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Exercise NORMANDY SCHOLAR
War Studies lectures can, occasionally, seem to have been written by Arthur Miller. New scripts from Miller (who died in 2005) are, admittedly, surprising. In the theatre, every men- ace-laden pause in the dialogue is meant to elicit a dull shock, emphasising the spectacle on stage. In Churchill Hall, such dramatic pauses usually allow OCdts an opportunity to have a long blink. Not so in France.
Ex NORMANDY SCHOLAR brought alive every- thing we’ve been taught so far. Since the Army is not currently engaged in war, it can be difficult to get in the right headspace. The knowledge that, at the end of our Commissioning Course, very few of us, if any, will deploy directly into an active war zone adds a certain permanence to our ‘peace mindset.’ Every lesson, TEWT and exercise seems slightly less sinister. There is a rather large park attached to the back of Sandhurst, the Common just down the road, even the oddly symmetrical woodblocks in the hills of Sennybridge – we may play soldiers, but we haven’t quite become them. And yet, there was an ethereal quality to the experience of standing in a small group in the middle of that 200 metres of flat, wet sand on Sword beach, imagining what it must feel like to crawl slowly, painfully, inexorably through a hail of steel, towards the Atlantic Wall.
OCdt Lewis
Stand by stand, we worked through the stories of Merville Battery, Sword Beach and St Pierre. The men described were the heroic sort. The Boy’s Own sort.
“You’re Lt Col Otway, part of the 6th Airborne Divi- sion, jumping into a field”; Dr Walsh bellowed in his broad Yorkshire accent over the wind and rain. “Your jump goes wrong and your 600 strong bat- talion now has 150 people, what do you do?”
“Er... wait?” we demurred.
“Wait!” he spat “Look at your orders! This tactical action is of such importance that you cannot fail. If you fail, Normandy fails, if Normandy fails, libera- tion fails.”
“Er... not wait?” someone screeched. “Very good.”
And on we moved.
“You’re Lt Lowe of 5 East Yorks, the first wave of D-Day. Part of D Coy; your objective is that gun over there...” Dr Walsh pointed to an ice cream shop behind us which had long since occupied said position.
Some discussion later:
“You, Lt Lowe, survived the initial assault to the Atlantic Wall but your Coy has been reduced to two sections, what do you do now?” And so, the day continued.
It was Edmund Burke that stated ‘In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, draw- ing the materials of future wisdom....’ On this trip, our knowledgeable seminar leaders sniffed their opportunity to impart such a volume and jumped into paeans of intellect. Once set off, it was difficult to contain their fervour. To approach might have been fatal - an overzealous hand gesture outside Merville Battery almost sent my glasses flying. That being said, as we stood on the ground, our fore- bears crawled, ducked and ran across; it felt less like a lecture and more like we were seeing a story unfurl before our eyes.
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