Page 28 - The Wish Stream Year of 2022 CREST

The exercise started as the coaches dropped us off, and the usual admin cluster ensued – 90 OCdts making the transition from snoozing on the bus to being tactical, whilst trying to locate Bergans, sort radios, and bomb up mags. Even- tually, we got going and started our insertion tab, an aspect of exercise that is often dreaded, par- ticularly in such notoriously hilly terrain. Thank- fully we did not have to go nearly as far as the rumoured distances and found ourselves in our harbour after about an hour and a half.
We were also fortunate enough to have set up our harbour in the same loca-
on their toes, not least because of the issuing of TES (Tactical Effects Simulator) for the first time for this exercise which opened the floodgate of injuries from people who were slacking on their skills and drills and unfortunately made casualty evacuations a regular occurrence.
The final attack was one last dawn assault on nine positions spread over a kilometre stretch and was the culmination of what we covered over the exercise. It began with the, by then famil- iar, 0330hrs wakeup, and 90 exhausted cadets were powered on by the last of our Soreen and
Haribo supplies! As the sun rose, 29 platoon assaulted the first posi- tion with schmooleys illuminating the sky and mortars suppressing the enemy. The whole attack was hectic as it brought together much of what we had learnt over the previous four days, with casualty after casualty and people being drawn across the whole battlefield as the link for those in command appointments. The
Company Sergeant Major brought just the right amount of intensity to get the adrenaline pump- ing, and those in appointment thinking quickly. This attack was certainly one of my highlights of all our exercises so far as more levels of com- plexity are added into the equation and we col- lectively get better at each of the actions.
tion as a previous group, so the
dreaded digging in did not take as
long as predicted. This meant that
we were able to get our heads
down and make the most of our
last good night’s sleep. How-
ever, it would not be a Sandhurst
exercise if we did not RECCE to
find and ASSAULT to destroy all
before the sun has risen, so the
following days put us through our paces with a handful of OCdts being picked each day to lead deliberate, hasty, and advance to contact platoon attacks. The combat estimate, orders process, and the sequence of each of these attacks was becoming more and more familiar to us. That said, no plan survives first contact, and those in appointment are constantly kept
The whole attack was hectic as it brought together much of what we had learnt over the previous four days
26 SANDHURST