Gas Gas Gas, Guns Guns Guns.

So that's week two over, and  it has been a flurry of activity, not unpleasant but crazily busy.  The week has been largely focused on next weeks exercise and as such we've been learning lots about defencive operations and planning, writing orders and struggling to get all the bits and bobs we will need prepared.

We've also continued to be bombarded by CBRN stuff, and can now successfully not only put our gear on in an emergency, but eat drink and various other bodily function in our clumsy suits.  This culminated with a trip to the Respirator Testing Facility (Gas Chamber).  Perversely we were all rather disappointed when everyones respirator did indeed work and we carried out all our drills successfully, and no one really came out with anything more severe than a runny nose. It wasn't quite the streaming eyes and dribbling we wanted for the photos!


We've also had a day on the ranges, where fingers crossed my usually inept shooting has taken a turn for the better and i did rather well, which is making me resent my rifle perhaps that little bit less.  Lets see if that lasts the entirety of next week when the deceptively heavy bastard has to be within 1m of me 24 hours a day.  A few good circuit sessions in the gym and a predictably hilarious return to the drill square after a month off and the week has been complete.

We are left now with the simple matter of Exercise First Encounter to deal with.  At least 48 hours of solid digging to start, followed by running engagements with this time Company strength (90+) Gurkhas who are happy to use chemical attacks doesn't exactly sound like fun. Our hope is that the surreal nature of digging a massive hole while having not slept for days on end, all the while dressed like an extra from Alien will keep us going.  Its those times when the fact that as a group we are all i'm sure truly insane, and can be entertained for hours on end by singing crap pop hits, or discussing whether it would be better to have a sausage for a nose or a eyelashes made of charcoal, really makes the difference between imploding in a puddle of self pitying civilian, or standing up and being counted even when every inch of you wants to stop digging take off your body armour, throw your rifle in a puddle and go to the pub.

It will  no doubt be breathtakingly tiring and sore and sweaty, but it is my real hope that it will also at stages be fun, and when we finally sit in our complete trenches the sense of achievement should be great. My gardening gloves are primed and my snickers pouch is full , and my next post here will tell if i survived 'Worst Encounter'.

Inters: New College Begins!

So i'm back! After an all too blissful break over the summer i very much slipped back into my civilian mentality.  The freedoms of getting up whenever i wanted, impromptu drinks with friends and not a chance of marching, were all too easy to get used to.
As such driving through the gates and unloading my gear into my new room in New College was not the best feeling i've had in a while. Reminiscent of the feelings i used to have as a 10 year old returning to boarding school i think truth be told i was home sick, expect now i wasn't worrying about French lessons and whether my new football boots were cool enough, it was that i was about to spend a term digging trenches, being gassed and learning how to kill people with a whole range of new weapons.
However i'm pleased to report those low first few days are now well and truly past on saturday night, and i've remembered that this can indeed be fun, and since its my job its not all that bad at all! So what have we done this week? Well things have been undeniably hectic and sleep has been at a premium.  There has been a big emphasis on CBRN (lots of different shitty ways to die), and so lots of running about in silly big suits which couldn't protect us from a spilled coffee let alone a nuclear blast, and stifling respirators.
We also had what can only be described as a school trip to the Defence College at Shrivenham where we played with all the equipment we will be allowed to use once we leave the time warp that is Sandhurst. This involved 270 Officer Cadets crawling around in and out of tanks, and every other bit of military gubbins you can imagine for a day, happily away from the confies of the Academy.  Just as we started thinking the Army was about impressive technology there to make our lives safer, and certainly easier, we then went on Exercise!
It was only a 24 hour 'shake out' and truth be told i actually had fun, and reacquainting oneself with the stinking, knackered, aching world of exercise was probably the shock to my system that was necessary.  One night time recce patrol, creeping about in bushes searching for Gurkhas, a few lessons and a rapid platoon attack, complete with mock artillery and another lung bursting casualty evacuation and we were done and back to camp.

The week has ended in a fairly relaxed manner, but with the foreboding knowledge that things i feel are about to get a little crazy.  You can only be taught about how to dig trenches and put on gas masks for so long before you inevitably find yourself in a trench being gassed.  Which is far from an ideal place to be when you haven't slept for 48 hours.  Here are a few pictures of our 10 year old inner selves being unleashed on some poor undeserving army toys at Shrivenham. More reports to come soon.

Crychan's Challenge

So we have returned, biten and beaten, and covered in shit from Brecon, and Crychan's Challenge. Crychan's is the summatative exercise of the Junior term, and really marks the end of the green bit of the term, leading into next weeks flurry of packing and Drill.  It involved 5 days and nights in Brecon, which really is the; i'd like to say heart, but its far to grim for such a romantic notion; of the Infantry and is infamous for its use by the boys with blacked out faces.  We spent the 5 days being thrashed through attack after attack, attacking through forests, out of swamps, down valleys, up valleys, at night, at dawn and during the day; all involving lots of sweating, frequent rain and sodden boots.  It was true infantry grizzle, and to be fair at times was bloody good fun. 

However despite the war film bravado of charging positions and jumping in and out of ditches like spider man, the truth is very different.  Weighed down with radios and ammunition, and suffering from an average of about 1.5 fitful hours of sleep per night, simply standing up is a major effort every time, let alone commando rolling in and out of a bushes.  The predictable joys of wet, blistered feet and 'prickly heat' as your body armour and smock provide a disgusting insulator to our sweating bodies, and everything, everything covered in a liberal coating of sheep crap as Wales's finest seem to be remarkably prolific shitters.  We are bitten day and night by the midges and every of the many scratches and cuts one picks up is predictably infected we are a pretty sorry state.

However this time the exercise at least has a purpose, and as we fight running battles with the Malyban, and ensure that the hypothetical aid convoys can continue to use Route Dog, we are now learning.  We're also told we're not too awful, which is pretty good!  Despite the odd instant of mistakenly attacking one position from all four angles and as such ensuring that we comprehensively kill the enemy but also each other, and various other bumbling antics as tiredness well and truly kicks in, i get the sense we are getting better.  There's also very welcome added realism which makes the hardships of Exercise slightly easier to bear.  The final Company scale dawn attack starts with a Great War esq countdown, hiding behind a ridge in the gloom waiting for 0500, as simulated mortar fire reigns down on the enemy position and then amongst a sea of illumination flares, muzzle flash and rain we charge over the top, its easy to get carried away.  Added realism though also involves casualties, one of which i later become as i'm 'shot' in the thigh and evacuated out of the battle on a stretcher.  It's with an odd pride, but also huge guilt that you watch your mates applying the tourniquet and writing my casualty report then heaving my sorry arse kilometre after kilmoter on the stretcher as we are bombarded with flash bangs and smoke; just to remind us that the Taliban don't give a crap if your helping a casualty they'll still shoot you in the back.

Crychan's on the whole was grim, it was wet and painful and i'm sure for 90% of the time all of us hated it.  However it served a purpose, and at least now tucked up in camp and appreciating the fact hugely that i'm not sitting in a cowpat, on a hill in the rain about to run for twenty minutes with an aching body, i can see that. If we're all brutally honest i think it also fulfilled at least slightly that little boy desire to properly soldier, to throw grenades, storm trenches and scream down the radio that you're running out of ammunition and are going to have to start throwing your spare socks at the enemy if the runner doesn't reach you soon.  It's that perhaps misguided feeling that other people don't know what this feels like, that after 112 hours of fighting and 8 of sleep you can still keep going and that somehow makes you different that i think spurs us all on.  There's a huge way to go yet but i think we're getting better, and we can now at the very least say we've done Brecon, and yes it rained, and yes it was miserable but we all survived, so screw you Wales! Here are some photos of me looking miserable alone, miserable in small groups and miserable with the rest of my Platoon, enjoy!

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.

Week 7 and Old College Sunday

Hello all, that is officially the half way point of first term done; so i suppose also 1/6th of the entire course, which is excellent!  The 7th week is known to be one of being messed about and increased discipline, which is less excellent.  Without the distraction of Long Reach we have been subjected to hours of in promptu activity and increasing inspections, with punishments (usually having to parade during the evening so one has even more of a struggle getting anything done) becoming common.  Having said that so far fate has been kind to me, and I've escaped being noticed for a mis placed crease, or an idle thread.

The week has also however been characterised by an increase in tempo in the Course, and a shift away from Drill and onto the more warry bits.  Friday was Excersise First Attack, which was a lot like it sounds.  Our first foray into section level attacks, complete with Gurkha enemy and copious amounts of blanks being fired.  Its all good fun, but the fun is heavily tempered by the i'm sure necessary but equally frustrating drills and orders one has to learn.  Something as simple as fire lots, go round to the right and throw a hand grenade at someone, is a gruelling mental as well as physical task. There is a precise order to everything, and drills and seemingly endless pneumonics and acronyms all almost but not quite the same, and all accompanied by a disappointed look from the Directing Staff when you forget that this particular S stands for Searchers, not Sit Rep or Suppress or even Situation, when all you can think of starting with S is Sausage and that definitely isn't it!

The week has culminated though at an almost civilianly lethargic pace, starting with my first foray outside these hallowed grounds for a few drinks with the Platoon, and the dubious wonders of Fleet.  Our impact on that poor little town however was severely limited by our 12pm curfew.  Sunday then saw Old College Sunday, which essential provides an opportunity for one's parents to come and see what magnificent soldiers we have become.  We marched (apparently not too awfully) belted out a few hymns in chapel, then in a wonderfully chaotic gaggle, bubbled not marched around the camp looking at accommodation and other bits and bobs; noticing the paintings and artifacts that usually we simply rush on past.  On that note the week has ended, and here goes another, although its only 4 days long which is good.  But its going to be crazy busy and the weather is looking lovely and hot, which for most of you is great but for those of  us in body armour and helmets is not!