Annual Exercise Report by Tom Smalley, Thetford, June 2011.

This year for Annual Exercise I was put on to the Advance Tactics and Leadership Course.

From what we had gathered in the pre-Exercise brief, it was going to be a pretty tough course; testing our mental and physical robustness in preparation for a command position in third year.

Looking ahead at the weather forecast for the week we were on Exercise, it looked essential that we brought our waterproofs; at least we were used to training on Sennybridge.

When we arrived at Thetford we packed our Bergens with a feeling of dread, trying to cut down on the weight knowing that we would be carrying and living out of them for 6 days.

The next morning we departed camp after a cooked meal, and moved on to the training area which was thankfully dry. We then moved into our harbour area which we would be occupying for the next 6 days. I was appointed a section commander for the first day which I think is probably the best job, as you have an easy to manage section and you get to lead the attacks or recces.

From our previous experience, we knew that a dawn attack would follow a recce so when we were given our first task for that evening, which was a recce patrol, we could prepare ourselves mentally for what we would be doing the next morning.

The final attack

One of the massive benefits of this course was that it gave us experience of leading a platoon, something I had certainly never done before and nor had most others. It was great to see the progression we made throughout the week. With a solid day doing ‘advance to contacts’ the improvement was exponential.

During this week we had 2 days on the ranges which gave us a chance to pass the required tests. Some struggled with this more than most, but after a few reshoots everyone had passed.

Probably the highlight of the Exercise was the final attack. After our improvement throughout the week, everyone was looking forward to it and most were keen to lead or have a significant role. After losing a significant part of the platoon in the first 400m, we realised that there would be a few issues that would be brought up in the de-brief.

The attack itself was satisfactory (albeit with dubious use of glow sticks to mark the end man) and the final attack marked the end of the exercise bar the loaded march. This was a 4 mile ‘tab’, or march, with weighted Bergen which showed who had the determination to keep up with the group. It was good to see people who were struggling at the back showing grit to run in at the end to make it under the time limit.

The final day was spent doing part of the exercise that the rest of WUOTC had done, including a round-robin of stands finished off with the obstacle course. This is where we got to see how the “pros” do it as the 2nd Lieutenants gave the obstacle course their best shot.

Beds and a bar

Moving into the second phase of camp we had two adventurous training days to relax and catch up on sleep; to do so by a reservoir canoeing and raft building was great. When we moved back into camp we were given the luxury of beds and a bar - what more could you ask for?

It also gave us a chance to catch up with the rest of our companies and find out how they had got on with their exercise and it was great to hear that some of them had given the SF a run around.

We were also given the luxury of a ‘culture’ day where we had a day out with our Company and looked at how the Adnams Brewery is run. This finished with a meal out where we said goodbye to the year 3 students who had graduated and where we found out our command positions for next year.

As 2 Platoon Commander/JUO I can look forward to teaching the mod 2 cadets the orders process, something that was hammered home on the advance tactics and leadership course.