When 89-year-old World War II seaman Jack Aldred read that the Royal Canadian Navy is prohibiting veterans from wearing their uniform without written permission, he laughed.

“What can they do, cut my rum ration?” he asked. “Have me confined me to barracks?”

The navy has many different ways to discipline sailors, and hasn’t elaborated on what punishment awaits those who contravene its recent order.

“In my day, we had seven days of Number 11,” or extra work on deck after supper, said Aldred. “But they can’t do that to me.”

Aldred, who served as an able seaman on HMCS Prince Robert, has been wearing his sailor’s uniform four times a year — on D-Day, Canada Day, Remembrance Day and Warrior’s Day — every year since the war.

Not once has he sought permission to do so.

In spite of the order, Aldred plans to wear his uniform on Canada Day, when he will march alongside other veterans from the Todmorden branch of the Royal Canadian Legion in East York.

And he’s not planning on asking for permission.

Of course, he’ll wear it only if it isn’t raining.

“To get that woollen uniform wet, that’d be too much,” he said.

Aldred manned the Y-gun, a twin 4-inch anti-aircraft gun on the stern of the Prince Robert, which had been hastily converted from a merchant ship when the war broke out.

They accompanied convoys between Plymouth, England to Gibraltar and on to Naples, Italy. His only action came when they received word a convoy was under attack in the Bay of Biscay.

“There were black specks up in the sky — that’s the German aircraft. Then we just opened fire like we did in practice and (went) back to Plymouth . . . that was it,” he said.

“My brother was in the North Atlantic hunting U-boats and chipping ice off the ship, and we were on a Mediterranean cruise,” he said, admitting he was a little embarrassed about his relative comfort.

After the war, however, Aldred ran into another seaman who had been on that convoy.

“Boy, were we ever glad to see you,” the man told Aldred.

While reading a book about the war more than 71 years after the encounter, Aldred found out that they had shot down three enemy aircraft.

“I feel better about it now,” he told the Star in his east-end apartment, standing proud in his dark blue uniform — the same one he was issued when he enlisted.

As for the order banning him from wearing it, “maybe there is a need for it, (but) not as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

Aldred’s message to the navy: “Smarten up. Spell it out a little clearer or something ’cause surely it can’t refer to us old guys.”