Page 15 - Four Cavalry Regiments (Crest)

The Regimental Journal of The Light Dragoons
vidual courses, ORBATs, capability and training was as much an art as a science.
February included the visit of His Excellency, The Jordanian Ambassador to award the King Abdullah Medal to LCpl Biggins for outstanding junior leadership, and winning the PoW Cup after a ‘Stella’ performance in the Regimental cross country. Cpl Wills, our loyal Engineer, col- lected the prize after coming first. These moments now feel like distant memories of a previous time without masks, and one of the few times this year the whole Regiment has managed to get on parade. We finished the spring with ranges just as COVID restrictions hit. Castlemartin for once was magical; warm sunny weather saw morale skyrocket as the nation went into
lockdown. 1st Troop won the Troop shield and the Squadron enjoyed a final week of relative freedom before returning to Gaza to work out what the impending doom of lockdown would mean for the deployment.
Leave provided an antidote for the fam- ily orientated, while singlies who had had visions of a final hurrah abroad were bit- terly disappointed as lockdown bit. The only benefit was the need to stagger Easter leave to meet the tide of critical vehicle maintenance for the operational fleet. As options to do anything narrowed it became an easy sell to all. This meant we main- tained a footprint through the new restric- tions, with a week on and a week off to mit- igate the COVID threat to our manpower. As we returned to work post Easter leave
we continued to maintain the one week on and one week off system throughout the summer term. This proved a command challenge but enabled good mission com- mand and junior responsibility.
The summer term was characterised by vehicle maintenance, preparation, doctrine collation and training. The whole squad- ron worked hard; at the bottom end Tprs were enjoying the one week on one week off programme, but finding their week on guard a hardship. At the top end, SHQ and seniors worked tirelessly to pull together loose strands and cohere final elements to enable our preparation for the deploy- ment. Ex VIRTUAL DRAGOON, a com- puter simulation exercise, under COVID conditions, was one of the few opportuni- ties we had to train together. It suited the more technically minded, with the inner geekery of LCpl Limon and Tpr James bubbling to the surface. They were in their gaming element and the exercise allowed the Squadron to confirm the theoretical foundation for the integration exercise.
Ex GAO DRAGOON, the integration exercise for the Task Group, finally allowed us to work with all our assets and attach- ments. It was a culmination of the last nine
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