Page 30 - QARANC Vol 14 No 13 2016

28 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Exercise Long Look 2016 New Zealand
After being approached to go on Ex Long Look I immediately jumped at the chance. New Zealand has always been a place I have wanted to visit and that, combined with Wales touring there during the dates I was going, sealed the deal.
After a brief meeting with Chief Nursing Officer (Army) Col Irvine, it was soon apparent that this wasn’t going to be the normal holiday Ex Long Look that I had heard about over the years.
After a lot of communications between myself, CNO office and AIB in Warminster, I eventually had my tickets and was en route to New Zealand. The flight took approximately 26 hours flying time with stops in London, Los Angeles and Auckland. Having set off on Sunday I eventually got to my destination of Palmerston North on Tuesday afternoon.
Spending 3 days in ‘Palmy’ I was
boarding a plane again to start work down in the South Island with Southern Group, Joint Operational Health Group.
I was met by SSgt J Boyd of RNZAMC and shown around the facilities and introduced to the staff. This was going to be another short stay as, although I was with them for 3 weeks, 2 of those were to be spent in the field in Tekapo, one of the training areas in the south.
Ex Achilles was a low level training exercise involving 4 separate units. The idea was that the individual units would conduct their own training for the first 5 days and then come together for what would equate to a Btn exercise in UK. I found quite interesting the comparison to our system as this exercise would be all run in-house whereas due to the numbers 4 units had to be involved.
One thing that did stand out was the scenery. As an avid Lord of the Rings
fan I could have been on the set of any of the films (I later found out that I was); also temperatures dropped to -10 during the first week and our low level training exercise turned into real time medical cover with a number of troops going down with hypothermia.
On returning from exercise, the normal post exercise routine ensued in time for me to attend the Mess to watch the first test between Wales and the All Blacks. With Wales leading after 60 minutes I was feeling an air of optimism, but then in true Welsh form we threw it away in the last quarter.
I had the opportunity of a day visit to Wellington. A couple of the medics took me round the sights. We visited