I Had a Very Good Captain.

I was sent to the destroyer the Assiniboine. That was in early 1943 and I was the executive officer, the second-in-command of her, and I had a very good captain. In fact, he was a super captain, because after I had been there, he got sick. We were on an Atlantic convoy back and forth between St. John’s, Newfoundland and Londonderry, mainly Londonderry, not always. It was the other end of the convoy run where the escorts refuelled and restocked, ready for the next trip and we did that for a number of months. On one of these trips he got ill and when we were ready to go from St. John’s he couldn’t make it. And it turned out he almost died from appendicitis. But he didn’t admit it until the last moment and I took the ship to sea because ... he organized that I did that, rather than declare himself sick and have the command put - there was spare captains around the place that they had just for this kind of thing. But he’d forestall that and literally made me the captain. I was 25 years old then. I thought I’d be relieved when I got back, that they’d get a more experienced ... never did. I got promoted to acting lieutenant commander and I was, I just kept … stayed in command of her for quite a while, until 1944. And then I was moved to be captain of the Haida.