Page 67 - KRH Year of 2021 CREST

The Regimental Journal of The King’s Royal Hussars 65
Hawks in the Brigade Headquarters
12th Armoured Brigade Combat Team (12 Armd BCT) is fortu- nate enough to not only have the mighty King’s Royal Hussars in its Order of Battle but three Hawks fulfilling key roles within its Headquarters: Maj Dave Welford MBE, Maj Will Wade, and Capt George Lynch-Staunton (deserving of an MBE).
Dave Welford, as the Chief of Staff, is the Headquarters’ glori- ous leader; Will Wade, while assigned as SO2 ISTAR, has begun to make a series of Machiavellian power plays to position him- self as the de facto Assistant Chief of Staff; while George Lynch- Staunton appears, while officially SO3 ISTAR, to have become the ADC to the Assistant Chief of Staff. Though, with great mag- nanimity, Will has been known to allow the Brigade Commander to borrow him on occasion.
2021 has felt strikingly busy. The beginning of the year was dominated by UK Resilience tasks, with over a thousand sol- diers force generated by the Brigade to assist with the national response to the COVID pandemic—the King’s Royal Hussars clearly chief amongst them. The Brigade Headquarters was then—at pretty short notice—deployed on Ex WARFIGHTER, a simulated US Corps level exercise in which 3 (UK) Div par- ticipates every two years, and which validates 3 (UK) Division as the UK’s Warfighting Division. Eight Battlegroup Headquarters were deployed from across the Division, each acting as a Brigade LOCON within the exercise, and the Brigade Headquarters’ role was to cohere these LOCONs; act as the lubrication in the gears between them and the Divisional Headquarters; ensure that no one did anything to completely unhinge the Division’s plan; and, in short, to do anything possible by either fair means or foul to ensure that the Division “won” WARFIGHTER. After several weeks of herding cats, endless COVID tests, and absolutely no sleep, success was declared: 3 (UK) Division’s performance on Ex WARFIGHTER was, by common consent, the best ever per- formance by a UK Division on WARFIGHTER and the strong- est of the three Divisions (the other two being US and French) on the exercise. At least some of the credit for the Division’s performance must go the Brigade HQ, with Dave Welford—as the grandly titled Chief of Staff LOCONs—cat-herder in chief; albeit, even ten months after the exercise, his only comment on WARFIGHTER is that it was “utterly bloody miserable”. Turns out even simulated war is hell.
On return to the UK, the Headquarters got on with the prepa- ration and deployment of the RTR Battlegroup on Op CABRIT 10—HQ 12 Armd BCT is the 1* lead for Op CABRIT—and the delivery of Ex IRON STORM to the KRH Battlegroup. With Battlegroup training in BATUS having been paused indefinitely, IRON STORM was an attempt to deliver the equivalent of a PRAIRIE STORM using the UK infrastructure of Castlemartin Ranges, Salisbury Plain Training Area, and the Combined Armed Tactical Trainer (CATT); an ambitious task involving a heroic comet tail of preparatory activity. Owing to exceedingly unfor- tunate circumstances (and a good chunk of labyrinthine bureau- cracy) the Salisbury Plain portion of the exercise was cut short and the majority of the force-on-force part of the exercise delivered in CATT. This was deeply unsatisfactory, both for the Brigade Headquarters and the Battlegroup, given the work that had gone
Ignorance is bliss in 12 Brigade HQ
into building up to the exercise. However, despite IRON STORM not being delivered exactly as intended, the KRH Battlegroup proved themselves—to absolutely no-one’s surprise—a thor- oughly effective Armoured Battlegroup, expert at combined arms, and more than ready to assume the position of the UK’s Lead Armoured Battlegroup. While all have contributed to these big blocks of activity, on an individual level the Headquarters’ KRH contingent have also been busy. Between trips to Solstice Park, Will has somehow managed to fulfil his role as the Readiness lead for the Brigade; delivered the Standardisation project for Brigade and Battlegroup Command Posts, an almost comically Sisyphean task; produced a number of Brigade Study Days and TEWTs; and led on “War Development” (experimentation) for the Brigade. Meanwhile George Lynch-Staunton, amidst more mundane ADC duties and his lead of Brigade interoperability and international engagement—which seems to consist of speaking English very loudly and slowly to a series of slightly perplexed French offic- ers—applied for an ECOPF grant for a filter coffee machine. The application was unfortunately rejected.
2022 will be an interesting year. The Brigade will double in size as of 1 Apr 22 as it gains additional Combat and Combat Service Support units as part of the Future Soldier programme; it will HICON the 1 MERCIAN BG on its Ex IRON STORM as they prepare for readiness; and will also deploy the KRH Battlegroup to Poland on Ex DEFENDER, HICON’ing this exercise in order to certify the KRH Battlegroup as ready for their subsequent deployment on Op CABRIT 11. While Dave Welford leaves post as Chief of Staff in Summer 22, both Will Wade and George Lynch-Staunton are staying on the log, and will be with the Headquarters as it deploys on Ex CERBERUS in the Autumn. CERBERUS is the most significant training event Brigade Headquarters undertake, and will be used to validate HQ 12 Armd BCT as the Armoured Infantry Brigade Headquarters at readiness. Most significantly though, and to great fanfare, George Lynch-Staunton has promised to re-submit his ECOPF applica- tion for the filter coffee machine; we await breathless.
GL-S