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Captain Connor Hunerfauth: You can train with blank ammunition. You can use dummy demolitions. At the end of the day, when you’re diving, that’s real water.

Captain Adam Orton: Hi, I’m Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. And this episode is going to be about the Combat Divers, which is a specialty under the Combat Engineers. Joining me from Gagetown from the Canadian Forces School of Military Engineering is Captain Connor Hunerfauth. And he’s going to talk to us about his experiences as a Combat Diver. Welcome to the podcast.

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Capt Hunerfauth: Thank you for having me.

Capt Orton: It’s my pleasure. So, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Capt Hunerfauth: Yes, so I joined in 2011, where I went to the Royal Military College of Canada. I did my university there and was training over the summer and ended up graduating in 2015 with a degree in civil engineering. From there, I spent about a year in Gagetown, New Brunswick doing my trade qualification training to become a combat engineering officer. After some fun in the rain in Gagetown, I posted out to 1 Combat Engineer Regiment in Edmonton, Alberta. I was there for about three years and I got to do a range of stuff from being a field trip commander, to an armoured troop commander, as well as an armoured squad and operations officer. And then, during my time there is when I actually did my Combat Diver Course. And so I got to do a lot of that kind of related training. After I finished my time, at 1 CER, I was posted back to Gagetown at the school, as you mentioned. And for the past couple years, I’ve been working as the officer in charge of the Army Dive Centre.

Capt Orton: It’s funny when we were first talking about setting up a podcast about combat divers. There’s a big discussion on like, what does that have to do with the Army and all that stuff? So can you explain a little bit how a Combat Diver falls into kind of the Army sphere as opposed to maybe the Navy—or somewhere else?

Capt Hunerfauth: I think to understand that, we really need to understand the picture of what Combat Engineers do. And, so, the kind of the elevator pitch for the combat engineers is that we ensure friendly forces can live, move, and fight on the battlefield—while denying the same to the enemy. We also have a secondary duty fighting as infantry. So, really, as a Combat Diver, you are a subspecialty within the Combat Engineers. And your job is to take all of that but move it in and under the water. So where we might differ from some of the Navy’s different diving specialties, is that we primarily work within inland waterways—so rivers and lakes. The Navy Clearance Divers are the diving experts in the Forces. So as far as a lot of safety directions and that, we will follow them. And we do, especially with a combat diver course every year, we’ll use the same facilities as the clearance divers out in outside of Halifax there. So that is an important relationship for us to maintain.

Capt Orton: What kind of training goes into being a Combat Diver and what do you look for in terms of candidates for that task?

Capt Hunerfauth: The first step is to become trade qualified as a Combat Engineer. And then once you actually get posted to a regiment, every year they run our selection program for the dive course we call the prelims. Now, the prelims, there’s not a super strict standard for each of them—but they do cover the same material. And they’re typically about a week long. And they’re really, you know, physically and mentally intensive. As well as we’re looking to see if people are going to have the aptitude to understand all the physiology and physics and some of the calculations that go into diving and dive tables. And really, from there, what you’re looking for is people that are that physically and mentally fit, that can work as a team, the ability to work independently. Because when you’re underwater, it’s pretty much you and your diving buddy. And you need to be able to sort out things yourself, because it’s so much more difficult with tasks underwater as far as you know, having your equipment, reduced visibility. And if you aren’t able to kind of handle the stress and be able to think on your feet, it’s gonna be very difficult for you to do this job.

Once you’re actually selected from the prelim—and depending on which command support you’re going—you come out to New Brunswick to the Army Dive Centre, where I’m currently working. And that’s where we run the dive course. That’s about three months long, and it’s kind of split between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We get to dive outside of Halifax, which is a lot of fun. And that’s—that covers the whole gambit of all the different tasks and equipment that we use. So once the divers complete that training, certain leaders if you have certain qualifications, and you show off the aptitude for it, you can then be selected to go on the Combat Divers Supervisor Course. And that’s about a month long. And that’s where we train our supervisors to actually lead and plan dive tasks. And there’s a big emphasis on safety, and managing all the risks associated with diving.

Capt Orton: What are some of the hazards that exist in that environment that people might not think of?

Capt Hunerfauth: Well, I think that—I mean, everyone’s aware of the water, but it’s something that you might appreciate is that, you know, after the first ten meters of depth, you actually doubled the amount of pressure on you from surface level. So, without shallower depth, it really is kind of actually the most dangerous transition period because, as you go deeper, while the overall pressure is greater, the actual change gets smaller and smaller. Especially as combat divers, I mean, we typically dive no deeper than fifteen meters with a maximum of thirty. So people might kind of wave that off as being just shallow water. But when you consider that kind of doubling of the pressure, it is something to keep in mind that the risk factors are there. I think it’s something to keep in mind with our training as well is that you can train with blank ammunition. You can use dummy demolitions. But at the end of the day, when you're diving, that’s real water. And that’s the real risk associated with it.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that’s a good point. And how does that combine well with the risks of military operations? Like, you know, from a military standpoint, what kind of risks exist?

Capt Hunerfauth: So, you can take it—it’s really a challenge for a Combat Engineer, if you are going to have to breach an enemy obstacle, for example. If you’re doing that in the water, you have to deal with a lack of visibility, you have to deal with the cold, cold temperatures. So it makes everything with the job that much harder. I think, just from a broader perspective of the military—you know, anything we do has risks associated with it. And so it’s just a matter of being able to anticipate what you can and train for that, as well as enable ourselves to think and act and to be quick on our feet to deal with the things we didn’t anticipate.

Capt Orton: You know, that’s one thing that I think people don't give a lot of consideration to is, you know, somebody might be listening and be like “oh, yeah, I like diving, and it’s not really that bad.” But one of the things is you get to pick your operating environment. If you want to dive and you look outside, and it’s garbage, you’re just like, “no, I’m not gonna go.” Whereas in the whole idea with military operations is that those factors, although considered as part of the planning process, you’re going like, “it’s got to happen” for whatever reason.

Capt Hunerfauth: Yeah, absolutely. Like, this isn’t diving off Mexico where there’s, you know, great visibility and coral reefs and colorful fishing and that. We’re diving in, like dark, cold water. And it’s not just a fun dive either. If you’re working with different equipment, like lifting bags, or different types of tools and that, there can be a lot going on. And you definitely need to be on your feet—or on your fins really.

Capt Orton: Yeah, it kind of makes me think, also, like, if you’re gonna tie that to the kind of the infantry world, people are like: “oh, yeah, walking in the woods is great.” But, you know, most infantry people find themselves walking through swamps—which is the bad version of that. So you face that, similarly, where it’s not all pretty fish and stuff like that. It’s actually usually probably the worst places that nobody would actually want to be anyways.

Capt Hunerfauth: Absolutely. And you have to look at the context you’re doing it into. It’s not just a go for a stroll in the woods, and then come back home and relax. I mean, you’re going to be working these hard tasks—and maybe you’re sleeping on the ground—and then you’re going back and doing it again. So it definitely takes a lot of resilience there.

Capt Orton: So, what do deployments look like as a Combat Diver?

Capt Hunerfauth: So, typically, there hasn’t been a lot in recent times. That’s just kind of the nature of the tasks that we were doing overseas. Probably the most recent one was we actually sent a dive team down to assist with civil power for hurricane Katrina victims. That’s probably the most likely thing you’d see as an actual dive team employing.

Capt Orton: I guess, like some specialties in the military, it’s one of those things where you don’t necessarily apply it very often. But it’s one of those things you have to maintain that skill set— because it’s a complex skill set. You can't just make combat divers when you need them. So you have to kind of maintain that experience.

Capt Hunerfauth: Exactly. Yeah. It’s not just like riding a bike that you can, you know, hop on and go back and do it. But like, I mean, diving itself isn’t rocket science. But when you incorporate all the different types of tasks you might be doing, it is a skill that you need to practice and rehearse.

Capt Orton: What led you specifically into becoming a Combat Diver? Did you have a background in that before or like what caught your interest in that particular task?

Capt Hunerfauth: I did a little bit of diving on my own in the civilian world. It was something I had fun with. But it wasn’t, you know—I wasn’t super passionate about. But what really attracted me to combat diving was the—like the challenge of it, as well as getting to work in those kind of smaller intimate teams, where it’s, like I mentioned before, that self reliance where if you’re underwater, there, it’s you and your dive partner for the most part—and you need to be able to kind of figure out and tackle that problem as you go.

Capt Orton: So, talk to us a little bit about the exercises and training. Like most army units and specialties, you have an annual exercise in your case. I like the tongue-in-cheek name of “Roguish Buoy” or “Roguish Buoy.” Tell us a little bit about that.

Capt Hunerfauth: Yes, the Roguish Buoy is probably the big thing that we look forward to every year. And it’s an international exercise hosted by us. It’s been running in B.C., in New Brunswick, and Quebec. It rotates every year, and we’ll invite international participation from across NATO. So we’ll have the United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany—just tons of different partners. That’s a really exciting opportunity for us. Because one, it’s all the Canadian dive teams coming together as well as all our international partners. And some of them, diving is their full time job. So they bring a greater expertise and breadth of experience to it that we can really learn a lot from.

Capt Orton: And what kind of things happened on that exercise. Like what do you actually do?

Capt Hunerfauth: So, I think the simplest way to think of it as it’s on a three year rotation where we have a focus on our close support tasks. So that’s kind of the more green army thing. Think about obstacle breaching and building. Using demolitions, providing kind of terminal guidance for things like landing rafts or other boats. The other gear would be more of a general support. And that’s kind of your more typical engineering tasks where we’re looking at using our hydraulic tools—maybe some lifting equipment, kind of providing support that could be provided to a battlespace in general. Not just as one specific unit. And then, finally, it’ll be ice diving. And that’s usually what they will do in New Brunswick or Quebec. And that can be a lot of fun, because that itself is a pretty taxing job working in such cold environments. You’re getting into the water, and it’s not freezing, but it's pretty much a one or two degrees Celsius. And that can be fun in its own right.

Capt Orton: Can you describe a little bit more in detail what obstacle breaching looks like for maybe somebody who doesn't know what that is?

Capt Hunerfauth: So, typically, if we want to go somewhere, and we’re fighting an opposition that doesn’t want us to take that path, they can put obstacles in the way that might look like minefields. It could be wire fences, concrete blocks—any number of things. And so we might find for whatever mission that, hey, like, we want to take this path across vehicles or personnel. And if those obstacles are in the water, that’s something that a Combat Diver could really help with. We have a number of different methods we can use to breach either the explosives using hand tools, hydraulic tools. And so, really, depending on what the mission requires, and kind of the time since we're under, we can employ any of those things.

Capt Orton: What other types of specialized equipment do you use as part of this trade?

Capt Hunerfauth: So, some of the cool stuff I find more interesting is specifically like lifting bags. I mean, there’s a lot of the stuff that we use as combat divers that any combat engineer would, so whether that be, for example, be explosives, or, like, metal cutting torches—we use those on land and in the water. But kind of a something that comes unique to working in the waters if say, we were doing some kind of larger, wet-gap crossing, and a vehicle gets tipped over and sinks to the bottom of the lake or river—whatever, that's really something where we can come in as divers and actually recover that vehicle. So there’s different things like lifting bags, and some other methods we can use to actually recover vehicles like that. And there’s actually quite a bit that gets into conducting that task. Because if it’s safe, it’s a muddy bottom, you have to deal with the suction effect and how to, you know, safely lift the vehicle up without just having it rocket to the surface—potentially hurting someone or dropping the vehicle again. So it’s one of those unique challenges that I really like about diving.

Capt Orton: When you’re talking about lifting bags, it’s kind of like the concept of filling a sunken ship with ping pong balls or something like that to bring it to the surface. Is that correct?

Capt Hunerfauth: Exactly. Yeah. There’s different styles of bags and sizes and that and we bring them down deflated, you connect them to different lifting points where you can use straps to whatever you’re trying to recover. And then we’ll actually have a tank with us with compressed air in it that we use to fill the bag and lift it up.

Capt Orton: That’s pretty cool. Do you have any good stories about experiences you had while working as a Combat Diver?

Capt Hunerfauth: Yeah, there’s plenty. Let’s see—what I can actually talk about. I think one of my funniest memories is during my dive course, one of the more challenging stations, whatever the trainer had to do, is that everyone loaded up in our inflatable boats and ripped us out into the ocean outside the Halifax Harbour. And then they pretty much told us all to jump in the water when we were wearing wetsuits and fins. And they just said swim back to the jetty, you know, that was kilometers away that had been hours of swimming. And it’s kind of one of those challenges they put you out to try to see how you cope with it. And so instead of us kind of breaking down and scrambling and getting exhausted, we all ended up actually a group of twenty of us on course there, we kind of laid on our backs, linked arms, and started kicking—and we were singing “ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,” just as we were swimming along. And you’re kind of really taking what should have been this—you know, a demoralizing event, and we just turned it into something fun.

Capt Orton: Yeah, and you know, that’s one of those recurring themes. You know, like, if you look at army training as a whole, is that growth through shared hardships. Right? You’re all facing these sometimes horrible experiences together. And it’s like working together as a team to just kind of make it a little bit better. If everything gels and everything comes together—and you have a good group of people and everything’s nice, then even those horrible experiences can sometimes come out as being pretty good. And you talk about them later.

Capt Hunerfauth: Yeah, it’s all about how you think you reframe any challenge. And you can turn a potentially negative experience into something that helps you grow and become stronger.

Capt Orton: So, if somebody is listening right now, what would you say to them if they wanted to become a Combat Diver? What advice would you give to them?

Capt Hunerfauth: I’d say “do it.” But really, it requires a lot of physical and mental preparation. When you’re underwater, you’ll usually be diving with a dive partner. But something goes wrong, it’s very easy for that kind of panic to set in. So you think something you need to build on your confidence with yourself and your ability to handle these hardships. And I think it’s also an awesome opportunity because of the challenging nature of the work and the courses in all of our training. It really attracts I think really motivated people. Those are the people I like to work with. I would also remember to be humble because comet diving is not Special Forces. It’s not, you know, sneaking out of the water in the middle of the night deep behind enemy lines to go do squirrelly stuff. You are a Combat Engineer that has a pretty awesome extra skill set.

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Capt Orton: And I think that really summarizes some of the army experience in a nutshell right there as well. Well, thanks so much for coming out. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

Capt Hunerfauth: Oh, thank you for having me.

Capt Orton: That was Captain Connor Hunerfauth, from the Canadian Forces School of Military Engineering.

Alright, safety brief time. It’s making its way up the chain of command. And like generals are talking about these auto groups that a lot of troops are being hurt on motorcycles. I ride—it’s awesome, it’s tons of fun, but take care of yourselves. The Deputy Commander of the Army made a comment to the extent that we hire people with an attitude of invincibility. When Charlie team needs to take the trench, we need people to not be afraid and face bullets. But that’s not an excuse for being risky on the road. Wear all the gear, all the time—and if you don’t ride, keep an eye out for motorcycles and make sure that people get home safe. That’s all I'm asking. Stay safe out there. Orton out.

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