Page 54 - The Light Dragoon 2024

The Regimental Journal of The Light Dragoons
Awkwardly posing next to an Apache.
convince an Estonian referee that no, he didn’t have a Javelin missile on him, but the thing is, he normally would, and – you see this roll matt? – this role matt is a simulated Javelin, so technically he has killed an Apache, right? Amazingly, the referee agreed. The Air Corps were furious.
The only downside was the mosquitos. They were big. Big. And they were everywhere. If you stopped for a second, you got swarmed. If you moved, they noticed and attacked. I managed to set an all-time record for the quickest ever shovel recce in the woods, having dug my hole, pulled down my kegs, and found six thirsty mosquitos instantly attached to... You get the idea.
A NATO General came to visit, which was cool. The Telegraph flew out a reporter and she wrote an article about us, which was nice. The Estonian Prime Minister even came to visit us in the field, where the Commanding Officer showed her his little knife. The journalists loved it, and his little knife was all over the internet soon after.
Once the fun was over and we had slathered ourselves in mosquito-bite cream, the work to rehab the vehicle fleet began. Simultaneously, we started sending people on a battlefield study in Narva, suspiciously close to the Russian border. Lt Elkington put on a wonderful tour, explaining the WWII battles in all their complexities,
“Sleep is a weapon.”
even if his loyalties did get a bit muddled (“Of course, the Nazi SS were bad. But the Soviets were bad, too, and obviously Russia is bad now, and a lot of the SS were just local lads who... Look, I’m not endorsing the SS, I’m just saying it was a
complex situation and I’m definitely not a communist, so...”).
There was adventurous training as well: kayaking and sea-kayaking and mountain- biking (or ‘biking’ – there aren’t any
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