I went to the gulf on HMCS Athabaskan.We sailed over and ended up at Port Said before entering the Suez Canal. We were told that we couldn't go in there because an order in council had to come out to put us on active duty.
Now, you can ask the 300 people on my ship, or the over almost 1,000 people on all three ships, what that meant. The only thing we were told at that time was that we were going on active duty, and I think they said that they took out the clause that they can shoot you if you don't obey a direct order.
That's all we basically knew going in there, so active duty, to us, was not that much different from everyday duty, but come to find out, it's a big difference between active duty and just sitting-at-home duty, and we didn't really understand it.
I think that today a lot of veterans still don't understand it, because, as Mike said earlier, where's the policy that states what it all is and what it means to the veteran who is going overseas, period? For us, in going to the Persian Gulf, we were told, “You're coming home when you get home.”