The Support Back Home was Incredible

Heroes Remember

The Support Back Home was Incredible

Transcript

There were so many businesses that supported us. The families, in particular, supported us when we were out there by writing and we had letters from right across Canada from schools, from concerned citizens and we used to keep a big bucket outside our sick bay. Each ship has a mini hospital in case something goes wrong and we would have a whole bucket of these letters and the sailors on their off time would take a letter and write back and we tried to write back to every and I think they are going to try and re-institute that maybe for this 25th Anniversary period that maybe the schools that wrote to us 25 years ago could have another look at it and a number of us have volunteered to write back and say ya it’s 25 years later, here we go, so quite a remarkable story. The businesses that supported us from Halifax; Clearwater sent 3000 lobster, live lobsters out for Christmas. All three ships were at sea Christmas Day, Christmas Eve we had lobster for Christmas Eve dinner. A number of our families were doing the same thing back home but not knowing that we had lobsters for Christmas Eve so that’s a tradition in our house now. Wacky Wheatley’s sent a Sony Walkman to every sailor who was out there with their name on it. Unbelievable, I mean just the support was incredible. So things like that just stick in your mind, you know, so when you say wow, we weren’t 11,000 miles away, we were right alongside the jetty as far as we were concerned. Greco Pizza sent all the boxes out with all of the material to make 3000 pizzas and we joked because they were delivered in longer than thirty minutes to the officers on the bridge, the sailors in the engine room, that they were free. But they came with a box with a yellow ribbon on it and farmer’s milk here at home had yellow ribbons on their milk cans, milk cartons until we got home. Sobeys, Superstore, the local merchants when we came back they held a big party for us in the armoury here in Halifax and they supplied all of the buffet and we really felt good about coming home too. You know the thousands of people that lined the jetty, there were thousands of people that lined the jetty when we came home and that was quite something else too. It was quite a deployment.

Description

Even though so far away, Vice-Admiral Miller and his crew always felt the support from their fellow countrymen back home.

Duncan “Dusty” Miller

Born in the United Kingdom, Duncan “Dusty” Miller immigrated to Canada in 1954. At the age of 15 and having a strong desire to join the military, Mr. Miller went to the recruiting centre but could not be accepted until 16 years of age. He then attended Bishop’s University in Lennoxville. During his career, Mr. Miller rose to the rank of Vice Admiral where he became the Naval Task Commander aboard HMCS Athabaskan during the Persian Gulf War. Vice Admiral Miller later retired from the military and now resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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