Fall, 2004 – Issue II

From Gagetown, With Love
by Boris Sark

So there I was getting up at “O-dark-early” in this lovely place called Gagetown. It was a regular Monday morning around 6:30am when my name was called out by the sergeant in charge of morning PT that day. The taking of attendance was a regular thing though it was redundant at times. I mean where else would one rather be but out on the track at 06:30 on a Monday waiting to be beasted by a senior NCO who’s been running for 15+ years with the army…

We started off easy, a quick run for what we later calculated to be about 6+KM or so. The funniest part was that only 2 or 3 reservists kept up to the regular force runners, the others did their crawl on their own time. After this jog we talked about making up t-shirts that would say “MO-POWER” as a motivation to all the reservists of W-battery who actually outnumbered the regs by a 2-1 ratio. (the shirts never got made, but the joke still is among those that were there in the rainy and warm days of the summer of 2004).

As life went on, PT runs became easier even for those who aren’t made to be runners, the names of those I cannot recall. The working days in garrison were spent prepping for the field exercises that were guaranteed on a weekly basis. There were troops who would spend more than half their contract time in the field, and boy was that great. Most reservists get shocked when they think “… Oh God, five days in the field, how am I gonna do this?”

But the simple fact is, you get used to it, after your first 4 day exercise one gets immune to being in the muggy field where nature can’t decide weather to rain or shine on you, and eventually everyone learned how to deal with the field.

Also one always knew that regs don’t like missing their weekends, so one was guaranteed to be out on Monday back by Friday, and the weekends were ours to do as we pleased. Fridays were usually quite the same in nature, we get back to D-25 have a quick clean-up shower and crack a bottle of beer to heal the accumulated mental and physical wounds. A lot of “Ungodly” deeds were done on weekends, but who can help the fact that Fredericton’s female population was so friendly to the boys from BC…

Saturdays were movie days, until it got dark and the booze was on peoples’ minds once again… Sundays were recuperation days, go to church, get ready for Monday and plan the coming up weekend. On that note I can add that those of us with the soul of an adventurer decide to go as far east as this country spreads, and managed to see the “Tall Ships” in Halifax as well as to visit some old members of this regiment who now serve out in Greenwood, Nova Scotia.

Out of all the experiences of the summer of 2004, I can only describe mine as the best time away from home on tasking. Good friends were made out there, a few great minds discovered, and a lot of gun drill practiced by people like myself who really needed it. And now it’s over and the memories of the people and good times are only captured on pictures and in the minds of those who got to “serve the weapons of W Battery from July 2004 to August 2004.”

UBIQUE