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8-15th April 2006

Easter Camp

Catch up with the events at Easter Camp at Stanford Training Area (STANTA) with our embedded reporter.

08/04/06 DAY 1
0915hrs and the cadets forming the Easter Camp contingent from 134 (Bedford) Squadron assemble in the squadron car park. With webbing, bergans and day sacks packed with all the necessary kit for the week long deployment to the Stanford Training Area (STANTA) in Norfolk time was found for a quick pre deployment photo. The van was loaded, the cadets filed onto the coach and everyone departed eastwards for the adventure.

Arriving at West Tofts Camp, STANTA the usual chaotic sorting of troops saw everyone locating the respective billets and meeting their flights. Most of the first day is taken up with arrival administration, briefings and getting to know your surroundings. With everyone formed up in their flights and on parade AWO Browne handed over the wing to Wg Cmdr Bower to welcome the cadets and staff to the camp, he then introduced the administration team before opening up a T-shirt stall to flog camp mementoes.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up a familiarization exercise (Fam Ex), this is a good chance for the flights to get to know each other and the camp site with its various facilities. It also provides an opportunity for the flight NCO's to find out how much work they have to do to control the 23 other people under his or her control for the week. FS Otulakowski and FS Russell of 134 (Bedford) Sqn are both flight NCO's for the week.

09/04/06 DAY 2
FIRE ALARM!!!!! lazy morning lay ins are not option here, this morning saw a practise fire drill take place followed swiftly by breakfast for all, with high levels of anticipation this is it, the first morning, the first real day of training here at West Tofts. As you can imagine not all of the 270 cadets can all be doing the same exercise each day, so the whole camp has been divided up, there's a very complex matrix which rotates all of the flights around the different activities.

The early part of the week is spent doing ground training that will prepare the flights for the big exercise later on; this training encompasses things such as cooking in the field, shelter building, leadership and patrolling. For some flights that means being in the field from just after breakfast until 2000hrs, for some people that's a long time away from electricity!!

Other flights have started to rotate through the shooting practise, that includes half a day of training and weapon handling testing in the classroom on the No. 8 .22 inch and L98-A1 5.56mm rifles followed by another half day live firing on the range. Today cadets have been shooting from 100m on the gallery range at Thetford.

134 Cadets after a 36 Hour Exercise