The year was 1978, I was stationed next to the Sweetwater Canal in beautiful downtown Ismailia, Egypt and feeling very, very far from home.
A lot of things had happened in my family that year I was away, some good things like the birth of my nephews Matt and Kris, some rather not so good things, like my sister being injured in a plane crash and my Father having a heart attack. And being far away from your family at a time like this can really suck!
Then one day I got a letter, your standard baby blue airmail letter, from my squadron back on the West Coast. “Hi!” the letter began, “You don’t know me but I thought I would let you know what is happening at the squadron while you are away!”
What followed was a newsy, gossipy kind of letter, full of lightness when I really needed it! By the time I reached the end I was smiling, even chuckling to myself.
The letter was signed “Looking forward to meeting you! – Jim”
“Hmm…” I mused to myself, “I don’t know any Jim in the squadron.”
So I wrote back, a newsy, gossipy kind of letter about life in Egypt, a recent trip to Jerusalem, meeting a young lady who turned out to be a madam, guy talk mostly, but a well needed break from walking in the evening just to put the hours in.
Jim and I corresponded for the rest of my tour in Egypt. When I returned home I took a couple of months off, getting as far away from a soldier’s uniform as I could! Finally came the day to go back to work. With a bit of resignation I dressed in my S3’s and headed for the squadron.
The troops were outside cleaning trucks, a common sight. In small groups, in the shade they worked, packing rucksacks, rolling cam nets, toting gerry cans or whatever needed to be done before parade. At one side of the group, seated on top of a stack of sleeping bags with his back against a wall sat a rather rotund private meticulously cleaning the mud off a pair of combat boots.
“Private Hough!” bellowed the duty sergeant, “Front and center!” as she gave me a side-eye grin.
Hough jumped to his feet, hastily flicked mud off his combats and hustled over to the sergeant with his usual sheepish grin.
Thus began our ‘real’ friendship, without postage stamps.
Jim and I got into more shenanigans, like burying a 3/4 ton pickup in the desert in Yakima, playing good cop, bad cop to a recruit class, or running hayboxes to the RRB’s in the middle of the night; with many a wobbly pop in the Junior Ranks Mess or late nights crowded around a table at Coffee Mac’s or Dennys.
One day we went off on a mission – looking for Buck Knives to complete our kit (along with the Aussie bush caps we often wore in the field). As chance would have it we found ourselves at Capital Iron, the closest thing Victoria had to an army surplus. We split up and headed in opposite directions. A few minutes later Jim peeked over the top of a shelf with a wolfish grin.
“Guess what I found?” he chortled holding up the prized Buck Knife.
“Where??” I demanded.
Jim waved towards the back of the store. “There was only 1 in stock…” he added with a grin.
“Damn!” I replied, one upped.
As it turned out there was only one Buck Knife in the store so I settled for a smaller Premier knife, a sort of mini-Buck. Very serviceable knife, just not the prized Buck.
Lives change, I was posted to Nanaimo, came back to Victoria briefly and then left the military for the weather service. Jim and I lost touch as I got married and moved to the North. Jim was my best man of course, but little did we know this would be one of the last times we saw each other.
Years and marriages passed and I started to look for my old Army ‘people’. I even started a Facebook group to snag the stragglers from 741 Comm Sqn. They came, more than 100 to date, all of us near or well past retirement age, with plenty of stories to tell.
But no Jim…
It took me years to find out that he had passed young, only 43, another victim of the Mighty C. With all the joy of reuniting with Darroch, Rich, Shan, Lynn and the rest of the gang there still seemed to be an empty place at the table.
A few days ago I started ‘de-stashing’ as my wife likes to call it, getting rid of the ‘crap’ I have hoarded for years. Old computers, tools, books, you name it it was on the block for either the BuyNothing group or a Free sign on the street. As I was emptying one of my old toolboxes I found something at the bottom that I had not seen for many years – my Premier knife!
I picked it up, turned it over, and in a flash 40 years slipped away! I was in the middle of a dusty aisle at Capital Iron looking at this grinning buffoon with his prize Buck Knife. And I had to smile.
The knife was pretty well as it was, a few extra nicks in the brass, but still with a keen edge. I brought it upstairs and placed it over my desk on the shelf.
Today I looked up at that knife on the shelf and thought to myself I need to honour that memory, so I made it a sheath, so it doesn’t spend another 40 years in the bottom of a toolbox. It deserves at least that honour…
As does my memory of Jim.
Cheers JR, you ARE missed!
Mark