or were maimed or forever changed by the horror of war to buy that freedom. They died in Flanders fields, they died on the beaches of Normandy, in the skies over Berlin, in hills of Sicily and Italy an in the flooded fields of Holland.

"We are the Dead. Short days ago
  We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
  In Flanders fields."


So Canada's military history is deeply tied to the history of the land of my ancestors, to my own life
and my freedom, and it was an honour to have served in it for a time. That the entire nine years I spent in it was spent in peace has much to do with the sacrifices made by others before my time, the symbol of which is a red flower that grows in Flanders Fields. 

  

"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
  To you from failing hands we  throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
  We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
   In Flanders fields."



Ubique!


Gary Menten
Photographer, 3BAM


*There is some question as to the accuracy of my recollection with regards to the pneumonia.