Certainly. As I said in my opening comments, the U.S. commander called me up—you'll probably appreciate this—and said the USS Princeton had been damaged off Kuwait in a known minefield. He said he needed an escort for the tug going up there to escort that ship out. He said the ship should have a helicopter, communications with all of us and anti-mine sonar systems. He said, “There's only one ship that meets all of those criteria, and you're sailing on it.” He was asking me whether I could get the authorization to be the ship that goes off Kuwait and rescues the USS Princeton.
That's when I called Admiral Summers and said, “Here's the deal. Athabaskan is perfectly prepared to go north, off Kuwait, to rescue the USS Princeton.” In fact, we did. We had to sail at a certain speed so we wouldn't activate any of the other types of mines in that area. There were floating mines the Iraqis had let go in the Persian Gulf. It was a pretty dangerous mission. Certainly, the crew was.... I talked to the captain and said, “It's up to you, Captain. You know, you're the one who's going to put your ship in danger.” He said, “There's no question. We're well prepared. We can do this.” Therefore, that's what we did.
I'd like to add one thing about the fact that Canada did not declare war on Iraq. That's irrelevant, in my mind. There was a war going on, and Canadians were in it. It may not have been declared by Canada, but we were in it. When you look at the Webster dictionary, it says that if two factions with combat capability go at each other, a war is declared. You can look up all the definitions. There are legal definitions, too. You can put the Gulf War in every definition and it comes out as a war. There's no question. It was a war, and the Canadian public knew it as a war. We went through dangerous things.
I can't tell you how glad we were when we came back—and that all of us came back. One of the things about the most successful naval operation in our history is that we all came back alive, and I'm thankful every day.
