Page 19 - 2001/02 AMA Winter

tureTraining
Manual Handling Courses and cotton wool for me please!" What will it take to stop the rot- ironically the threat of legal action perhaps. If we don’t run realistic training for our soldiers and they do not come back from the battlefield will we face legal action for not adequately training them for the job of war in the first place? Surely (as has been pointed out before) the Army needs risk takers to fulfil its primary function. Nobody is surely going to insist that we make the enemy identify all possible trip hazards for our infantry before they can assault their position.
at the same time and that delicate balance, you know, I think it just has to be transmitted all the time. We don’t do anything stupid. There’s enough out there to get you anyhow.’
If we succeed in taking the 'adventure' out of Adventure Training we are cheating our soldiers out of preparing them for the unique demands placed on them in combat situation. Preparing them to cope with the fact that through the course of their jobs they run the risk of severe injury or death.
We’ve crossed a line and it seems to me that everyone knows it but is either unwilling to stick their necks out or unable to stop the monolithic problem of the civilianisation of our military. I digress perhaps onto a deeper rot within the system that anyone who has ever served at a training establishment will know only too well.
“WeseemtohaveAsIcometothecloseofthis I1 3 V E article 1remember the chain
The moment we started insisting that expe­ rience could not be taken alongside qualifi­ cations we began to undermine Military Adventure Training. There are only so many weeks in the year and you can either sacrifice some of your time to follow the military qualifications ladder or you use that time to build up your experience.
In an increasing litergacious and risk adverse society where does that leave us with activities which by their very nature are designed to contain very real risk indeed? I believe if we’re not strong and don’t resist some of these fundamental changes not far from the death of Military Adventurous Training; In fact not far from ‘AT’ standing for Activity Training and nothing more. I am not suggesting that we should forget the duty of care as instructors of less experienced indi­ viduals but that this has to be balanced with judgement. We have to forever view it in the context of why we chose Adventure Training as a tool in the first place. Once again Willian F. Unsoeld reminds us what we seem to be trying so hard to forget.
‘You emphasise safety in a high risk operation. You emphasise safety, but you don’t kill the risk. You emphasise safety as a rational man’s effort at survival, but we’re going to go right ahead and stick our head in the noose that’s the game. But we’re going to be so careful in doing it,
of my Corps. I initially envisaged a group of six climbers, three experienced and three less experienced in order to pass on skills and at the same time challenge the instructors themselves. Over the months of nursing it to life I have undergone a strange sort of ‘mission creep’ which took me further and further from the expedition aim. I chose a demanding activity, Big Wall climbing and a challenging area. Perhaps in hindsight I was too ambitious for the Services but that just underlines my point. I am a cautious climber and many who know me will without doubt back that up. I have a reasonable amount of experience in rock climbing and some aid climbing but no Big Wall experience. What I encountered was a catch 22 situation in that I required JSRCIs with considerable Big Wall experience. For an expedition that I had originally meant to take a capable team with some experience through a structured sequence of climbs so that they too would be considered to have
that necessary caveat of ‘Big Wall' experi­ ence. Very quickly it became evident that I would probably be the least experienced on the trip if the trip went ahead at all. To take a group of six already accomplished climbers off on a trip that could be done in their own time was never my intention at all. In the end I required such an experienced team that everyone was so senior that they could not be released. End of expedition Lotus Flower Dragon may she rest in peace. The ironic thing is that when I leave this summer I will simply buy a plane ticket and go and
do it anyway!
lost sight of why
AdventureTraining
is a cnre military
of events that set me on the I l f U fllV Path to writing it in the first
Ul VVIIj place. Iamduetoleavethe fn a in in n Re9ular Services this
II
d
l
ll
l
li
y August. I had planned to
n ilitn n n ! l l i a r y
or9anise a rock climbing expedition in the North West Territories of Canada as a
jj
activity farewell piece for the soldiers
y.”
ARMY MOUNTAINEER 17
Photo by Mark and Bridget Smyth