Page 33 - RADC Bulletin 2021

the enemy held off, for now, we returned to the camp for a long night of rifle cleaning and preparing for a room inspection.
Module C turned its attention to topics such as leadership, morality, war studies and psychology. However, everyone’s mind was heavy on the resurgence of the Donovian special forces; it was time to head out to Aldershot training area for our five-day exercise.
The rain followed us to Aldershot, where our combat estimate exam was done in flooded shell scrapes. Despite our orders floating around with our kit, we all passed. We demonstrated how our belt buckle drills had improved and we put in all our effort for the long days of platoon attacks and night ambushes.
Finally, the time came for the RADC to shine, leadership of the platoon passing
to Platoon Commander Bell and Platoon Sergeant Gurung. After a long evening of writing orders under tarpaulin and making the perfect model, it was time for our attack. A right-flanking attack through woods and hilly ground saw the enemy defeated quickly.
The culmination of this exercise saw a coordinated company attack. We snuck around the enemy positions in the cover of
thick undergrowth to attack from behind. We had come a long way from that first exercise.
After the completion of our longest exercise, we began to celebrate being on the home run. Our final module saw lots of drill in preparation for the commissioning parade and our chance to fully eradicate the Donovians.
We went back onto Barossa for the
final time. At dawn, we raided the FOB
that was the enemy’s last base. With the light creeping over the horizon, we burst through the FOB doors to find ourselves outnumbered by the enemy. While taking out enemy buildings in pairs, we imagined we looked like a special forces unit, though I suspect we didn’t look like this to the Major General who had come to witness our dawn attack in person. A mass casualty situation was made up by the DS, and after managing this we carried three dummies on stretchers all the way back to Victory College via the wish stream. We crawled through tunnels and underwater obstacles to emerge outside Victory College, freezing cold and with leeches in our webbing.
Finally, at week eight, we had our Commissioning parade. Sadly, COVID stopped us from having any guests but it
was still a great feeling to finally walk up the steps of Old College after all our hard work. Our time at Sandhurst finished off with a
week long range package. It was great to finally have the hectic schedule of the last eight weeks calmed down, but we were sad to be soon leaving behind our platoon that had turned from a group of individuals to a team.
There had been challenging times; putting on wet kit at 0300 to go on stag, or ironing your bed when you should be sleeping in it. All these challenges left us closer because we suffered it together, and everyone agreed that our crazy nine weeks were the most memorable of our lives.”
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