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Life in the Navy Reserves

by Cameron McPherson

132 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-1253; ISBN 1-55395-538-2; US$16.00, C$19.99, EUR13.00, £9.10

Come along with me and enjoy a life uncommon to most. Be part of my adventures that are at times quite hair raising and at others just plain hilarious.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book My Life in the Navy Reserves is a true to life account of my many adventures with the Canadian Armed Forces. This book takes you on an odyssey of adventures and misadventures, through my eyes. The stories told here are compilations of my 10 year experience. Find out what it is like to go through boot camp, fight fires and sail on the ocean. Throughout the book I describe moments of humour, sadness and patriotism. There are times when I have run-ins with my superiors. Through this journey, you will feel what it would be like to be in my place. It is my hope, that through my descriptions and details the reader will be able to put themselves into the moment.

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About the Author At the time this book was written, I worked at the Shell Scottford Refinery in Fort Saskatchewan as a pipe fitter. I am still active in the reserves having passed 10 years of my service on May 04, 2002. This book chronicles my adventures in that first decade. I had thought about committing these stories to paper in the past, but now there were a few factors guiding me. I want to have a written record for the days I can't remember them. My two children are too young to enjoy my stories right now, so when they are older they will have this book. I currently live in Alberta with my lovely wife Kellie and my children Keegon and Shayna. When I'm not working for the Reserves, I work as a plumber, local union #488. In my spare time I enjoy writing and spending time with my family.

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Sample Excerpt

When you share a room with a fire out of control, I compare it to going into an unlit room and trying to find a set of keys, but a lot more hair raising. You have to feel your way through the room, forget about using your vision. Here you must use your instincts and there's nothing like a piece of flame darting out from behind a curtain of smoke and licking you on the mask to heighten them. Occasionally you bump into things as you do in the dark and it is a luxury when you really know the layout of a room.

On the outside of the compartment, once the fire is lit inside it sounds like a raging monster. And the sounds inside are foreboding and ominous. But once inside, your mind takes over and you go into such a state of concentration that you seem to only hear your own breath, the wrinkling of your clothes and the pounding of your heart. Voices and screams are muffled and incoherent and the wide-eyed ferocity with which you attack the fire seems out of body.

After fighting the engine room fire in groups of four, it was time to practise individual attacks. We climbed on top of a vessel simulating being on the upper decks. And one by one , we were supposed to descend into the vessel through a hatch on the back and then put out the fire. When my turn was up, I remembered a couple of things from my training. One was that you were never to let go of the hose, the hose was your life. The ladder was equipped with a handrail so you had to keep one hand on it at all times. The second thing I learned was that you do not put any external pressure on your Chemox. If you do, you run the risk of collapsing the lungs and you need to be out in the fresh air to be able to revive them.

When I descended the ladder, I was clutching the hose nozzle so tightly against my chest that I forgot about the second rule. I went down the ladder quite quickly because it felt as though the adrenaline was making my knees weak. At the bottom, I found that I had deflated my Chemox lungs. The mask clung to my face tighter and tighter when I breathed in, and when I breathed out the mask would lift slightly allowing air to escape out the sides. I wasn't getting any air and I was starting to suffocate. I tried to turn toward the ladder to go back up but suddenly I was grabbed and being held back. It was the instructor who lit the fire and I guess he was yelling at me to put it out. I couldn't see him that well and I tried yelling back at him that my lungs had collapsed, but we couldn't hear each other. At this point I was trying to pull the mask off my face to breathe whatever air I could. I started choking as I breathed in the smoke, and for a second time I tried to go up the ladder. The instructor held me back again; he didn't want me going anywhere because I had the water.

So I just said screw it, I let go of my mask, held my breath and took aim at the fire. With the hatch above me open, I had some limited vision and to me the fire looked like a flickering candle off in the distance. Actually it was a large trunk filled with flammable liquid. When my water hit the trunk the liquid inside splashed out violently and that little flickering flame erupted and roared towards me like an angry beast. Time seemed to stand still at that moment as I watched in awe as these huge flames came toward me faster and faster and growing larger and larger. It really only took less than a second for the flames to hit me in the chest and knock me into the wall. Now it was my turn to erupt. I pulled on that hose valve as hard as I could making sure it was fully open as I began to advance on my enemy. I thrashed around and yelled at the fire until I had won the battle. It took only a few moments for the smoke to billow out fo the hatch and within seconds I could see again, I dropped my hose, pulled off my mask and breathed a sigh of relief.

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Catalogue Information

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