NavyGirl280 said:
I was looking around and I didnt see a post for HMCS Iroquois deployment yet so I thought "why not start one?"
My husband (LS Bradbury - NCIop) left Wednesday with the ship and her crew. They are "scheduled" to return home a week before Christmas. I dont want to get into anything "heavy" on here as some of the issues with NATO have been discussed on other posts. I would just like to send much love and luck to my husband and wish for a safe return for the ship and her crew.
S.Bradbury 
This was in the paper yesterday. Fair Winds and Following Seas to Iroquois. He'll be home before you know it NavyGirl.
Iroquois set to command
Families wish loved ones well as destroyer sets off to head NATO mission
By KELLY SHIERS Staff Reporter
Impeccably dressed in shiny black shoes and a navy suit with "captain" emblazoned on the jacket, Nicholas Kelly kept a stiff upper lip as he watched HMCS Iroquois prepare to leave Wednesday for a four-month NATO mission overseas.
A bit too stiff, perhaps, for his dad, Petty Officer 1st Class Mike Kelly, who tried in vain to wipe all the doughnut crumbs from his four-year-old’s mouth while a photographer stood nearby.
"Not my kids," the elder Kelly said with a shrug and a grin as his son squirmed out of his grasp and ran off to join his sisters and other children playing at the navy dockyard in Halifax.
"He’s just joking," Nicholas’s six-year-old sister, Michaela, said before she, too, resumed the fun.
Around them, some of the warship’s 309 crew members and their families stood close for last-minute cuddles, hand-holding, a bit of laughter and a lot more tears.
"I’m going to miss a lot in four months," Petty Officer 1st Class Kelly said while waiting with his wife, Corrina.
"Courtney — she’s only 18 months — she’s like my little puddin’ and in four months, she’s going to be different. I’m excited to go, but the same time, I don’t want to leave my family for four months."
As farewells were being said outside, inside the warship, preparations were well underway for the voyage to France, where Iroquois will meet up with the Standing NATO Response Force Maritime Group 1, a multinational force of up to 14 ships under the command of Canadian Commodore Denis Rouleau.
The destroyer will be the response force’s flagship, taking over those duties from HMCS Athabaskan, which returned to Halifax last month after six months away. As Iroquois sailed by, some of Athabaskan’s crew lined its deck, enthusiastically waving to their colleagues.
Iroquois, which will participate in training exercises in the Atlantic Ocean and North and Mediterranean seas and as part of the NATO presence in the Mediterranean, will be "trying to inhibit and deter any kind of terrorism activity that might happen in (that area), as well," said the commander of the Atlantic fleet, Commodore Bob Davidson.
But given current conflicts in various regions, Iroquois is ready for any change of plan, he said.
"They’re absolutely prepared to go do any mission we might need them to do — not that that’s planned at the moment, but that’s what we send them for," he said.
During a tour of the ship’s bridge and operations room, Iroquois Capt. Dan MacKeigan explained the advanced communications and weapons systems — including anti-aircraft long-range missiles and anti-submarine weapons — on board.
During a refit last year, weapons improvements were made to help the crew fight off attacks from small ships, such as suicide boats, he said.
Capt. MacKeigan said the communications capabilities, weaponry, radar and long-range sensors, along with an experienced crew, make the ship ideally suited for the NATO job.
This mission is an opportunity for Canada to show its ability to lead at sea, said Commodore Davidson.
"If we’re going to speak with a voice that carries any weight, we’ve got to step up the plate and do leadership as well," he said.
( kshiers@herald.ca)
