CCF Exercise, Summer Lightning

The final weekend of the Easter holidays saw a platoon of the CCF’s Army Section deploy to Bramley Training Areas in Hampshire. After a morning’s fieldcraft training under their Sixth Form NCOs, the 30 cadets marched out for a 24-hour battle exercise. Their mission: to drive an insurgent enemy from the vicinity. Having establish a patrol harbour, fighting and recce patrols were dispatched to observe enemy activity and close with pockets of resistance. A helicopter landing site was located and ambushed; several deep positions were taken; and intelligence was gathered. On the basis of this last, a night-time ambush was planned and, as a cataclysmic thunderstorm broke overhead, an enemy vehicle convoy was decimated by the fire of the Caterham rifles.

The deluges of rain and the exercise’s eponymous lightning strikes had cleared by early the next morning, and in the sunshine the platoon set up a FOB from which to finish off the last vestiges of a crumbling resistance. Trenches were assaulted, tunnels cleared and finally, in the baking midday heat, the exercise came to a close with a platoon attack on a fortified compound. All the cadets performed admirably in very challenging conditions, but especially congratulations go to two cadets who earned field promotions: Sgt Jack, Lower Sixth and A/LCpl Ben, Fourth Year.

 Lt Mathew Owen