Page 64 - Example Journals

10 EAGLE AND CARBINE
ing vehicles. The Squadron then knuckled down to understanding life as a Light Cavalry Troop. No more complex t comms. No more massive main armament. No more roof. But with it much more ‘track mileage’, more agility, more stealth, more inquisitiveness, more foot-born soldiering. Soldiers have risen to the new challenge, and whilst there is much work to do, con - dence in and on the new role is growing.
Beginning to provide the Squadron with further sur- veillance and repower support have been the trust- worthy 1st Troop of D Squadron. Their training has been similar in many respects, but with the added demand to ful l the new demands of sniper training, mortar training, grenade machine gun training, and Javelin conversion. There is much to do to fully bring the Support Troop capability to fruition but they’re on the right track – with an unswerving desire to live in holes in the ground and wear ghillie sniper suits mak- ing them appear as unshaven green sheep.
In sport the Squadron has led the way. It is no exagger- ation to say the Squadron could eld a Rugby 7s team that could probably challenge any other Army team – probably the Army team itself. Football, tug-of-war, cross-country and a host of other sporting endeavours have resulted in the Squadron winning the coveted Moncreiff Shield, the greatest Regimental sporting accolade.
The Squadron has also welcomed many new faces. Staff Sergeant Mills has joined us as the new Squadron Arti cer. Two transferees from the Royal Gurkha Ri es – the now Lance Corporal Thapa Magar and Trooper Bhim; Lance Corporal Thompson from attachment with 1 SCOTS, and the brand-new Troopers Milne, McLennan, Lynch, Oliver, Crowe and Gaughan. Great to have them along.
Farewells go to SQMS Staff Sergeant Aitken, now released to be MTWO, and we are grateful to him in raising the Squadron to an administrative level which allowed the rest of us to train – from bullets to burgers. To Sergeant Burton, departing for the world of civil- ian transport management. And to Corporal Kapawai and Lance Corporal Stodart as they depart for RACTR posts in Bovington; they have both done much to physically thrash and toughen the Squadron up ready for its new role. Congratulations to Lance Corporal Stodart on the arrival of his son Kailib, even if he did think the congratulatory owers were for himself, not Mrs Stodart.
Conversion to the new role has broadly gone well for the Squadron. There are still challenges – communi- cations equipment must but will get better, more time
Staff Sergeant Barclay gives his orders
required interacting with other arms (for example Engineers and Gunners) to really understand where we can t in with others (this will come later in the training cycle), more time practising the new SOPs is required but this will be provided by more training in spring 2015, and as ever one can never re enough live ammunition and so the Squadron looks forward to its nal live ring period on Bergen-Hohne ranges. So much to work on but the Squadron is in many respects converted to the new role, albeit only at Troop level to date. This will change over the coming year. Going back to the rst point of the article, that no-one has the sole preserve of good ideas, the Squadron now looks to push its experience to date to the other Squadrons as they follow down the mounted conversion training pipeline; the experience must be a collaborative one for all Squadrons to achieve the best training we can.
It is tting to nish the article with recognition of the soldiers on Exercise Breslau Herald in May 2014. It has been a year of rsts in the Squadron and on behalf of the Regiment. To that end Mr Bradford, Sergeant Degei, Corporals Laing, Brown and Lowdon, the then Lance Corporal Hutchinson, and Troopers Cairns, McCullough, Stewart, Seith, Monaghan and Maillerdet-O’Neill formed the rst Troop in Regimental history to deploy on exercise mounted on Jackal and Coyote in the Light Cavalry role. This really is something they should be proud of.
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