Benj@N69

Weekend week 2

I got up at 5:30 am to attend the captain’s speech and feedback round with the soldiers before the weekend at 6 am. at 6:05 am, I called him to tell him that there are 180 soldiers waiting for him… “I’m still in the quarters”, he said. Lesson learned, eh?

The feedback session was awful. He didn’t manage to have his slides projected (he works as a professional officer there, mind you!) and wasted most of the time on administrative bullshit (what to watch out for when asking for personal leave next year and so on.

One soldier asked if it was allowed to drink alcohol off work outside the quarters - because some soldiers spotted the captain drinking a glass of scotch around midnight on Thursday. He was stupid enough to answer “yes, the order only says there’s no alcohol allowed in the building, but please don’t make a mess outside”, just because he didn’t want to admit that he did something wrong.

I drove home with the deputy head of the unit, tried to stay awake with the aid of lots of coffee and Red Bull, but didn’t really manage. And now, after all these write-ups, I’ll continue not to sleep and try to get some things done over the weekend. For example some training, as I couldn’t do a single second of running this week :(

Friday: week 2, day 5

Friday was supposed to be the day of the first artillery shooting with the whole battalion. Our unit was planned to deliver ammunition, take it back after the shooting and then refuel the battalion. The maintenance platoon had to hold itself ready for vehicle defects, and the medic group set up something like a small emergency room.

We collected our radios and vehicles and prepared for a function check at 8 am. The electronic comm system was supposed to be set up at 8:30 am. Our captain didn’t show up until just before 9 am, so we went the ammo and fuel platoons away; I waited with the command vehicles a little longer. The “joining” didn’t work for the comm system, neither for us nor for a howitzer unit preparing nearby (see picture).

It seemed that the problem was on battalion HQ level, so we went back to our main building and waited. I did some more paperwork, finished the order for next week’s march and from time to time checked on the soldiers trying to set up the comms system.

We heard the howitzers shooting, so something must have worked, but it definitely wasn’t the systems we were supposed to use. Around 3 pm, we finally figured out that two cables were switched and the amplifier couldn’t work like that. At least something.

Around 5 pm, the shooting was over with, and we attended a little ceremony to honour St. Barbara, patron saint of the artillery. To this end, most vehicles of the whole battalion met at one place: 24 howitzers, 24 armoured ammo carriers, around 15 APCs and countless all terrain vehicles. Quite impressive, and we didn’t even bring our recovery tank which weighs almost the triple of a howitzer.

After dinner, we had set up a meeting with our captain and to representative of the battalion staff to discuss the problems we had among each other. The discussion was really constructive, but I don’t see our captain changing much of his behaviour yet. At least the staff guys told him in very clear words to stop doing useless stuff that only creates paper and stress. We’re no recruit school after all.

We finished the week in our own “logistics bar” with a few beers, mainly to celebrate the last day of service of the chief of the workshop. The staff guys were there, too, and it was great fun to listen to their tales and stories. Our captain was outside for most of the time and afterwards preferred to talk to the supporting staff instead of his platoon leaders. Oh well.

Thursday: week 2, day 4

I got up early to do the recon work together with the motorcyclists. They’re three and really convenient to work with. If only all soldiers had their attitude.

I had to do drawings of the deployment of the whole unit with four platoons, down to the level of a single vehicle. Of how to set up protection, defined paths for leaving our positions, configuration in case of enemy contact, how to secure placement of the vehicles. Four places to refuel the whole battalion at once.

Our captain used to be intelligence officer in the battalion staff, so this kind of drawings is totally his thing. Spoiler: we actually needed about 5% of the information and my work could have been done in half an hour. Hooray.

Also, I delivered half an hour too late. I couldn’t have cared less after the captain told me in a manner that tends to drive everybody here around mad.

The rest of the morning I spent with additions to the drawings, corrections and more unnecessary perfectionisms.

In the afternoon, I had a rapport concerning material and vehicle return in two weeks. The first half hour was only about material, so I dozed off a little. The vehicle part was of more interest to me, but the guy who presented really didn’t make any sense, created lots of confusion by contradicting himself constantly and was generally annoying. The take away message from 90 minutes blah blah was: “Wait until you get the written order Monday evening.”

After that, I gave some instruction material to the transportation NCOs of the other units, before our unit rapport started at 4:45 pm.

In the evening, we were supposed to go out to have dinner. The rapport lasted for a bit more than two hours, so we took a break to dismiss the soldiers. After the break, we continued. Our captain understands to create an atmosphere of tension and general bad feelings like no one else, my heart rate must be at 160 constantly just from sitting there.

Afterwards it took more than two hours to do the setup of Friday’s exercise - down to the detail level of vehicle numbers and radios for the platoons. The former deputy commander of the battalion joined us and helped clarify some things that weren’t clear from the orders issued.

Anyway, it was 9 pm and the platoon leaders were still swamped with things to get done, all paperwork. Some deadlines naturally passed because of the ultra long rapports, and when our captain had to leave with the former deputy commander, we put requests for moving some deadlines to the next day in his box, put on the dress uniform and went to dinner. The first time this service, nota bene: it’s not possible to finish a day’s work before midnight with all the paperwork the captain asks from us. Which doesn’t stop him from complaining about all the paper he gets from us.

When we got back around 0:30 am, the battalion commander expected us. Wanted to know if all the soldiers were around; the officer responsible for the day hadn’t been around when the soldiers had returned, so he didn’t know. We woke up the deputy staff sergeant, but he had been asleep then already so didn’t know either. The staff sergeant was on personal leave, so the battalion commander told us to check all the rooms. Turns out we knew where everybody was. And it was after 1:30 am again.

Wednesday: week 2, day 3

Reports from the last days! I really didn’t have any energy in the evenings to write them.

On Wednesday, we did something like an internal visitor’s day for our unit. Each platoon prepared a little showcase where they presented what they actually do. We had a look at the ammo supplies platoon, fuel supplies platoon, maintenance platoon and my platoon, the command platoon with the kitchen, medic group, recon motorcyclists and transportation centre.

The picture was taken during the ammo demo: the barrel of a howitzer, the “Gottwald” crane truck and the “Büffel” (buffalo) recovery tank next to each other.

I attended the ammo demo and then went to prepare my part of the command platoon demo, recon. I think some soldiers almost died from boredom when confronted with the not-so action packed world of military signatures on map sections.

In the afternoon, I was supposed to conduct a “platoon deployment training” with the recon motorcyclists. I used it to do some preparation work for next week’s short march on Wednesday: we had a look at where to start, where to park the trucks and so on.

After dinner, I did some paperwork until 10 pm, when the issue of orders for Friday’s artillery exercise started. It was not actually an issue of orders, but much more an instructional conversation about the deployment of an artillery battalion in the context of an infantry brigade, the role of the logistics unit and so on. Took one and a half hours. After that, I was issued orders to do recon for the exercise. This took another hour and ended up with me having to deliver ridiculous amounts of information on a map section, until 9 am the next morning.

And because the day hadn’t been long enough yet, we got a call that our kitchen crew had been taken out by the military police and wasn’t allowed to drive any further, so they had to be collected. We took up a soldier and I went with him to get them. After a little detour we got there, immediately had to do an alcohol test and took them home. Ever since, the kitchen crew is very, very nice to me! :)

Tuesday: week 2, day 2

The morning started with an hour of sports; I would have loved to go running a little, but a) I forgot my shorts and the package with them hasn’t arrived yet and b) I wanted to work on the list, the document that would enable me to know where all my 88 people are.

Around 0830, I had to bring the people to a refresher about basic soldier skills. I brought them and went back to work on the list and some more paper stuff. Suddenly, I was called to the captain’s office where two captains from the battalion staff expected me. To tell me how awful it was of me not to be where the soldiers were, how could I leave the NCOs alone without an officer around and so on. That a platoon leader has to be around his platoon all day long.

1. That wasn’t “my platoon”, it was the whole unit.
2. Hmmm, what would I probably prefer… working on boring paper stuff all day long or being outside with the people?

When I told them that actually the battalion staff is asking very much paper work from us, one of the guys told me that “the day doesn’t end at 5pm for a platoon leader, you know”. Oh my god. Really?

They said something like “Geez, are you angry now? Well, unlucky for you that it’s you this time, we hear you’re actually a good guy blahblahblah” and then they asked how the course went overall. Well, since I was angry anyway I told them how lousy I thought everything was, and I thought you two guys can just go screw yourselves.

The afternoon consisted of a rapport (1 hour), an extra rapport about risks of tomorrows trainings (1 hour) and the battalion flag handover. The risks centered around extremely dangerous activities such as the head of the kitchen crew presenting the kitchen (“Does he handle hot stuff during the demo?”) and a medic NCO saying something about the medic team of the unit (“Do they show recovery of wounded soldiers? We should have medics around then in case something goes wrong.”)

The handover started with 30 minutes of counting people, ordering them according to height and lots of waiting (see picture). The handover was boring as always, and the parade was embarrassingly bad. Well, if you have music but you command the step not according to the beat, you have to live with people out of step starting with the first row. Not my problem.

After that, I cleaned my rifle and pistol (didn’t go shooting today, but two weeks ago), both pairs of boots and finished the list. And wrote this here.

Monday: week 2, day 1

Today, all the soldiers started their service. With six others, I went to the logistics centre early in the morning to welcome the drivers and get the rest of our vehicles. Vehicle reception went okay; it’s only a bit annoying when you have to leave the logistics centre for 1.5 hours over lunch time because they stop working then. That was when I took the picture, waiting in some vehicle, very bored.

Weather was lousy, rainy and cold, and I was very tired. Once back in Bière, a paper war extraordinaire started: we had to hand in about 20 cm of paper to the battalion staff by 10 pm. Which was a close call, because at 9 pm, our captain welcomed the now complete unit, and we had to attend, too. To be introduced to the people.

After some restructuring, my platoon comprises 93 people. This is a little bit much to keep the overview from the top of my head, so tomorrow I’ll create the mother of all spreadsheets for people management. Really looking forward to that.

The rest of the evening I spent doing paperwork. The flood of applications for personal leave only just started, but with my newly set up filing system, I feel more or less ready.

Sleeping time!

Weekend week 1

The weekend was mostly sleeping, and hating the street parade in Zurich. My tram comes in >1 minutes? Thank you so much for the very precise information.

I could snuck in a swim today - my first triathlon is coming up in three weeks! I’m pretty afraid of the swimming part… I want to be able to do it all in front crawl!

Friday: week 1, day 5

Friday was another quite busy day: with a few transport NCOs from the other units, we drove at 6am to Grolley, the place where the logistics base of the armed forces has its nearest vehicle center. The artillery units had their drivers start their service on that day, so unit 1 to 4 received their vehicles, and I was responsible for the “repetitorium”, a small practical refresher so people get used to driving army vehicles again.

The picture shows the train with the nine recon vehicles for the battalion. They just arrived when I was setting up the little course, see the little cone to the left.

I even got a list of the vehicles our unit is supposed to get on Monday - something we didn’t have until now, but wanted to have so we would know how many people we needed on Monday to move all our vehicles.

I arrived back in Bière just in time for lunch. After lunch, I discussed the Monday with my transportation sergeant, what people we needed where, when we had to leave and so on. Interesting detail: our commander ordered the people starting their service on Monday to be in Grolley at 8.30am. The logistics order of the battalion says that vehicle reception starts at 10am. If I followed that order, people would start their service with 1.5 hours of waiting. Our unit commander says, when asked about things like that, that “he was aware of differences between his orders and battalion orders”, and decided to “accept them”.

But telling us? No, no, no need for that… we would find out sooner or later, it seems.

Anyway, at 3pm on Friday, we had a last coordination rapport for Monday, and it looks like it’s organised now. I wonder what will go wrong.

We were then supposed to leave for the weekend at 5pm, people assembled outside at 4.30pm. The soldiers were supposed to put the breechblocks of their rifles into boxes; the captain told me to check if they were all there. That was close to impossible to check, since until now we haven’t received lists of how many people should be around; I don’t know who exactly has a rifle and who hasn’t, which officers have brought their pistol and their rifle, and so on. We just decided that it was okay and started to put the boxes away ;)

The captain then wanted to see the authorisation of the people who took their rifle home (they had to shoot the annual compulsory program). Of course he knew that only one of them had one, because he signs them personally. The others then had to write an application for an authorisation, and because of that it got really close for many people to catch their train, I don’t know if they did it. In any case, they certainly love our captain even more now.

And then weekend!

Thursday: week 1, day 4

Today was the busiest day so far. I had three bigger things to finish, but with clear priorities:

• Monday of next week, the first day with all soldiers, had to be planned
• The big refresher for basic soldier skills on Tuesday next week had to be planned
• My platoon recon training had to be planned

Of which the most important was of course the Monday: imagine a bunch of soldiers arriving, all more or (mostly) less motivated to leave civil life for three weeks, and they are greeted by a bad preparation. Not good.

The picture shows today’s main product: my idea for Monday. I won’t be here, I’ll be 100 km from here receiving vehicles.

The state of logistics in our course is terrible. We haven’t received lots of our material, starting with fax and copy machines, ending with vehicles and spare parts for the workshop. It is not possible to get a list of the vehicles I am supposed to get on Monday, so there’s not even a way to check whether I get the right ones.

And finally, our captain navigates straight into a quite avoidable disaster: with an ultra-rigid policy on applications for personal leave he infuriates one soldier after the other. People can’t go to important events in their civil work life, they miss shows for which they have booked tickets half a year ago… Just think how happy they will be when on the evening of the event they are missing they don’t get anything useful to do.

In other news, the battalion commander had us do a quiz about St. Barbara, the patron saint of the artillery. How stupid is that, I knew about 0.5 answers out of 20. After that, we went to a hut in the forest and had barbecued sausage and beer or water.

I of course stuck to water because in ten minutes I want to go and work out so this day doesn’t feel like a complete loss in my book.