Some time in the early fall of our first year at Royal Roads, some dastardly University of Victoria (UVic) students stole onto the RRMC grounds under cover of darkness, and made off with the two brass ship's cannons that flanked the main entrance to Grant Block. This would have been no random frat-house prank. While these were rather modest artillery pieces, three-pounders, maybe, they weren't exactly paperweights; the barrels alone must have weighed something north of three hundred pounds. So it wasn't simply a matter of a couple of brazen kids tossing them in the back of a Gremlin on the spur of the moment.  

The heinous crime was discovered early the next morning when the cadets under punishment (there were always cadets under punishment) went over to Grant Block to polish the guns, and found that there were no guns to polish. (Much to their delight, no doubt.) The College's honour had been sullied; the Cadet Wing had no recourse but to recover the cannons. There was a meeting in the Junior Common Room, and meticulous military operation planning, practically on par with that of OPERATION OVERLORD, was begun. (The second-years, fresh from their Basic Officer Training Course at CFB Borden in the summer just past, were all about that sort of thing.) In the dead of night, the Wing would proceed en masse to UVic in a convoy of cars, storm the dormitory where the cannons were being held hostage, and then return, victorious, to the College. There were even motorcycle escorts to help shepherd the convoy on the long route across town.  

Unfortunately, the daring raid failed to meet its objective, and the cannons were not recovered that night. But the recovery operation is not the real story here. The raid had a secondary objective, to deliver a message to the student body of UVic, to the effect that Royal Roads was not to be trifled with. Your storyteller and three other cadets - they shall remain nameless, to protect the guilty - borrowed a military half-ton pickup truck, into which we loaded the machine used for marking the lines on sports fields, together with several fifty-pound bags of lime. (For reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, I just happened to have a key to the shed where this equipment was stored.) I would like to claim to have been the mastermind of our little "skylark within a skylark", but, while I had always been a willing and enthusiastic skylark participant, I lacked the predilection for mischief to concoct such an escapade.  

When the convoy arrived at UVic, we detached from the main body and made our way to the university's football field. We unloaded our equipment, and then discovered an obstacle that none of us had anticipated: the field was surrounded by a ten-foot fence, and the gates were locked. Undeterred, one of us climbed over the fence, and a second took up a position straddling the fence (wince!). The other two handed up, first the line-marking machine, and then the several bags of lime, to the person on top of the fence, who dropped them down to our accomplice on the other side. Then we all clambered over the fence, and loaded up the line-marking machine.  

While the rest of the Wing was occupied with conducting the frontal assault, we used the machine to print "RRMC" in giant letters, thirty yards high, down the centre of the field. In the distance, we could hear the commotion created by our classmates as they engaged the foe. Then there were sirens; the campus police had been alerted. We worked as quickly as we could, pausing only to reload the machine. We didn't want to fail in our appointed task, but neither did we want to be left behind, and suffer the ignominy of capture.  

We were inscribing the letter "M" as we heard the engines of the convoy's cars roaring to life; the Wing was mounting up, in preparation for the withdrawal. We raced to complete the final "C", then we dashed back to the fence, opposite our transport. Two of us climbed the fence, one to start the truck, and the other - yours truly - to receive the equipment as it was handed over the fence by a third, who for a second time that night, courageously risked his chances of ever siring children by straddling the fence. The fourth remained inside the fence, handing the machine and the unused bags of lime up to the fence-straddler. (We had had no real idea how much lime we would need, and consequently erred on the side of caution and brought all that we could lay our hands on). Up and over went the machine, as the vanguard of the Wing passed by our position, on their way off the campus. Next came the first bag of lime, and then another, which in turn were dropped into my waiting arms. The main body of the convoy was now passing by us; our truck driver enjoined us to redouble our efforts with helpful suggestions, such as "hurry up, for [expletive deleted]‘s sakes!"  

The inside man heaved the last bag up to the fence-straddler. He may have been distracted, either by our driver's exhortations or by the sight of the Wing in full retreat. In any event, he missed the fence-straddler. The bag sailed in a graceful parabolic arc up and over the fence. Well, not quite over. The bag snagged the top of the fence, and was torn asunder. A rapidly-expanding, fifty-pound cloud of lime began its descent. Your humble narrator, stunned into immobility by the awful spectacle unfolding just a few feet above his head, failed to move out of the way in time to avoid the plunging plume of white powder. As I stood there, like a simulacrum of the statue of Neptune that graced the staircase between the Castle and Grant Block, only somewhat less heroic-looking, my cohorts scrambled over the fence, bundled me into the truck, and we roared off just in time to join the departing rear guard, with the campus cowboys in hot pursuit. They abandoned the chase once we were off the university property, and we returned to the College, and safety. 

The next day, one of the first-year cadets with a private pilot's license flew an aerial reconnaissance mission over UVic and photographed our handiwork. Remarkably, there were no repercussions for either the raid proper, or our little graffiti side-show. Mind you, for several days after the event, I made for a rather credible imitation of the Peanuts character Pig-Pen, exuding a cloud of fine white powder wherever I went. 

Editor’s Note: Mike Mathieu who was in the convoy as well, but involved with the main body going after the cannons, provided some additional information about that night: I remember it was late at night and we were all dressed in combats. I recall there had even been an O-group, and being really impressed with all the details that the organizers had thought up. The bulk of the cadet wing, me just a dot in the rabble, crowded into all the available cadet cars, and drove over to UVic in a big convoy. That song "Convoy" from the movie Smokey and the Bandit was popular at the time, and was blaring on the stereo of the car I was in. By the time we got to UVic, the campus security guards had already intercepted the lead cars and were speaking to the cadets running the affair. The security guards were quite concerned that the affair might deteriorate into a brawl, and implored the lead cadets to turn the convoy around and return to the college. At that point, with the enforcement officials already involved, it was decided that discretion was the better part of valour so we all complied, and headed back to Roads, with the security guards following us to the outskirts of the campus. The college took a dim view of the original gun-napping by UVic, and when it was time for UVic to officially and ceremoniously return the cannon a few weeks later, the College sent a junior officer to the ceremony at UVic.