Page 24 - The Wish Stream Year of 2022

Exercise SELF RELIANCE
OCdt Deakin
Ex SELF RELIANCE is a big milestone in the first five weeks for new OCdts coming to Sandhurst. For many it was the first intro-
duction to our kit, and as we would later find out, our Gore-Tex. Among the photos, you can see 32 Platoon busy preparing kit long into the even- ing. Despite the extensive kit list, we still man- aged to fill every available pocket of space with Haribo that we had brought in on Ironing Board Sunday.
Finally, we were ready to deploy onto Barossa training area and move into our first platoon har- bour area. The first night consisted of digging our shell scrapes and our first exposure to sleep deprivation on sentry duty. The next morning, we had our first field lesson, in which we were taught how to wash. Who knew we would have to be taught that at the grand age of 23? This was followed by lessons on range cards, sentry positioning, ground sign awareness and model building. After a long day of patrolling back and forth to these lessons, somehow everyone was looking forward to seeing their shell scrapes again...
Being ‘clever’ potential OCdts, many had cho- sen the May intake in the hope of being intro- duced to the challenges of Juniors with the summer weather. However, Sandhurst had other ideas with heavy downpours for the first time in weeks, and, as we patrolled back, it dawned on us that our two-person holes were now filling up
with water. The only solution to this was to dig deeper where the ground was dry, so back we were digging again.
The next morning, we were curtly awoken by the sentry and ordered to ‘bug out’, having commit- ted a serious infraction of the rules by not cud- dling up with our rifles in our sleeping bags. Now, behind schedule, we had to hastily conduct our morning administration. Definitely a lesson learnt there. The day seemed to fly by from there, as we performed fire manoeuvres and section attacks one after another. But as the sun set, our ‘working day’ was not over as we had the tactical night nav to complete.
At this point, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we started to think about the beer gardens we would be sitting in over the sunny Jubilee weekend. We were all brought back to reality when Colour Sergeant Galloway foreshowed a ‘false summit’. As we patrolled back into camp towards the lines, we were all hopeful, only to be told at the last possible moment to make a right turn and patrol along the front of Old College carrying all our kit and equipment adding on an extra 4km in the now blazing heat.
Heading into the weekend, we all had a sense of achievement but were also looking forward to relaxing and telling all our friends about the train- ing we had been doing.
22 SANDHURST