Page 22 - QDG 2023

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1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards
C Squadron
C Sqn kicked off 2023 with a flying start, with the advanced party for Ex Warf- ighter 2023 departing for the states from Heathrow, including the SQMS and his team of helpers. It was to be the first of 5 flights heading stateside that would see 70 troops from C Sqn deployed to support 3UKXX conduct a headquar- ters exercise in Fort Hood, Texas. Not our normal bread and butter, the Sqn was tasked as RLS because the previous RLC subunit got it spectacularly wrong, so some cavalry pride and panache was drafted in.
Under the experienced and effortless leadership of Maj Mansel (OC RLS) the Sqn undertook all manner of novel tasks that phase 2 couldn’t have prepared us for and a varied experience of highs and lows awaited us. Our home for the 4 months was to be Fort Hood in Texas, which was a great demonstration of the differences between the UK and US armies. In one tank park of many there were enough AFVs to outnumber the entire UK fleet of Warriors, ditto Chal- lengers, Jackals etc. This rather set the tone for our time in Texas - Mass, Scale, Big, Bigger and Vast. On the topic of vast, the accommodation provided was contained in 6 enormous marquees that housed 120 bed spaces and rattled constantly (a slightly understated fore- shadowing of what was to come...).
Nevertheless, morale was high on arrival and after the rest of the squadron arrived, including the actual OC Capt Barham after his skiing holiday, we got to work preparing an RSOI package to receive 1300 exercising troops with an average rank of Major. Driving shuttles and lectures were the main task and thankfully we had our Land Navigation
Instructor Sgt Griffiths on hand to not get lost on the way to the airport while there were 2-Star Generals waiting for him.
was soon discovered that dancing with another man is frowned upon out there. The saving grace of moving to our new breeze block village was the food. The US
Most of the permanent dation was contained in a FIBUA village that had to be sterilised from bat excre- ment, (insert Covid related jokes here) so that they could be lived in for the duration of the exercising phase. The breeze blocks and open windows in the village didn’t detract from the amazing scenery we were living in, and in typical QDG fashion it was turned into a comfortable home as much as it could be.
accommo-
Army do many things very well, but food just isn’t one of them. Hyper processed and sugary rubbish took down several of the Squadron with food poisoning including the OC, until half of the UK’s deployable chefs were drafted in and we soon had three field kitchens at full operating capacity feeding up to 1500 personnel a day. The UK kitchens were so good that the Americans would frequently invite themselves over and this remained one of the areas of the exercise where we
The ‘mosque’ (it wasn’t
a real mosque) was host to
many rooftop parties until
the exercise got underway and booze was banned and with plenty of oppor- tunity to get out and about, there were many visits to the local town Killeen for rodeos, BBQs and line dancing. It
totally out-did the Americans. This however came with the inevitable pain of ‘pan bashing’ on shifts for 8 hours a day. Special thanks go to the 3XX Divisional Signals Regiment (DSR) for not lifting a
It was soon discovered that dancing with another man is frowned upon out there.
C Sqn CivPop