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! :)
