Inters Continues

Hello all, my sincere apologies for my absence here for so long.  The rumoured business of the intermediate term regretfully was reality.  The usual schedule of exercise, lessons and bullshit has continued; yet now our evenings are taken up with homework and preparation for presentations and various other fun academic based activities.  One can only really liken it to a busy day at school followed by an hour at the gym, followed by an evening working in a laundry, while trying to complete your well overdue dissertation at the same time.  Things have been busy.

However with the impending Exercise Druids Ridge on the horizon, and an even more hectic few weeks after that i will attempt to stem the flood and update on what has passed over the last few weeks.  After First Encounter we were plunged muddy and tired but entirely willingly into a period of sustained academic endeavour in our War Studies, DIA (Defence and International Affairs) and CABS (Communication and Applied Behavioural Science) building for day after day of pondering morality, learning just how much better the Germans were than us at fighting in 1940, and discovering exactly how confusing and hopeless the world’s political situation was.  However for minds, admittedly starved of intelligent debate and honed to blind obedience, these days of coffee breaks and peace, hidden away from the bereft Colour Sergeants during our illicit encounters with overweight, balding, unpolished shoe wearing,  entirely unmilitary boffins this was bliss. 

 

The Bliss began to be tempered however by more and more gruelling PT sessions, heaving logs around roads, and charging in unremitting agony about the academy with our daysacs and rifles and webbing as the Directing Staff sought to rid us of our blossoming academic bellies. 

There has also been another entirely welcome trip away from Sandhurst, and to one of my Regimental suitors up in Yorkshire.  I had a wonderful time and am entirely smitten with the Regiment in question, and even the obligatory nights drinking, which did descend into semi naked lime cordial and brown sugar coated wrestling (don’t ask), but this time it was inclusive fun rather than targeted bullying wasn’t too bad, and i felt a lot more at home. 

 Time will tell if i impressed them in return, but fingers crossed.

 

We’ve also hosted (and i endured the seating plan nightmare) a hugely enjoyable Dinner Night, to which Parents were invited.  It was a novel but very welcome experience for us all to bring our loved ones into work, in strange role reversal, and then getting steadily merry as the scary Regimental Sergeant Major becomes less and less scary as he stands (girly G&T in hand) chatting to one’s parents.

The last few weeks then have been a whirl of activity, but without any real focus on which to report.  I have learnt to shoot a pistol (which it turns out despite all the films would literally struggle to hit a barn door at any more than 25m!), i’ve learned to climb a 6ft wall in the official style, and i’ve learned that Yemen is definitely a shit hole, but i’m not sure how much i’ve progressed as a soldier.  The upcoming exercise i suppose will tell.  The complexity we’re told has ramped up, and we’re now expected to be at least half way competent (no more 360 degree attacks).  

 We have the intrigues of fighting in buildings, conducting ambushes, and the pretend media bugging us while we try to remember which end of our rifle the bullets meant to come out of after 7 days on next to no sleep.  I hope the complexity, and the thrill of fighting Gurkhas up and down clean mud free stairs for at least some of the time will make this one fun.  I fear the cold and wet of Wales in November, and the inevitable shame as one forgets to collect half of your sleeping platoon after they’ve been laying in ambush for 6 hours, or the fact my feet will definitely be wet for every second, and probably at least one of the floppy pale wrinkled messes will fall off at some stage will, instead make it rubbish.   

But either way it will be done and this again is one of those big steps in the course. I will report my progress in a few weeks.  In the meantime here are a number of largely irrelevant photographs, some of one of the more fun PT sessions on the high wire course, where i discovered i’m still not afraid of heights but that cable does hurt your hands, and some of academy sports day, and our Company Rugby Team beating everyone.  Wish us luck, Wales didn’t beat us last time lets hope now its winter it will continue to show us mercy.

First (Worst ) Encounter

Mid Deturfing

Tuesday morning the trench takes shape

Well its done, which is wonderful!  First Encounter is another one of those hurdle moments in the course and its over, it was also number 3 of the 'big six' exercises so I'm half way!  I'd love to be reporting that its was great fun, and really just like being a kid, building sand castles with some mates.  But it wasn't, it was at times as they would say here 'turbo shit'.  In short the first 3 days were truly grim, and particularly the night times were just about as low as i can ever remember being.  Fortunately the last 2 days picked up a little for reasons i will henceforth explain.  On the up side the static nature of the Exercise and some weirdly cooperative Directing Staff meant much photo and film taking, so this will be a media intensive post, i hope that goes down well.

Snatching some sleep

So what happened, well we deployed early, and just to ensure we arrived at where we were to start digging sweaty and miserable we had a 5km or so 'insertion TAB (tactical advance to battle)' while carrying all our kit, which we believe averaged in at about 50kg.  Once our steamy, weary selves finally made it to the big field that was to be home we started digging at about midday on Monday.  Save for the odd gruelling night time recce patrol, and a period of about half an hour at first and last light where we all stood guard we then dug, non stop until late on Wednesday night.

Wed morning and the metal's in.

Day in day out no let up, just cadets, shovels and lots and lots of earth. I, and i think its fair to say we, went to some pretty dark places as we stubbled and grovelled through the night time hours, everything aching and our minds in absolute turmoil as to why exactly you are here doing this.  We all wanted to give up with literally every inch of our being, but it says huge amounts about our sense of loyalty, not to our Country, the Queen nor even the Army but to our muckers in the Platoon and Company who were standing bleary eyed next to you, sometimes literally collapsing into heaps only to stand up again and keep passing turf for the next 40 hours. This time, truth be told there was little mindless banter and silly chit chat, we all went introspective and had to fight the battle in our minds, but we were not fighting it alone, and to a man we got through it. Yes we were late finishing our trenches but we did finish the bastards, and when we finally collapsed into their narrow confines for an hour or so snatched sleep on Wednesday night it was not with resentment, but neither was it pride.

I saw friends literally swaying and staring into the distance, completely removed from any sort of immediacy, i saw people fall out of consciousness within 30 seconds of sitting down, and experienced my own mind descending into lunacy as i saw baby dinosaurs playing in the fields and bushes morphing into BMW's as i scanned the bright sunlit grass for the enemy.What i did not see though, certainly not in abundance was giving up, arguments and the bickering predicted.  There were of course fatigue induced grumbles occasionally but the remarkable propensity here to crack a smile just when you know your friend needs one, or a conciliatory pat on the back as you drop what must be the five hundreth sod of turf youve uprooted that night in a undignified heap is something i've never been pushed to experience outside the ridiculous confines of the Army.

Fortunately things turned slightly for the better once the defences were made, there were still barbed wire fences to erect, minefields to lay, night attacks to be conducted and gurkhas with gas to be repelled, but there was now brief rest bite between the periods of activity.  The beautiful weather was both a blessing and a curse, stunning sunset followed beautiful dusk, and our trenches remained dry throughout.  But with temperatures in the high 20s we sweated and coughed through our respirators and charcoal lined suits, and the dust infected everything.

Things ended on a crescendo of gaseous violence as we were attacked by and then counter attacked against a Gurkha dawn attack. Struggling but eventually succeeding to repel an enemy advance under the weight of our CBRN suits.  Then it was back to the grind stone as our trenches had to be filled in and then re turfed, this time though a digger helped, but it was still a 6 hour slog to finish with.

Defending against the Gurkha attack.

On Crychans we saw the point, we learnt to soldier, on First Encounter truth be told i did not.  I learned to 'operate under conditions of stress and fatigue'  but i know what it is to be knackered, and angry, Long Reach and Crychans have taught me that.  Did we learn anything about defence and how to organise one against the enemy? No, i learnt i flipping hate digging and i never want to de turf anything ever again.  I know we're not meant to understand at the moment, and some time in my career it will become crystal clear what that was all about, but for now i'm just glad its over.  We smiled for the photos and laughed when we could, but this was very much a sense of cheerfulness in the face of adversity, which i suppose is a skill enough in itself.  Its probably brought us closer though, and knowing that i can share i smelly dusty hole in Norfolk for 5 days with the likes of Gibo, Over and Vausey and never for one moment not want them about is a pretty good feeling.  They wanted us to descend to hating each other, but we didn't, we dug a big fucking hole for three days, slept in it for less than 4 hours then filled it in again, and laughed at the futility of it all.