Dressing For The Weather.

The Big Barbecue

A lot of people would have spent much of the weekend of May 30-June 01 having a barbecue. I suppose that in a way, so did I, except that the thing being barbecued was me, and no beer was served. I'd been looking for my sun block the night before but couldn't find it and figured what the heck? We were only going to be in the Old Port for an hour or so, and there are trees there to provide shade. Well, if you read my previous post, "TTBR" you'd know we were there a lot longer and that I didn't spend much time in the shade. I burn easily and should have known better.

Wearing my "Stupid" Hat

Mistake #2 was to wear my wedge cap instead of my KD service dress cap with its visor to protect my face and eyes. I ordered the wedge cap because I found it difficult to operate a camera with the

No brainer: which hat would you rather wear?

SD cap and because I HATE berets, especially the big floppy WWII ones. The Canadian Army has incidentally, adopted many stupid and or useless forms of headgear over the years, primarily to emulate the British Army who adopted them first; berets (crappy protection, no two look the same), bearskins, (I'm glad I don't have to wear one)  the wedge cap (looks cool, especially the coloured ones, but offer terribly crappy protection,) and my personal favorite "stupid" hat the pillbox which offer worse protection than any of the above, with the added benefit of reminding everyone of a bellhop or a cigarette-girl in a nightclub, or an organ-grinder's monkey.

1950's Bush Cap

Yes, yes, I know...they were all emulating military dress to begin with but stupidity isn't limited to the military. I think that the first truly sensible piece of military headdress issued to Canadian troops between the Boer War and the Cold War was the old Olive green bush cap of the 1950's, though military conservatives were still quite insistent that we could adorn it with a large and very visible brass cap badge.

It must be warm under that hat.

When it comes to uncomfortable hats though, especially in hot weather, I can't think of anything worse than the bearskins worn by the guards regiments and part of the 2 R22R when in full dress. British Foot Guards regiments earned the right to wear these tall impractical things in the final stages of the battle of Waterloo where Maitland's Brigade went toe to toe with and repelled five battalions of the chasseurs and grenadiers of Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Naturally, we adopted the same dress for our own regiments of foot guards and not wishing to insult anyone who wears this uniform, when looking at these poor blighters dressed like this on a hot summer day, all I think of saying is "Better them than me." Seriously...it's nice to have khaki-drill uniforms in the sort of weather we usually have in Montreal during the summer months when 3BAM is most active.

Monique Champagne, Maurice Noreau and Jaques Borne prepare wreaths.

We had three salutes to fire in two days that weekend; The first in the Old Port,  I have already written about in my previous post. The other two, held respectively on Sunday morning on Mount Royal and The Field Of Honour in Pointe Claire made for a long hot day, at the end of which came gun maintenance. The missions went off without a hitch this time, and I, along with pretty much everyone else loaded up on sun block, especially when we got to Pointe Claire where we had a two-hour wait before shooting in a place with little shade. 


We had a lot of members present, especially in Pointe Claire. Security was much less of a problem than in the Old Port, largely because neither ceremony is well-publicized and both are held in places that are not especially easy to find. I'd go so far as to say, well-hidden. This means fewer people wandering by in search of perforated eardrums, but it also means fewer people whom we can make aware of our general existence. Unlike the Old Port ceremony, in which no-one who happened by was previously aware of what the ceremony was about, everyone in the cemeteries was there specifically for the ceremonies. I will also take the opportunity to mention here that Maj. Chantal Berubé of the 2nd Field Regt, RCA commanded the honour guard for the ceremony.

Tom Savoie and Denis Dumas offering different salutes.

One thing I did notice is that we are not all saluting the same way. See photo, right. I started something last year by arguing arguing vehemently that when dressed in WWII dress, we should all be saluting they way we did in WWII, with the palm of the hand showing. The other salute, force by all services by unification in 1968, was only used by the navy prior to that date. We are army, not navy runs my argument, and so when in KD, we should use the pre-1968 salute. It also  (in my opinion) looks much smarter, snappier, to use the old salute. Unfortunately, we've never really settled the issue and it seems the older members who joined before 1968 have taken to this notion, while the younger ones haven't... not yet anyway, but I'll continue to try to convince everyone to salute the correct way, as I insist on doing myself.

Lcol Mikkola fires the 25pdr. Will Gallant, wearing his new KD uniform for the first time stands ready in the foreground.

Denis Dumas hoses down the barrel

Will Gallant and Marc Castonguay pressure wash the gun.

But as the title of the post is "Dressing For The Weather" the photos will prove that dressed as we were, in the KD uniforms that our Sunray, CWO (Ret) Gilles Aubé wisely chose for us, there could have been nobody at these ceremonies more comfortably dressed than 3BAM.

At the end of the day though, came the maintenance. We couldn't put it off until Tuesday since the parade square at CDN had to be cleared for rehearsals for a Brigade change of command parade being held the next weekend...so the long day got longer. It gave me the opportunity however to snap a few photos of the grungy side of 3BAM's operations. I thought that these worked better in black and white, which is why they are presented here in this manner. it takes a lot of dedication for these unpaid volunteers to give up as much of their free time to doing this stuff. Many gave up both their Saturday and Sunday to fire the salutes. Several live a good distance from Montreal and have a long journey both to come in to CDN and a long journey home at the end of the day. All of us used to get paid to do stuff like this when we were in the army. Now our only reward is knowing that we did a good thing, and I suppose, having a good time together while doing it.


Ubique!


Gary Menten,
Photographer,
Once-a Sergeant and,
Burnmaster-General etc.