Page 34 - The Wish Stream Year of 2022 CREST

Exercise NORMANDY SCHOLAR – BURMA COMPANY
OCdt Smith
At 1930hrs on Monday 4th July, OCdts from Sandhurst deployed abroad on Ex NORMANDY SCHOLAR for the first time since 2019. Well rested from a week of defensive operations on Ex SLIM’S STAND, 88 OCdts from Burma Company, including 16
international OCdts, boarded the
ferry at Portsmouth at 2300hrs with AATAMs at the ready. After a 4-hour snooze, and a hearty breakfast, we arrived in Caen and set off for our first stand of the day: Operation Merville Storm.
Parry and Lt Col Otway, trying to piece together their rapidly changing and evolving plan. With a massively reduced force, with next to no heavy weaponry, Dr Jones encouraged us to formulate our own plans and put forward how we would
Starting at the drop zone and
moving along the direction of
travel that 9 PARA took towards
the small hamlet of Gonneville on the morning of 6 June 1944, we were quickly able to imag- ine ourselves in the shoes of the command- ers such as Lt Jefferson, Capt Hudson, Major
the soldiers from 9 PARA must have been both extremely brave, and also extremely well trained to not only take on this mission, but to achieve mission success.
With a massively reduced force, with next to no heavy weaponry, Dr Jones encouraged us to formulate our own plans
motivate what little troops we had left to undertake the rest of the mis- sion. Moving into Merville Battery itself, we had the chance to dust off our AATAMs and conduct Questions 1-3 of the Combat Estimate in an attempt to formulate a coherent plan of action for the final assault. Tap- ping into the knowledge and expe- rience of the DS, we presented our plans as sections and came together in agreement on one salient fact –
32 SANDHURST