Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is coincidental. The venue is fictional and any resemblance to actual bases, locations, is coincidental.
This story takes place in 1976 Canada and reflects the mores, traditions, customs, etc., of the times. I urge all of those who read this story to remember that what is "politically correct" today, was not thought of back then. If you are Lib-Left, politically correct and have jumped on the bandwagons of whatever causes are the fads of the month, please do not continue past this point. This also applies the so-called "Religious" Right and "Moral" Majority. I respectfully remind you that the "Good Book" also contains proscriptions, restrictions, do's and don'ts that I don't see or hear any of you thumping bibles about. Write me, I'll be glad to give you some excellent web sites. To all the anti-this and anti-that, Bible Thumpers, Libertarians and the ACLU, the bankrupt and increasingly irrelevant United Nations, please do not send me e-mails espousing whatever cause you're touting. I have no time for claptrap.
As this work contains scenes of explicit sexual acts of a homosexual nature, if such erotica offends you, please move on to a tamer site. If your mainstay in life is Bible-thumping cant, please move on. If you are not of legal age to read, possess or download writings of an erotic nature, or if possession, reading, etc., is illegal where you live, please move on.
This story is written in an age without worry, and as such unprotected sex is practiced exclusively. I urge all of you to NEVER engage in sexual acts without proper protection. The life you save will be your own.
I will respond to all e-mails (except flames).
PROLOGUE
AURORA Heron Spit it was called at first. Later, as the world turned and others came to view the barren, wind and salt-spray swept bit of land other names were used. But it was always AURORA. It had always been there, or so it seemed to the green-eyed boy leaning against his bicycle, staring at the lights of the long jetty that thrust into the dark waters of Comox Harbour.
AURORA A Royal Navy haven where the tall ships that flew the White Ensign could refit and clean their copper-plated hulls. The boy could almost see the third and fourth rates, their black hulls slashed with white, turning slowly at their anchorage, rising and falling as the tide ebbed and flowed.
AURORA A Royal Canadian Navy establishment from 1914, all but barren and used as a 1000-yard firing range where young sailors of Canada's fledgling Navy banged away at stationary targets made of paper. The boy could almost hear the ragged volleys and smell the gunpowder drifting on the wind, and see the White Ensign that flew from the Mast.
AURORA Another war, and now called NADEN IV, an outpost of the Royal Canadian Navy still. Flimsy tarpaper barracks and classroom buildings now lined the Spit, and on the dusty Parade Square stood another generation of young Canadians training to fight another war. They were all young men, boys from Alberta, from Ontario, boys from every province in the Dominion. Boys who would, when their training in Combined Operations was completed, be shipped out, to be replaced by more boys, from Nova Scotia, from New Brunswick, from Quebec. The boy could almost see them, tall, proud, the cap tallies on their distinctive round caps tied with a tiddly butterfly bow, their bell-bottomed trousers creased seven times for the Seven Seas, saluting the White Ensign that flew from the Mast.
AURORA The war progressed and Canada needed every man. A new element appeared on the Parade Square. Sea Cadets. On the Parade Square mustered young sailors in training, Sea Cadets from British Columbia for the most part. Young, frightened boys away from home for the first time but determined to make their newfound brothers proud of them. They were all brothers. Nelson had called them brothers, A Band of Brothers, Brothers of the Sea. The boy could hear the whispered promises and pledges. The boy cadets would keep the Faith. They would guard the White Ensign that flew from the Mast.
AURORA The Royal Canadian Navy was gone. The buildings, temporary wartime structures, remained. Ragged, leaking, with sagging roofs and cracked windows, but sufficient for housing another generation of boys. The Navy was gone, but the Sea Cadets remained. Heron Spit and the ramshackle buildings were now a Sea Cadet Training Establishment. The boy could hear the loud groans and plaints of disgust as the newest generation viewed with jaundiced eye the crumbling barracks and windblown Parade Square, and the words of quiet pride as their eyes looked upward and saw the White Ensign flying from the mast.
AURORA 1976 and Her Majesty's Canadian Ship AURORA, which had been a summer training adjunct to the main training camp in Victoria, a satellite to the Esquimalt Sea Cadet Camp was now, with the closure of Esquimalt, the main training base for Sea Cadets in Western Canada. The jerry-built wartime structures were gone, replaced with more substantial H-shaped wooden barracks, a rebuilt Drill Shed, a new Stores Building and a refurbished jetty and Boat House. The Mast remained, now flying a lesser flag.
The boy, now a man, stared from the open window of the Land Rover, the twinkling lights in the distance growing brighter as the car approached the long, winding causeway leading to HMCS AURORA. As he watched, The Phantom saw light after light fade into the darkness and disappear. He now realized that the first steps of his journey to manhood had been taken, and that the road ahead, while long and winding, would never be walked alone, that he would walk with many others toward the light of a bright, golden sun.
In the far distance he could hear the growling of buses. The Boys of AURORA were returning and The Phantom wondered how many of them would walk down his road, how many twinkling lights would be bright in the tomorrows to come, and how many would be extinguished forever.