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.