The first one I attended was with Duke. The waters of Lake Winnipeg were roiling and in the darkness we skipped stones, sang songs by The Village People and got booters.
A couple of years later when the Reimer family had moved to Winnipeg, Brian Dyck and I were Corporals in the church CSB. The CSB Captain was desirous we attend the Camporee, so attend we did. I have no idea why Brian and I were late but we drove into the darkened camping ground and found our tents. The Brigadiers were causing a ruckus while one of the Mucky-Mucks made the rounds with a flashlight. "If you boys don't quiet down I'll subtract points!"
"Who cares?' said a brigadier.
Over the campfire the next morning we guffawed about this. "'Who cares?' Hyuck-hyuck!"
"I care!" squawked our Captain.
Now we were abashed. We practiced the final march in ernest. We unfurled the CSB flag and marched in unison. At the end of the parade our Captain was to turn and smartly salute the CSB Grand Poobah.
What the Grand Poobah and we did not realize was our Captain had spent his childhood in Russia and was fed up with saluting. At the appropriate time we marched past the CSB Grand Poobah alright, but our Captain pointedly looked in the other direction. When we asked him about this he said, "Uh, yeah. There was a bird in that field that needed my attention."
Some years later I was the Captain of that battalion and awfully full of myself. We attended exactly one Camporee which was cut short by winds. I wasn't shedding crocodile tears — I had come to really dislike Camporees.
Boy, it was windy! There were rumors of a tornado and the sky was black with topsoil. I sang Mark Heard songs to keep my spirits up.
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