Page 67 - QDG 2023

1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards 65
Pre-march kit checks
After a long and surprisingly uneventful journey the coaches rolled through the camp gates of Hohenfels and crested the hill to see the transit camp which we would call home for the next month. Rather predictably mobile signal and with it our connection to the outside world ceased to exist at this exact moment.
A Sqn immediately set to work unloading HETS and preparing to deploy into ‘the box,’ working long hours on the tank park to ensure the conditions were set for a successful exercise. Whilst the troops on the tank park were show- casing the efficiency and hard work so often displayed by A Sqn, SHQ found themselves attending the rehearsal for the rehearsal of the BG Rehearsal of Concept drill and attempting to demys-
I’ve been hiding my tabacco in here
tify the US orders process.
As the exercise itself drew closer A
Sqn tackled the problems that arose with their usual fortitude, finding German forklift drivers to unload ISO containers, dousing the flames that sprang out of 12B’s Coyote and generally trying to make sense of what the Battlegroup plan might be.
After not one, not two, but
three BG ROC drills and their
associated rehearsals (we
were reliably informed this
was a sure-fire guarantee
of success) and the Bde plan being completely rewritten two days prior to
along the corridor and....
the exercise, A Sqn were finally ready. On a cold September morning, A Sqn rolled smoothly out of the camp gates (apart from 11B who after an extended period at Harrogate had clearly forgotten how wheel chocks work), and quickly discovered that any form of communication was virtu- ally unworkable due to the terrain. This issue quickly proved irrelevant as A Sqn took up positions in a 2x2km box and could communicate between hide locations and
OPs with a loud whisper.
A Sqn proceeded to perplex the US BG by utilising the almost unheard-of
A quick Arty Target refresher
Contender for a 90s album cover
A Sqn tackled the problems that arose with their usual fortitude