Page 27 - The Wish Stream Year of 2022 CREST

the conduct of our first raid. That night, trip flares were sprung, and the harbour was assaulted, building the battle picture for the following day’s withdrawal to a new harbour location. This long process of moving to and occupying a new har- bour was followed by a set of company attack orders. With an hour’s sleep, we set off on the final day for our first company attack to conclude the exercise.
Ex ALLENBY’S ADVANCE also saw us mak- ing use of new pieces of equipment, includ- ing HMNVS and TES. Firstly, HMNVS, a night sight which, while initially disorientating to look through, garnered us the capability of operating in complete darkness and remaining situationally aware. TES, or ‘laser tag on steroids’, allowed us to artificially kill or be killed by the enemy, add- ing a deeper layer of realism to our actions. TES punished those with poor tactics or use of cover and meant that for the first time the platoon’s actions and decisions now organically created their own painful CASEVACs.
Ex ALLENBY’s ADVANCE felt like a big step up from Ex ROBERT’S RETURN. The actions and orders contained much more complexity and the sense of realism and consequence was vastly dialled up. As a result, it holds the coveted prize of being the most challenging exercise we have done to date and on par with Ex LONG REACH as the most rewarding. Overall, Normandy Com- pany thoroughly enjoyed their trip to Brecon.
Exercise ALLENBY’S ADVANCE
Ex Allenby’s Advance is one of the most antic- ipated of the Sandhurst exercises amongst OCdts. It is in Brecon; it is a formative exer-
cise, and it involves digging in. A perfect storm that ensures a healthy level of sleep depriva- tion and pressure to perform. The exercise also marks the introduction of company level actions, as well as the Ambush and the Raid, all whilst confirming the skills that we have learnt so far on the Commissioning Course.
The questionably reliable New College rumour mill consistently produces horror stories of exer- cise that, coupled with the terrain and weather of Brecon, tend to make OCdts particularly nerv- ous. However, we were incredibly lucky and as the New College Commander attested – in his 23 years of service, visiting Brecon for exercise for at least two weeks each year, he has never experienced as fair weather as we did.
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