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troops had a real buzz at the end of the evening. The intent is to make this a regular event with an ambush, platoon attack and river crossing coming in the next three months on either drill nights or weekend training.
To enlarge our recruitment source,
HQ Company was working on establishing a rifle platoon formed by the students of
the University of Wolverhampton. This
is based on the Armed Forces and War Studies Courses at the University, but is open to all. This will really come into effect in October with the start of the academic year, when a group of 20-30 students will join
the Company. Those on the Armed Forces course will be taken straight from their first lecture to a waiting mini-bus and driven
to the ARC for an induction to the Army Reserve, but don’t worry they do know this, and are not being press-ganged.
HQ Company is also exploring recruitment for members of the ethnic minorities. Community relationship is
being built up with the Sikh community in Wolverhampton which is the largest outside London and 10 per cent of the population of the City. Events at the Sikh community have been visited and taken part in by members of the Company, the highlight of which
was chapatti making at the local Gurdwara which was done with varying degrees of success by the soldiers involved. We also
organised an open day at Wolverhampton ARC for the Sikh youth. This consisted of the standard open day activities such as an inflatable assault course, weapons and equipment (including an impressive display of WW2 kit owned by Cpl Vaughan) and some lessons but also some Sikh military artefacts and a lecture on Sikhism and the Army by the 143 Brigade Sikh Chaplain. As a result a few young Sikh adults have indicated their interest in joining either the
Army Reserve or the Army Cadet Force as adult instructors and there has been a lot of interest in joining the Cadets amongst the children present. The day went along way towards breaking down barriers and forging stronger links with each other and was a successful first stage in engaging with the local community.
A two-week cadre camp was held in
last October at STANTA. Courses ranged from JNCO, to BRU and Driving. Ptes
Edge, Jones and Powell had attended and passed the JNCO Cadre. Ptes Bird and Chitombo attended and passed the Driving Cadre where they are now qualified to drive difference types of vehicles and capable in driving in different types of road conditions. Pte Chitombo was particularly excited in
her success on the course as she had only been driving for just over a year prior to
the cadre. She was particularly proud of
her achievement in being able to change a wheel without any assistance. Pte Jones, having first passed the JNCO cadre and subsequently the PTI course, was promoted to become a Lance Corporal. Well done all.
Having only just taken over the command less than a year ago the OC, Maj Carpenter- Balmer, has already made a number of changes and introduced new ideas. Training on drill nights had regularly taken place in the field on exercise taking, the advantage of the longer hours of daylight in summer. The OC introduced and organised the
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