Page 14 - Wish Stream 2023 CREST

Exercise LONG REACH:
a Falklands Company Perspective
OCdt Bunn
On the 31st of October 2023, more than 200 OCdts in only their eighth week of training, embarked on a journey around the ‘sunny’
Black Mountains in Wales. During this time, the OCdts would have to battle ‘Storm Ciaran’ and mountainous terrain for the 36-hour milestone exercise known as Ex LONG REACH, which all OCdts, British and international, must endure as a rite of passage as they go through to gain their commission. Each would be able to tell you tales about the lows experienced by all and the highs experienced by some.
This year, we got off the coach at 2200hrs into a cold and wet night, which was a common theme for the next two days. But with high spirits, 21E[cho] of Falklands Company stepped off into the night. Following routes that had been planned over the previous weeks, we visited five unmanned check- points (all conveniently located at the top of all the summits), and seven staffed checkpoints. These would test the cognitive ability and teamwork of participants whilst under time pressure and an ever-increasing lack of sleep.
As we set off, we started on our route, taking us up our first of many ascents. The patrol ensured we started as we meant to go on, by doing every- thing properly and double checking our navigation. After this climb, we would drop down into the val- ley into our first command task. Having success- fully completed this, we headed towards the infa- mous ‘X-Ray’ summit. This took us several hours to climb, with the team having to redistribute weight as we slid and crawled our way up. However, the top would be no better, with wind pushing us side- ways, we quickly navigated our way north along an exposed ridge line.
During the second night, the weather would take a turn for the worse, with a ‘yellow warning’ mean- ing Exercise Control (EXCON) imposed a limit on us ascending to the high summits, whereupon this later changed to an amber warning (banning all travel above 450m). Nevertheless, we had man- aged to already visit all but one of the major climbs so this wouldn’t impact upon us too much! After a
four-hour mandated rest which mainly consisted of us climbing into poorly made ponchos that would have done well to withstand the weather we were experiencing, we got up and prepared to start the last ten hours of the exercise. Whilst this was pre- dominantly downhill, the effect of setting out into the dark took a toll on morale, culminating in an 8km walk along a long, dark road surrounded by woodblocks. This would test us, as we had no sense of how far we had walked and relied on just keep placing one foot in front of the other.
After sunrise and we got past our last climb, we eventually made it to our last checkpoint, where we completed the task and thought we had just 1km to get to our last check point.
As we all got back onto the coach and tucked into our service station meals (for me this would consist of a modest nine-pack of Krispie Kreme Dough- nuts), we could all positively reflect on what we had done and what we had learnt from this experi- ence, whether this was a newfound ability to cope with the hardships that the Black Mountains could throw at us, or simply learning that putting talcum powder on your feet really does stop them getting wet. This long 36-hour period certainly lived up to its name and we now feel we can contribute our share of ‘dits’ to those of our forebears before us.
12 SANDHURST