Excitement of Going to War

I never expected to have the send-off that we did. It was like national pride suddenly erupted, it was like a volcano like people were… I remember being as a young guy we would go downtown a lot, obviously young sailors and that was the big thing, guys on those three ships who were going, like we’re going to war and everyone was like, “Really, you’re going to war? ” Have a drink with us and t-shirts, I remember buying it must have been a thousand t-shirts off the ship with Iraqnophobia Veteran on the back and a picture of the Persian Gulf region on the front and with the Persian Excursion on it and I must have bought about a thousand shirts that I just gave away to people. Everyone wanted it, everyone was there for it so it was great. And then the morning we were leaving because I was in there early. A lot of preparation to get ready. We had all of our gear to stow so we were really early and I actually lived on board at the time so up early, obviously we’re going to sea. It was the 24th of August and a beautiful day and then you could start to see people, there were a lot of families coming down to the jetties and stuff but you couldn’t see out of the dockyard but then you could start to see on the bridge where people were starting to line up on the bridge and then the boats and all the boats were sailing around and suddenly it wasn’t just a few boats it was like a flotilla, there seemed like hundreds of small vessels. And once we pulled away and then you start to see more of the waterfront, that’s people, Wow! I was, actually I had tingles in my and I’m getting them again. It blew me away, it totally blew me away and then when we finally left the harbour and we got out of the mouth of the harbour it was like, uh, I think now we have to get on with it like now it’s time to do the job. So everything from that point on was, it was just nose to the grindstone type work, work, work, because we worked up on the way over, we had sea training with us and they put us through everything. We went action stations, fires, floods, missile attacks, gas attacks, everything and it was just nonstop until we got over to Gibraltar and then obviously we got out first port, blow off steam and then, you know, so but it was phenomenal, the whole feeling was very phenomenal. It was something I thought I would never see in my life.