Page 40 - MERCIAN Eagle 2015

Exercise FROSTED BLADE
Twelve soldiers from 1 MERCIAN spent their Christmas and New Year away from home to compete in the Infantry Alpine Ski Championships, otherwise known as Exercise FROSTED BLADE.
The team consisted of both novice and experienced skiers and was held in Val d’Isere, one of Europe’s premier ski resorts. The participants spent five weeks at a
training camp building up to the exciting final race week.
The 1 MERCIAN team entered Slalom, Giant Salomon, Super Giant Slalom and Downhill skiing races. Although relative newcomers to the event, they triumphantly finished 6th out of 36 teams!
Novice skier Private Marcel Theron raced in the team after learning to ski on the exercise just 5 weeks before, he said: “It
was a fantastic experience to come skiing here – an opportunity that I would not normally have had”.
Private Alex Kent again learnt to ski
on the exercise but managed to pull off winning a Gold medal in the Super G and a Silver medal in the Slalom, Giant Slalom and Downhill races. He said: “I had some experience snowboarding in Germany, but skiing there really allowed me to improve!”
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Adventure Training & Sport
Skydiving Opportunity for JNCO Lance Corporal Sibanyoni
This year I was chosen to work at the Joint Services Parachuting Centre (JSPC), Netheravon. I have still been part of B (Malta) Coy, 1 MERCIAN and still regularly see the rest of my platoon, but every day
I have been reporting to the parachuting centre.
I was thrilled to be given this opportunity and pretty surprised as I had very limited sky diving experience. Last July I went on
The JSPC staff on expedition in California in the Elsinore drop zone
a one-week Basic Static-line Parachute course and did four jumps. I enjoyed it so much that my platoon staff managed to secure me a post working on the junior staff.
I was only at working in Netheravon for five days before we flew to California for a two-week expedition. In this time, I managed to complete 42 jumps and progressed from jumping with two
LCpl Sibanyoni’s 100th sky dive
instructors having to supervise me, to being allowed to jump from the plane with no supervision and deploy my own canopy before landing safely.
I have had a lot of responsibility whilst working at JSPC. I run the managing
and issuing of kit, and taught the soldiers there on courses how to safely pack their parachutes so that they would open safely when they were 3,500 feet up in the air.
LCpl Sibanyoni doing an altimeter check over California
THE MERCIAN EAGLE