Deutschland!

So, i went to Germany this week, which is nice! Just getting away from Sandhurst into the real, no saluting, calling Majors their first names (i'm not even sure i remember my own first name sometimes), 7 o'clock mornings proper Field Army is a joy.  It takes trips like these i think to remind us why where all doing this in the first place, which maybe is the point.  Although the other more salient point perhaps is that it gives us a bloody good look at the Regiments we may be joining and even more so gives them a look at us! 

My visit was characterised my three things, running, looking at stuff and drinking, not always in that order and not always exclusive of each other.  I was hugely impressed by the Regiment, the Mess was massively welcoming and the soldiers some of the brightest i've come across. They did the hard sell and showed us all the 'gucci' bits of kit that the Army actually uses, rather than the Falklands spec stuff we still use at Sandhurst.  They even took me for a ride in a Scimitar (little tank) which was awesome.  As i perched in the commanders position and hurtled about doing my very best tank commander face as a big Fijian gunner explained how everything worked next to me it was blissfully easy to forget about Sandhurst, and the pile of ironing and polishing i have now been reunited with on my return.

The visit was capped off by a very civilised Black tie dinner followed by a rather less civilised drinking session in the Mess afterwards.  I suspect this is where the real test phase began for us, and our performance was most closely scrutinised.  What followed was a typically Cavalry programme of games involving setting fire to stuff, doing potentially dangerous things with champagne, narrowly avoiding ruining the priceless Oil Panting in the corner and ending with a game of Mini Flare Cricket.  We were forcibly encouraged to drink a frankly hideous amount, and then packed off to bed when we had, to the general consensus  lost control of ourselves to enough of an extent.  Drinking raw eggs and Tequila and pints of Gin has never exactly been my cup of tea but these initiations are an unavoidable if archaic part of Army life, especially amongst the more old fashioned Regiments. 

Now back at the Academy things are beginning to ramp up towards our final big exercise of the term Crychans Challenge, which is a week of thrashing in Brecon and promises to be quite a test.  After that we then have to get our Drill up to scratch before the Sovereigns Parade on the last day and begin our move to our new home in New College.  It promises to be a hectic few weeks but i will do my utmost to keep you all updated.

Dinners and Orders

Not really a weekly or even event based post here, but its been a while so thought id keep the ball rolling and let you all know what's been going on over the last week or so. 
Not hugely exciting i'm afraid as the focus is now firmly on the '7 Question Estimate' and giving Orders.  Which truth be told is a pretty tedious process, by which we all come to the decision to go right flanking with a Fire Support Section at 90 degrees in lots of different and convoluted ways.  Then go through an equally convoluted process to deliver said Order to our Platoon in a way that has graduates from good univiersities  baffled; but i'm sure will be clear as day to your average Infantry Squaddie.  Of course i jest; and we all understand why this process has to be so regulated (mainly so when we're in full idiot mode after weeks on no sleep and living in the rain we just follow said process and so don't forget anything) it's still pretty turgid stuff.  It is however the bread and butter of being an Officer so we must all simply swallow it down.

The weeks have however been punctuated by a number of mainly alcohol related festivities, which is the sort of thing we would have dreamed about towards the beginning of the course.  First up was a Platoon night in London, which was the predictable flurry of colourful trousers, overly formal shirts and champagne in one of Claphams, truth be told less classy establishments.  We may appal everyone within a tactical bound of us, but we have fun so who cares.


This is followed by our first Company Dinner Night, which i think its fair to say is a big success.  For those of you as yet unaccustomed to the Dinner Night (I will do my best to correct this for many of you soon!) its classic military fair.  Trumpet calls to dinner, silver one must never ever touch, very tight trousers, bursting for the loo but not be able to go, port drinking, marching band inside the dining hall, banging of tables and putting on our poshest voices stuff!  All of the senior Officers are there, and its a great chance for us all to let our closely cropped hair down, and converse with them as humans rather than strangely keen servants. 

Needless to say drinking goes on far longer than it should; which feels less than good the next day when one is up at 6 regardless, and being forced to run around the athletics track as we all struggle, and some fail, to maintain full control of our churning stomachs.  I suppose there's a lesson there somewhere, but by the look of the various Colonels and Majors last night its clearly one i have many years to learn yet.  As photos are frowned upon (obviously!) here are a few of our getting ready revelry.  More to come soon.

Second Attack

Another week down, and one i feel i may look back on as being rather pivotal.  It was a week more about actual soldiering than we have had before, full of rifles and running and toil, but brilliant because of it.  A number of occassions are worthy of further report, starting with our journey down the Wishing Stream.

 

  This may sound like a Lewis Carroll esq adventure, but was more Saving Private Ryan than Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.  After an afternoon of 'Tactical Command Tasks' (rescuing injured Gurkhas from landrovers stuck in minefileds while keeping watch for impending doom from the forest), we were tasked with returning via a series of tunnells, rivers, ditches etc while carrying a stretcher with a very war weary manaquin attatched, and a number of ammo boxes; all the while weighed down by our webbing, helmets, daysacs and rifles.  This soon deteriorated into a full blown charge through the mud, quite literally chest deep in water and at one point fully submerged as the Directing Staff kindly aided us on our way under a bridge with the bottoms of their boots.  Despite our best efforts to waterproof everything, there's only so much a tescos freezer bag can do against a putrid river, and cleaning out our rilfes was a rather labourious task.  I'm sure there are many of you out there thinking this sounds horrible, but i'm equally sure there are few of us in here who didn't have more fun and sport wider grins than we so far have at Sandhurst as we ruined our kit through that river.  That was more like the inspirational promo videos that had lured us in in the first place had promised and we loved it!

Things then continued along that line; we ventured onto our first day of  live firing with real bullets, and equally real carbon covering every possible inch of our weapons afterwards.  This was shortly followed by the imaginatively titled Excersise Second Attack, following neatly on from Exercise First Attack.  This time though it was an overnighter, with all the misery that usually brings, and we were doing Platoon scale attacks.  Again though it was fun; sweaty, exhausting, aching, hideous fun, but fun nonetheless.  We battled increasing numbers of Gurkhas for a whole day, as attack blended into attack, untill ammo got so low that my unfortunate section ended up assualting three depth positions in one bound, and we all gave up in an exhausted huddle.  As we have now progressed to proper radios and actual attacks it is a real thrill to look around at your mates and think shit, if i knew literally nothing about the Army i might think this lot were proper soldiers.  It's also a surreal buzz to lay 20m away from a Gurkha in a hole as he fires automatic fire at you and you return your discipled rapid rate of fire of 30 rounds per minute, and you both wonder who is going to pretend to be dead first, despite the fact that i would have been dead hours ago if these were real bullets. 

 

We are however told at the end, in a brilliantly Sandhurst esq way that we are 'achieving the required standard for this stage of the course, which i think is a compliment, but might also indicate that we're still bloody useless.  Morale is boosted though by a perfect speech from our small, angry, Scottish Company Sergant Major with whose words i shall finish; i paraphrase but i don't believe exageratte, and i apologise for the swearing!  " You men when you go home this weekend; and you're out in your f***ing bars and f***ing night clubs, i want you to look at that f***ing f***er next to you with his spiked up f***ing hair and f***ing stupid clothes and think what the f*** have you done today; because i've been learning to f***ing kill people!"  It may not be quite out of the MOD book of Political Correctness but it certainly sent us on our long weekend with a smile.