Sunday 15 April 2012

Update post-spring-camp

So I'm back, recovering from a very intense time at the OTC spring camp. The Friday consisted of organising bags, rifles and such at RSB, and spending the remainder of the 3hours twiddling our thumbs and searching for stuff to do and food to eat. We stopped at McDonalds in Perth for dinner around 9pm. (random fact: the OTC trips are the only time I ever seem to end up in McDonalds) then it was a long road trip in a roundabout manner until we reached camp at around 11pm. Only to discover the pantec with all our gear hadn't arrived yet. Someone complained about being cold, and we all had to do push-ups in a line to "warm us up". At least I can do some now..
Anyway the pantec arrived around midnight and it probably took about an hour to unload everything. Luckily the girls billets was nearby, so once that was all finished, we just laid out our stuff for morning, stuck polish on our boots, set the alarms, and jumped in bed. We were up again at 6.30 am.
Breakfast throughout the week was a pain in the @$$, because we were sharing with both cadets and air cadets, and the queue was so long it was difficult to get breakfast early enough to be ready for morning parade. Somehow we managed, partly because most days we would arrive early to get to the front of the queue.
On Saturday, we learned basic rifle training and green skills. On Sunday it was more of the same, and everyone passed their weapons handling test.
Monday came and we were out in the field, securing the harbour area and learning to do platoon attacks. My section was the assaulting section at the first attack, and indeed most of the attacks over the course of the ex.
We finished around 5pm and struggled to light the hexi-burners to warm up our food, so I ate lukewarm rations and got myself onto Stag duty for the hour. I got back in time to listen to a talk by our SUO, and set up our sleeping area, before going out on patrol, during which we picked up more rations. We finished at around 11pm and I slept until I went on stag again. Now that was interesting. I had barely arrived on stag when we spotted the "enemy" about to attack. Sure enough they fired shots and we shot back. There was another call to stand-to at around 6am, after which everyone just stayed up. It was snowing.
That next day we practiced more platoon attacks, and eventually ran out of ammo. Even the guys bombing up mags ran out of rounds to fill them with. On Wednesday we restocked with ammo, and went out on a platoon attack, in lovely weather, to attack nine enemy. Annoyingly, I twisted my ankle, and was sent out. I met with the defeated "enemy" as they made their way back to the meet-up point. We ate and cleaned our rifles out. That night we had a barbecue at the mess.
On Thursday we spent the day cleaning rifles, on Friday we had a day on the range, and Saturday was the march and shoot race. We left on Sunday. I got off at the Perth stop and went to my parents house for the week, then this weekend went to band in Glasgow. I go home to Aberdeen tonight. :)
It's been busy, but good. Now time to get back to uni work.

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Location:Montrose St,Glasgow,United Kingdom

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