Over the early May Bank Holiday, 2 Platoon from Royal Russell CCF (Army Section) deployed on our annual 48hr fieldcraft exercise. We kit prepped the week prior, so we were ready to leave school at 1600hrs to undertake our mission.
We arrived to our Area of Operations (AO) at 1800hrs, where we got an idea of the landscape by patrolling down to our harbour location. This location was already personally selected by Captain Quick to fit our requirements: a good signal, close to a supply of water, lots of trees to set up our bashers etc. We then quickly set up our sleeping bags making sure that we had one person from each section on sentry (on look out) to keep us safe from any enemy force. During the night we maintained this safety procedure, so that we all had a ‘peaceful’ nights sleep.
Our morning began at 0600hrs when we collapsed our harbour and began the morning routine: cooking breakfast, washing, cleaning rifles and loading magazines with ammunition for the day ahead.
After that, we split down into our sections and were given three different lessons: Observation post / why tings are seen with Sergeant Edney, erecting a 5.4m radio mast with Lieutenant Blows and vehicle check points (VCP’s) with Captain Quick and Captain Fisher. In observation posts we leopard crawled to a given area two at a time and scanned the landscape right to left and bottom to top, breaking our view into foreground, middle and far ground. We each noted down all army equipment we spotted, which was proven to be very challenging as a lot of it is camouflaged. During signals we spoke about different radios we could be asked to use and assembled a 5.4m mast which attaches to the Mercury 715 radio. Finally in VCP’s we learnt how to remain calm when stopping enemy forces from entering a given location and how to thoroughly inspect their vehicles.
We had a swift lunch break before patrolling to an open area with lots of vegetation where we practiced stalking. Using our skills from Monday night training, we perfected our personal camouflage and leopard crawled on the floor, in an attempt to reach the high ground without being spotted by Captain Fisher and Sergeant Greenwood. Once you got close enough to the top the aim was to read the code on the bus. All cadets did exceptionally well in this exercise.
That night, following intelligence gained from the VCP earlier in the day, 2 platoon conducted an anti-personnel Ambush on a known enemy supply route. We patrolled into an all round defence where our section commanders spoke via the radios before getting into the ambush formation which was lead by our main gunner. This ambush was successful, therefore we were able to return back to our harbour in time to get 7 hours rest, ensuring we still did our sentry duty through the night.
The next morning, with reveille at 06:30hrs we did our morning routine once again before getting briefed on our next attack. This time with less direction our section commanders (Corporal Bond, Corporal Breen and Corporal Hackett) were forced to think on their feet. As said in our orders by Captain Quick, our aim was to stop the Hankley Houidinis from getting on their helicopter and leaving the area. It was imperative we were in position for h hour (the time we planned to fire). Two and three section were fire support and one section started the initial assault. We then did a reorg to check nobody was injured and that everyone still had ammunition. As different sections had different amounts of ammunition we changed the sections roles, so now two section were the assaulting section. on the evacuation, one of our section became injured, and had to be removed from the area via stretcher, whilst the remainder of the platoon continued to defend us from the enemy forces. We successfully completed our mission by destroying the enemy.
Afterwards we gathered back where we were first dropped and cleaned our rifles before getting lunch and traveling home. It was a great weekend but we were all very grateful to be able to have a nice warm shower on our return home. Our thanks to Captain Quick and the officers that took time out of their weekend to teach us lots of new skills and for providing us with lifelong experiences.
Written by: Corporal Breen