Page 28 - RSDG Year of 2021 CREST

26 EAGLE AND CARBINE
COMMAND TROOP
Captain A Pring
With the Regiment exercising as a battlegroup again after years of squadron level deployments and UN peacekeeping, 2021 was time for the resurrection of a deployable Battlegroup Headquarters and a refocus on Command Troop.
To kick start the year, Comd Tp signallers came to the fore, running long-range HF training for Squadron HQs. Pushed out to training areas around Scotland, Cpls Grimes, Chinsen, Saulailai, and Bogidrau had Squadron signallers speaking on HF back to Leuchars. Later they would repeat the feat getting comms with other units in Estonia, Cyprus, and Bovington, dem- onstrating some impressive technical ability.
Swinging into the spring, BGHQ staff joined in and started their own training in a game of musical tents. Bouncing around a disused airfield in Pembrokeshire occupied mostly by sheep and sugar beet, new setups were trialled, and CHOC drills rehearsed. Whilst the RSO experimented with different tent combinations such as the Croissant or the Sausage, LCpl Lynch was losing his mind repacking trailers, Tpr Sharpe was introduced to the elusive bite point on the clutch, LCpl Menassa delivered fieldcraft lessons, and tutors from CAST ran staff through the Combat Estimate.
With lessons learnt and SOIs revised, BGHQ com- menced the main training sequence of the year with
a CAST in Catterick. Joined by a plethora of attached arms from the Artillery, Royal Engineers, Med Corps and even Vet Corps (one good-humoured Dog Handler arrived and promptly left once it was established that no dogs had been incorporated into the simulated environment), BGHQ swelled in size and got stuck- in to the serious business of deterring the Donovians from invading the Baltics. Luckily, time was found for some team cohesion and Cpls Bell and Rollo kindly shuttled the Command Troop and Staff team round the Yorkshire Dales’ recently reopened pubs.
Fully immersed into the scenario, the battlegroup moved from Yorkshire, crossing the border into Poland (Norfolk) for some RSOI, then conducted a tactical road move past Warsaw (London) and into the contested territories on the Latvia-Lithuania border (Salisbury Plain). “Drop the f***ing roleplay sir and tell me where I am going” complained one trooper whilst driving west on the M4 past Vilnius en route to Caerwent. Geography aside, Ex WESSEX STORM had its fair share of challenges, not least of all was Sgt Barrett’s perpetual mission of finding space to park BGHQ’s significant caravan of 30+ Land Rovers. An