Phantom
of Aurora by
John Ellison
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 the 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 dusty
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, wood and tarpaper
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 jerrybuilt
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.
A causeway now joined the once isolated spit to the
mainland. The Duty Boats from Comox were gone. The Mast
remained, now flying a lesser flag.
The boy reached
around and pulled a black wool ski cap from the saddlebag
of his bike. His eyes gazed longingly at the lights
of the buildings that lined the Spit. HMCS Aurora now
lay quiet in the darkness, the boys asleep. During the
day, in the light and sun of perennially perfect days,
the Spit was alive with teenaged boys, hundreds of teenaged
boys.
Smiling wolfishly,
the boy pulled the ski mask over his head. He turned
his bike toward the deep woods that lined the road leading
to the causeway, and the treasure houses of Aurora.
He would hide his bike in the weather-beaten shack and
soon, very soon, his hand would reach out and his fingers
would lovingly caress the warm, soft skin of one of
the Boys of Aurora.