In the early evening of June 20th, Y Company and X Company advanced from Okehampton Camp on to the training area of Dartmoor.

Accompanied by very good weather which was to last the remainder of the exercise, I, along with 1 Platoon of Y Company tabbed forward along the craggy, barren terrain of long grass interspersed with bog lands. In those five days on Dartmoor I learnt a great deal, from recce patrols to ambushes which I had learnt in the classroom but had never conducted in the field, as this was my first exercise lasting longer than a weekend.

My time in Dartmoor fine-tuned all my drills in the field, and strengthened my resolve to become an infantry officer in the future. The exercise was by no means easy, as shown by the casualty figures in the first few days, but this only made the exercise more interesting.

On day 3, I was given the opportunity to be Section IC, a command position that I had not previously held on any training weekend prior, and this taught me a lot about how to handle a section which were now starting to tire. I also had to motivate them in order to tackle an enemy's position at the top of one of Dartmoor's tors, despite being low on drinkable water and with a lack of sleep.

Another bonus was the fact that all the companies of WUOTC had been split up, which lead to the meeting of people from other companies I had not previously interacted with. The most enjoyable part of the exercise was in the last two days, when X Company and Y Company were pitted against each other where we could put what we had learnt in the stands with Royal Welsh to the test against a conventional opponent, culminating in two large scale company attacks.

After the exercise, the second part of camp was different, although not lacking in energy. I had missed the OCs weekend as I had been attending my AOSB Briefing in Wiltshire, but on return my time was split between the RSM’s Leadership Challenge, whereby different stands pushed your section mentally and physically for the day, the English Civil war battlefield tour and the cliff assault day with the Royal Marines mountain leaders, with battle abseiling and the cliff roller haulage.

This was my personal favorite as I had never done anything like that before and had never previously been on any Royal Marine visits. The majority of evenings were spent in the officer’s mess making the reveille at 06.30 increasingly more difficult as the camp went on, especially after the final dinner.