Sorry for the Delay - Inters Day 1

Who would have thought I would have survived to see the start of Inters, but here I am. It’s been a while since my last post so this will probably be a long one. Since my last post we have done a huge amount. The final few weeks of juniors was a combination of emotions. I spent the majority of week 12 worrying about exercise Crychans Challenge which we were due to go on in week 13. Not only because of the assessment and scrutiny we are going to be under but also because of the horrific weather forecast that is due for Wales. We also spent the last two days of week 12 of exercise Second attack which was more for us to get back into the rhythm of field exercises as well as a chance to experience the cole. Despite the coldness I was able to get an awful lot from it, which left me feeling a little better about Crychans.

Week 13 started at 0330 on Monday morning and I don’t think I’ve ever been dreading an exercise as much as I was that morning. We arrived at the training area to a foot and a half of snow and sub zero temperatures. However we kept as busy as possible to fight the cold and tiredness. The exercise was spent conducting platoon advance to contacts, recce patrols and fighting patrols, which I will admit got a little tedious after a while, but it gave everyone a chance to command in a variety of roles, from 2IC all the way to platoon commander. The exercise culminated with a final attack early in the morning on the Friday for which I was the section commander for the point section for the entire company. The responsibility was high but so were the rewards for a job well done. Once we had finished the attack we rushed back to the buses or ‘white angels’ as we call them, and after a bit of admin we jumped on and instantly fell asleep all the way back to Sandhurst. It was a tough exercise but definitely gave us a real sense of achievement. Even if the temperature did get as cold as -14 degree in the night.

Most of week 14 was spent administering ourselves ready for the move to inters, mostly cleaning and handing in kit as well as boxing up our stuff that was to move to the new accommodation. The had the sovereigns’ banner steeple chance on the Thursday which wasn’t too bad as well as a PFT to see how our fitness had improved (greatly in some cases). And on the Friday we got dressed up and watched the Sovereigns Parade, and saw the Senior term pass out. Which gave us all something to look forward to. We were then due to leave on a mountain leader course for out first week of leave which was unfortunately cancelled due to the weather, which did give us an extra week at home for Christmas.

So here I am now, sat in my new room in New College, day 1 of Inters and I am already absolutely knackered. We’ve had a busy day including a fitness test to ensure we haven’t let ourselves go over the break as well as a mountain of administration tasks ready for a 2 day exercise we leave for on Wednesday night. We have got a visit to Shrivenham tomorrow to see some weapons demonstrations which should be good, but I don’t think anyone is really looking forward to the exercise the day after.

I’m not going to lie it is a little depressing being back after 3 weeks off but I’m back with the guys and once this exercise is done we can really get back into the training again. Not to mention taking a much opportunity to laugh at the new Junior term running around in their boiler suits, thinking it could be worse.

Thanks for reading!

Rob xx