Page 78 - Mind, Body and Spirit No. 105 2021/22

76
www.raptcassociation.org.uk
11 EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISPOSAL AND SEARCH REGIMENT – RLC
SSgt (SSI) M Crook RAPTC
Taking over the role as SSI for 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Regiment (11 EOD&S Regt) in Sep 2020 came with a bit of a shock, with little to no handover, I found myself very quickly out of my comfort zone.
I was quickly brought up to speed by the Regt 2IC about the nature and layout of the Unit, so let me give you a quick brief.
11 EOD&S Regt are tasked with providing Military Aid to Civilian Authorities (MACA) for EOD&S capability. In layman’s terms, they support the nationwide Police and UKSF on all firm base EOD&S Taskings. The so what of this is that the Regt has 655 personnel spread across 5 Sqns.
The 5 sqns are dispersed across 5 separate locations covering the entirety of the UK, each Sqn is then further broken down in 3 or 4 Troops which are then further dispersed from the Sqn. 11 EOD&S Regt operates from 14 separate locations across the UK and NI and responded to circa 2750 EOD&S taskings in 2021, that’s approx. 7-8 call outs every day of the year.
I was to be located at 421 Sqn which shares its location with the RHQ element at Vauxhall Barracks, Didcot.
Taking over as the RAPTCI at a Unit has never been so strange, on arrival and asking to be directed to the gymnasium the MPGS simply laughed and waved me onto camp.
It soon became apparent on meeting up with the gym IC (Cpl, AAPTI) that Vauxhall Barracks, although housing approx. 190 personnel, had no gym! only a lone standing squash court, which was filled with legacy equipment that was neither fit for purpose or salvageable. PT and all fitness testing had been taken outside for as long back as anyone could remember.
I then found another room on camp (in the junior’s accommodation block) which had been converted into a makeshift weights room, bearing holes in both ceiling and floor from people overhead pressing in a room that wasn’t high enough, or dropping weights on a carpeted floor, with asbestos stickers on every wall, I literally couldn’t believe my eyes.
However, with a new forward-leaning QM posted in, we set about fixing this issue. Understanding at the time, that the Unit was not on the Defence Estate Plan we knew that getting any form of hard standing would be unachievable, so we looked at the next best option which would be a semi-permanent structure. Also understanding the varying quality of some of the semi-permanent
structures out there we managed to find a funding stream and a contract that would provide us with the closest option to a hard build gym that we could get.
With the ethos of “environment dictates performance” we pushed hard for more and more funding to raise the standard of the training facility as it would be our primary and only training facility, in steps Maj Brian Dupree and over the space of 6 months everything was agreed, and the contractors finally started work on building our new Strength and Conditioning Facility (S&CF).
The S&CF was up and running within a month and kit was starting to stream in, we are now at a point where the facility is basically complete minus a few final touches and is being used regularly by circa 45-50 personnel for regular Sqn and Tp PT, not to mention out of hours personal training, something that has never been a thing at Vauxhall Barracks unless you were paying for a local gym membership.
Alongside this, as the Unit were coming out of the COVID Lockdown, Regt AT was starting to happen with 2 multi activity AT Packages being run in Mid/late 2021 (EX DRAGON DEMON WHIP and EX WOARLOCK ADVENTURE).
Ex DRAGON DEMON WHIP was a 5-day Multi Activity Package delivered out of Lower Gillerthwaite Field Centre at Ennerdale Lake, in the Lake District. It covered Open boat canoeing, Mountain Biking, and hill walking. The Package, although being delivered coming out of the back end of COVID, ran smoothly and the views and weather did not disappoint.
The remainder of my time has been filled conducting Troop and Sqn visits to the outstations and getting to know the wider Regt PT Staff and trying to understand the issues and concerns they face within their own working environment as lodger Units across the Country.
Some of the main issues that were spotted on my initial visits were whole troops of personnel with no PT staff to support, lack of ability to run, manage or support Level 1 and 2 PT, gaining access and time to gym floor space for the PTI’s to run level 3 PT. Now that I and the Regt have a wider and more in-depth understanding of Regt PD Issues it has allowed us to build a very concerted priority driven action plan to bring a very challenging Unit.
In a very busy and challenging Unit I am now seeing a clear path from where we were, to where we need to be, and with the 24 AAPTIs that we now have within the ranks and across the Regt, and some very forward leaning RAPTCIs form across the country helping and supporting our outstations, the Unit is quickly coming together.