Fg
Off Lis Foster
For the November training weekend, Ops
Flt relocated to woods on Hankley Common, part of the Longmoor Training Area,
where scenes from the recent James Bond film, Skyfall, were shot. Here
we were to undertake a field ops Exercise, alongside other Flts from 606 Sqn.
With
an advance party of SAC Stu Taylor, and ACs Roper, Butwell, Church and Carlyle,
I travelled to the training area on the Friday afternoon, where we were able to
erect 3 of the 4 tents required for the exercise before nightfall. The remainder of the equipment was then
set up the following morning in time for the arrival of the rest of the Flt.
The main training for the
weekend was an exercise put together by SAC Stu Taylor and Cpl Les Birch – who
has now left the Sqn – using their years of experience from working in Ops
rooms in theatre and on live JHC exercises.
For
the Exercise, Ops Flt was split into 3 groups, plus an Exercise Control (ExCon)
team. Each group had a mentor (Fg
Off Cooper, Cpl Wallington and myself) whose job it was to subtly guide, while
letting them run the exercise in their own way. After allowing for time to set up the Ops rooms with maps,
flying programmes, ‘Pilots to See’ boards and meteorology, the Exercise then went on to run for some 8 hours, until
2000hrs. Each group had the same injects, but dealt with them in their own way
– from General Whinge demanding a helicopter to take him into a danger area
with no notice, to arranging casualty evacuations for a convoy that came under
fire. The pace of injects was good
and allowed everyone to experience something of the life in an Ops Room.
During the day there was a visit
from the HAC, Air Marshal Macfadyen
and Lt Col Natrass from Reserves JHC. The VIPs talked to us all individually
and seemed genuinely interested in the training taking place.
The 606 Sqn chefs provided a cook
tent with a communal facility for boiling ration packs, as well as tea and
coffee, and this became a focal point for people to congregate in the
evening. With the generator being
switched off at 2200 we all settled down to an early night.
The weather throughout Friday
and Saturday had been beautiful, however, we were woken in the early hours of Sunday
morning by an enormous clap of thunder – the heavens opened and when I turned
on my torch just before 0700 I found I was lying in a large, quickly growing puddle. Luckily the all-weather sleeping system
had worked and I was at least warm and dry inside my bivvy bag.
After
getting up and moving the kit out of the floodwater I took my packet of ration-pack
porridge over to the cook tent, only to find that the chefs had worked their
magic and bacon, sausage, eggs and beans were just about ready for
breakfast. Amazing! Ops Flt had slept in the tents we had
been using for the Exercise, but much of the Sqn had slept in bashas in the
wooded area. I’m sure the cooked
breakfast was doubly welcome for them.
