Page 42 - Cavalry Regiment

16 The Regimental Journal of The King’s Royal Hussars
C (IIH) Squadron
Estonia’s frigid, flat and monotone white landscape was not much of a welcome to 2019 for C (11H) Squadron. With only snowy ice underfoot for the previous two months and with tem- peratures of -22oC offering little prospect of a thaw, avoiding the temptation to go into hibernation would require some serious warm kit and a fair bit of mental resilience.
Thus, on 2nd January, intrepid C Squadron left the rest of the 1 YORKS battlegroup in camp to slip up the country lanes onto the training area to test fire a tank with a new barrel. There were bangs that not only reminded the locals of the awesome deter- rence profile of Challenger 2 but also provided a rather grand starter’s pistol for a full-on programme of winter training to fill our remaining time in theatre.
The priority was to complete a bespoke cold weather operator course provided by rather earnest instructors from the Royal Marines. This involved a dismounted deployment onto local
Rather snowy gravy
Tpr Thomas on range sentry duties
training estate for three days to learn survival and military skills in extreme cold weather conditions. Having beheaded some rather unhappy chickens, small groups huddled into their over- night ramshackle shelters before trying to light a fire with which to make probably the fowl-est stew known to man.
The exercise culminated on the final morning with the long- anticipated and long-discussed jumping into ice-holes. An inex- plicably filthy local lake was chosen and breached. ‘Volunteers’ were selected. Before long, there was a steady flow of gurning faces running back to the recovery tents for aggressive rewarming drills and then an interminable flow of stories about how “it was not bad actually.”
The cold weather operator course qualified C Squadron to con- duct its own, unescorted dismounted training in the Baltic environment. A second invitation was not required. A potential non-commissioned officer cadre took the younger members of the Squadron out of their comfort zone to conduct section attacks and casualty evacuation in knee high snow, with many of them showing the grit and leadership required for future promotion. Trooper ‘Young’ Knight was identified as top student and became a Lance Corporal accordingly in the autumn.
Vehicle training also took advantage of the novel conditions. Everyone was taken on to a local airfield to learn how to control a 68-tonne tank on sheet ice. Once that was mastered (or not in the case of the 2IC, Captain Lynch-Staunton), some went further and trialled a little assisted-Nordic skiing. It all set the Squadron up for the finale of the tour, a brigade level mounted exercise with the remainder of the battlegroup, Belgian colleagues and Estonian
When life gives you snowshoes, make massive graffiti