Find out how C Company are adapting to life in Northern Ireland

C Company moved to Belfast in March 2008 and have set about adapting to life in Northern Ireland. With plenty of weekends off and 2 airports nearby, getting home has not been an issue.

With exercises up to Company level and hosting the Jamaican Defence Force it has been a busy period. But they did manage to find time for a bit of Adventure Training, as the following extract will tell you.

Parachute training in Germany

On the 24th May 2008, a composite group of soldiers from across the Battalion set off from Cavalry Barracks to Germany to jump out of planes.

Donning our orange jump suits on days 1 and 2, we were briefed by the instructors as to how best to

• avoid hitting the ground at bouncing speed

• steer a parachute away from roads, water and pylons, and

• leave the plane with the best chance of survival

Sorted . . .  Day 3 found the course sectioned off into several chalks and flown to 3,200ft to exit.

Taking the plunge

As the Platoon Commander and with the muttering from most of the soldiers mouths I was marked as first out on the first chalk. Soon, I was sat pale faced, feet dangling out of a plane, intermittently staring at the distant earth and the macabre and chillingly expectant faces of the 7 soldiers who were supposed to follow me out. 

Landing with the grace of a recently calved giraffe, I looked back up at the sky to spot if the seven lads had actually followed me, strangely there were 8 canopies in the sky - 1 soldier was attached to 2 of them.

A first on the Sennelager DZ, he had mistaken his one reserve parachute handle for his two steering toggles (only separated at opposite ends of his parachute) and was now descending in the wrong direction.

He landed unscathed and after a quick debrief he learnt from his mistake and we cracked on.

We returned to parachuting and with the exception of the few that suffered terribly from flying sickness, the majority of the course progressed through static-line jumps and on to dummy pull jumps as they became masters of the skies. 

Unfortunately, some, though becoming masters of the sky, were not masters of flaring their parachutes to prevent landing at high speed, which gave us plenty of laughs but luckily only a few twisted ankles. 

The rest of the course went without a hitch, with no more dramas or injuries, however a young soldier who will remain nameless managed to get a quick one in on the return journey.

After stopping for snacks at a service station and purchasing a gob-stopper, his scream echoed from the rear of the coach.

Further investigation revealed that the gob-stopper he had been sucking for the past 15 minutes was actually a marble made from glass rather than from delicious sugary goodness - nice teeth.

Successful two weeks

The two weeks that saw the birth of the Mercian Eagles was an excellent Adventurous Training opportunity, and one that mirrored the work hard, play hard ethos of AT, and indeed our Battalion. I thank the staff over a JSPC(G) and the lads that came away to jump out of planes with me for a fortnight.