What WERE They Thinking?!
Jim, happily demoted to platoon officer from guard commander .. .
A little while ago, I took on a last contract with the navy to see me through until I ‘swallow the anchor’ (Yup. Retire.). I won’t tell you what I do with the RCN, because then of course, I would have to kill you all, and that would be too much bloodshed. . .
. . Those of us in the Canadian Armed Forces understand all to well, the term ‘secondary duties’. So, keeping that in mind, the navy, in it’s not-so-infinite wisdom, ‘tasked’ (Read, ordered) me with being ‘guard officer’ for an upcoming foreign admiral’s visit. See, when some VIP visits, there of course is the required ceremony, and in this instance, this consisted of the wonderful Naden Band, a fifty person ‘guard of honour’, flag party and various hangers-on. And naturally, they came straight to me and essentially said, “Parker you’re it. I’m what?, says I. “You’re are the guard commander for the forthcoming visit of the Admiral of the Chilean navy.” “But”, I whimpered, “I haven’t done sword drill in 25 years and I’ve never been a guard commander before. Really, you do NOT want me as your guard commander. Really.” All to no avail, of course .. .
Flash forward a few days, with the intervening ones being spent frantically studying
