Benj@N69

Wednesday: week 4, day 3 Like yesterday, I slept until noon...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:18:28 +0200

Wednesday: week 4, day 3

Like yesterday, I slept until noon because I had stayed up most of the night. Can’t complain though, I ended up with quite some sleep. The exercise was more or less over for us, I had to go back to Bière, attend some rapports, then more rapports, and at 5 pm we had the exercise review with the brigadier general, brigade staff and the battalion commander.

The review of our unit was awful, the worst of all six involved. The guy who checked on us was quite obviously looking for the bad things, but who cares.

After the review, we returend the battalion flag. Like last year, only a handful of our unit could make it to the ceremony, and we were referred to as the “logistics platoon”. By the other company commanders. Jerks ;)

After the flag return, we had a last get together of all officers of the battalion, and later we returned for dinner and lots of setting up for tomorrow and Friday, because we’re returing all our material and vehicles.

A symbol of how well organised we are at the moment: the computer pictured is a $40’000.- piece of equipment, and nobody knew where it came from. Not until one of the radio guys said that they’ve unmounted it from their vehicle, because they thought it should be like that.

We also don’t really know where we have to return that stuff tomorrow… fun times guaranteed!

Tuesday: week 4, day 2 It’s past midnight again and...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:42:10 +0200

Tuesday: week 4, day 2

It’s past midnight again and I’m sitting through my shift in the civil protection shelter for the second night in a row. After writing this, I’ll make a tour of the outdoor guard posts and try to upload to tumblr - quite difficult with my network coverage here around.

Today started with me sleeping until noon, because I stayed awake all night. My breakfast was lunch, and after that we tried to fix the radio connection problems from yesterday. Without success, by the way.

Around 3 pm or so, we got a visit from a member of the brigade staff: a lieutenant colonel who happened to be my unit commander when I did my first repetition course in 2002. Funny to see him again. He told me to update a few things on the “leadership board”, among other a little drawing of our area set-up.

I went outside to start drawing; when I had reached the place where we’ve put our trucks, about 250 metres from the shelter, I got a call from the lieutenant who was still there, that they had about twelve “OPFOR civilians” there: soldiers in civil clothes who acted as the opposing force. Directly after the call, I saw how the two guards next to the trucks were kidnapped by more “civilians”. Strangely enough, they more or less ignored me, so I went back to the shelter.

The civilians were sitting in front of the entrance, blocking the gap in the barbwire. I went inside, and after a few minutes, their leader approached me with three demands: he wanted to have the truck keys within five minutes, connection to the battalion commander within ten minutes and within some hours that all the military would leave the area. Otherwise he’d kill the two hostages and blow up the vehicles.

Since I didn’t even have connection to the battalion myself (the radio problem, remember?), I had to call my captain with a cell phone. He happened to be near us but told me to ask for some more time. The “terrorists” returned, about 20 by now, and armed. Another leader repeated the demands and I told him again that we have to wait for the captain. The latter appeared after some time and was taken hostage, too. We handed out the keys and were ordered to disappear except two people who could stay outside.

Here, the lieutenant colonel halted the exercise and said that we now stay inside, the “terrorists” leave and we just wait how long it’d take the battalion to react. After some time, the situation was handled, the battalion would have asked the civil police to send special forces. In this type of operation, the armed forces are subordinated to the police.

Anyway, I was mainly annoyed at how it was impossible to react well. Apart from not being trained at all in these matters, our rules of engagement and non-existent equipment made the whole thing into a farce. Not to imagine how stressful it would be for a military (active reserve) leader to decide about people’s lives when put under such pressure.

In the evening, I had to do some recon work for tomorrow, which we hopefully won’t need, because the exercise ends tomorrow and changing place with this many people is just not much fun.

The picture shows one of the “hostages” after liberation, a bit sleepy, on the roof of a truck. Weather was okay today, by the way.

Monday: week 4, day 1 Today, we started with the big final...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:30:28 +0200

Ammo FLAT being put on trailer

Bike helmet, a few of our trucks

Monday: week 4, day 1

Today, we started with the big final exercise for this year’s course, lasting until Wednesday. It’s called “PARABEL” (parabola) and of the operation type “area security” (Raumsicherung), as opposed to defence type operations, i.e., it’s not a classical war scenario with a symmetric opponent, but an “asymmetric opponent”, a “threat below war threshold”. This means usually boring guard shifts for us.

The morning was full of preparations, getting equipment, assigning people to different platoons and so on, and around 1 pm we were ready. A little later, we left for our assigned location. Difficulties we met underway:

The route we chose crossed a 3.5 tons weight limit, and we brought a truck with trailer of about 26 tons overall. He had to find a slightly different path then.

Once we were settled in the new spot, we realised that we had no radio connection to the base whatsoever, because we were behind quite a hill. We had to send the radio vehicle so far away that now we’re having a motorcyclist in both places to convey important messages.

It’s raining and very cold. I don’t even want to start to think about the pool water of next Sunday’s triathlon.

In the meantime, the battalion communications officers passed by and told me a few secrets about the networks they’ve set up so tomorrow we can bring the vehicle back and stop torturing the motorcycle boys.

Anyway, it’s a pretty boring night in the shelter here and my highlight is going to be just now when I’m about to leave and try to find a decent mobile signal to upload this here.

The pictures show some of the vehicles we have in the exercise, see separate captions.

Weekend week 3 A rainbow dismissed us into our well deserved...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:22:00 +0200

Weekend week 3

A rainbow dismissed us into our well deserved weekend. I didn’t sleep as much as last weekend and even managed to fit a short, but really nice bike ride into Sunday. And because my first triathlon takes place coming Sunday, I also went swimming, for the first time after two weeks.

Let’s just say: breast stroke it is for Sunday. Why kill myself with crawling and gaining 10 seconds on the first 50 metres, just to drown afterwards? I still want to learn front crawling, but it’s just not my time to shine until T1 yet ;)

Friday: week 3, day 5 After the morning roll call (I don’t...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:17:00 +0200

Friday: week 3, day 5

After the morning roll call (I don’t really know the proper English military term, sorry), the battalion commander visited our unit for a little speech towards the soldiers. The infantry recruit school in the building next to ours had made national headlines, because somebody - most probably a soldier of our unit - sent a little movie of the promotion of the recruits to soldiers. To this end, they had to run around for about half an hour (not as in jogging, but as in sprint intervals, with boots), do countless push-ups, sing the national anthem, start all over with running and push-ups, singing, and so on.

Because this all took place directly in front of our building (about one week ago), we got premium seats to watch the whole show. I had to go inside to get a fewthigns done, just to miss the highlight of the “ceremony”: the recruits got their rank insignia, complete with a fist punch to the shoulder, and after that, six of them got whipped. The video is by now also online, check it out here.

The responsibles later said that it was all staged, including the video. That the whip was no iron chain, but just a piece of fabric. That it actually weren’t recruits, but officer candidates.

I haven’t seen all of it, but quite enough to say that this is complete and utter bullshit. All staged? Yeah right. By now, a second video has surfaced, showing the fist punching, so the “all staged” version is even less credible now.

Anyway, the battalion commander came to us to explain that he wanted to talk to the creator of the video, because sending something like that directly to the press is of course the wrong behaviour. In principle, taking pictures and videos is not allowed in the army, but it’s very common that people do it anyway. See this blog. The idea is to prevent the spread of media that would cast a damning light on the army, which I don’t think mine do.

Nobody stepped forward, but the battalion commander left his number and encouraged contacting him.

The rest of the day was not very eventful: the truck drivers drove around, I finished up some paperwork, and we prepared the big final exercise of next week. Not really, but we should have.

Towards the evening, our favourite recruit school set up another show for us: the daily cleaning of shoes and rifles was combined with walking across each othersstomachs, with boots and everything. Because the idiots now know that somebody of us made them look pretty bad nation-wide, they greeted us with their trademark shout, “Auf die Dauer - MINENPOWER!”, roughly “in the long run - mortar power!”, because they’re mortar soldiers. For the last shouts, the head shouter even turned around to us, so flattering! Friendly as we are, we gave a round of applause, but only earned a bird flipped at us. How rude.

Because we did some terribly good work, we were sent into the weekend on Friday evening already. Everybody was ready to go, only the captain was missing. He was busy with one last interrogation. Awesome timing, sir! After about 20 minutes, also this was over with, and we could leave.

One more week to go!

Thursday: week 3, day 4 I slept until almost noon (the exercise,...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:46:00 +0200

Thursday: week 3, day 4

I slept until almost noon (the exercise, remember?) - on the floor of the rapport room. Very uncomfy. But I got a few hours of sleep in.

The rest of the exercise was very uneventful for us: we delivered some ammo, ordered parts of our unit back because it was obvious that they should come back (even though the battalion forgot them) and around 5 pm called it a day.

After the, we had the exercise “GRILLIERO” - barbecue with the whole battalion, see picture. From where we were eating, you could even see Mont Blanc in France!

Later in the evening, we went out with a few officers and the two quarter master sergeants - one of the platoon leaders and one of the quarter master sergeants had their last day. It was going to be a short night!

GPOYW: I’m definitely going to sleep very very soon...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:24:50 +0200

GPOYW: I’m definitely going to sleep very very soon edition

Wednesday: week 3, day 3 Today, we started another exercise with...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:03:20 +0200

Wednesday: week 3, day 3

Today, we started another exercise with the whole battalion, lasting for about 24 hours. In the morning, I was sent to do some recon work for the part of our unit that was sent away later, and at 10 am we had the issue of orders. The rest of the morning I spent thinking about how I wanted to set up my platoon.

After lunch, we assembled the platoons, checked equipment (they all had to bring stuff as if they would sleep somewhere else for at least a night, even though we’re actually based in our normal building) and tried to give an overview of the exercise. As this kind of exercise usually consists of lots of waiting for the soldiers, they often don’t see any purpose in doing them, which can be extremely tiring sometimes.

At 3 pm, we started setting up radio connections, and at 5 pm the exercise started, with parts of our unit already somewhere else. The comm systems took really long until we had connection to the battalion staff, but finally I think we managed ok. Almost nothing happened in our area so far, a staff officer once showed up and criticised some details and the captain showed up for a short time. He’s sleeping outside with the troops today, plus he’s totally turned into a good colleague of all platoon leaders and fist bumps to say goodbye and the like. (….?!)

Since either the deputy head of the unit or I have to be awake at all times, I’m pretty tired right now (it’s 4 am here) but I hope to get a few hours of sleep once the deputy gets up again.

The picture shows parts of what an INTAFF operator sees when working: the two radios used for voice and data transmission. Super exciting.

Tuesday: week 3, day 2 The day was full of short periods of not...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:16:06 +0200

Tuesday: week 3, day 2

The day was full of short periods of not so much to do: all the soldiers were at work and I fought my little paper battles. In the morning, I drove a truck to a shooting range; I haven’t been driving truck for a while now and I hope the people on the bridge weren’t hurt too much. It was a short drive, I should add. At the range, we did some machine gun shooting with the howitzer 12.7 mm machine guns. I’ve never shot anything bigger than my assault rifle until now, so that was pretty impressive.

The afternoon was for me mainly about the little march for which I’ve done some recon work. We managed to assemble 50 people to walk; we’re actually not interested in bringing the ones that really don’t want, because why should we drag along some whino who just annoys everybody. Our captain didn’t make it to the start of the march as he was still with the battalion staff.

We were lucky with the weather, and the landscape in the region here is absolutely beautiful. We were a bit earlier than anticipated at the place where we’d planned dinner and dinner was a bit late, so we had to wait there, with a few not so happy people who would have preferred to continue walking. During dinner, we were joined by the captain (who was actually co-responsible for delaying the dinner) and the two staff guys from Friday who wanted to check on how we’re doing. I have to say that our captain really makes an effort to improve relations to the platoon leaders.

After the march, we had a talk with the soldiers, mainly about the same things as always: they do good work but expose poor behaviour in terms of how they wear their uniform, plus the last two nights there was trouble around “bed time”, i.e., we didn’t know whether everybody was around or not. Today, everything worked fine (except one guy who thought he could just leave us for football training) and I think people try to improve on things.

As do we, we invited the captain for our bed time beer. We’re so kind.

Monday: week 3, day 1 If I were a good soldier of my unit: I...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:37:00 +0200

Monday: week 3, day 1

If I were

a good soldier of my unit: I got up at 0600 am for shaving and breakfast. At 0700 I attended the daily morning presence control of the unit, in my sports outfit because I knew afterwards there’d be sports. After one hour of sports, I joined the unit working place on maching gun handling, rifle shooting and some more basic soldier skills. It lasted until the end of the afternoon; afterwards, I cleaned my rifle but didn’t grease it yet because I know that tomorrow there’ll be the weapon inspection. After that, I had a shower, put on my dress uniform and enjoyed the evening going out.
the typical INTAFF (artillery guidance system) operator in my platoon: I got up at 0645, just in time to be around at the daily morning presence control. Because I didn’t bother to bring my sports clothes, I didn’t join sports, instead I went back to bed. At 0900, my stupid ass platoon leader took me out of bed again so I could join the unit working place. I went there but refused to shoot my rifle and to do any machine gun handling exercise. As soon as I got back, I put on my B uniform because I didn’t bring the dress uniform, went out and got completely hammered.
myself: I behaved like a good soldier until after the morning presence control. Then I attended an issue of orders with the captain. I wanted to know how many vehicles I should do scouting for today; it took about half an hour to clear that issue. Afterwards, I had to look for my recon squad, and then I had to wake people still in bed even though they were supposed to join the unit working place.

The rest of the day I spent driving around with the recon motorcyclists, saying things like “next week we’re having an exercise, could we please stay at your place with 40 soldiers and 8 trucks? No? Really? Too bad, but thank you anyway!” But at the 11th or so place, we were successful, so I think there’s something ready for next week now. This finding had to be visualised on 10 slides of course, which had to be faxed to the battalion. After that, I went out to have dinner. The evening ended with the battalion commander pulling me away from my beer (together with 3 colleagues), saying that he thinks he’s talking against a wall, showing an iPhone picture of the building where the soldiers sleep, all lit up. We left our half full beers and checked all the rooms to create some more darkness. And I wrote this in my room, but because I have no network up here, I’ll upload it only tomorrow.

The picture shows the view from the place we finally found: Romainmôtier. Actually really beautiful.

Weekend week 2 I got up at 5:30 am to attend the captain’s...

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:35:00 +0200

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...

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:26:00 +0200

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...

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:11:55 +0200

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...

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:46:18 +0200

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...

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:50:37 +0200

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.

That wasn’t “my platoon”, it was the whole unit.
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...

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:33:34 +0200

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...

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:57:26 +0200

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...

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:52:51 +0200

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...

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:20:55 +0200

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.

(GPOY)Wednesday: week 1, day 3 I forgot my favourite part in...

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:34:33 +0200

Monday: B uniform

Wednesday: C uniform (yes, a jumpsuit)

Wednesday: no uniform, lots of sweat :)

(GPOY)Wednesday: week 1, day 3

I forgot my favourite part in yesterday’s report about Tuesday: I snuck in a 30 mins run in the evening :)

Today was pretty uneventful so far: I only had to hand in a few papers here and there, lists of people who attend some training tomorrow, I ordered a few regulations - who isn’t interested in the latest news about pistol handling?

Up next, I had a medical check-up for my civil truck driver’s licence. I had the deadline moved to next week so I could have the army doctor do the check - for free. Result: my liver has normal size (9 cm). Phew. On the way to the appointment I snapped the second picture: since yesterday we switched uniform and now wear the extremely fashionable jumpsuit for mechanised troops.

The non-commissioned officers arrived later in the morning, but because I’m back to having the command platoon, I didn’t get any :( My NCOs are awesome, but I never see them: chef, mail corporal, materials sergeant… but this actually just means I had nothing really to do after lunch.

Instead I went running with one of the other platoon leaders, and because I signed up for my first triathlon directly after the service, I added a little spinning session in the gym afterwards (see third picture). During which my heart rate monitor died - I take it as a divine sign to finally get a GPS Rolls Royce type of a watch.

Dinner was - like everything our kitchen produces - more than okay, and now I’m passing time until 9 pm where we have our next rapport. After wading through the pile of paper in my mailbox (and writing this here), here’s what keeps me/us busy these hours:

Our (over?)zealous Captain has opened 11 (eleven) disciplinary proceedings against soldiers who skipped their guard duty and were found drunk or soldiers who just disappeared for some time and returned too late. For reference: in other years, we had 0 (zero) proceedings. One of the soldiers has already fulfilled his complete duty and has been sent home - I wonder if the Captain finds out anytime soon ;)
Our unit has to ensure guard over the weekend; the people have been commanded today. I don’t know how they were selected, but it’s very unusual to pick older soldiers who have a clean track record, I understand that they’re very upset. Also, some of them planned to move this weekend. I predict the list will have to be rewritten.
The office badly needs a soldier to help them out until Friday. The first one we assigned didn’t want to so much that we started looking for another; I think we found one just now.
The first applications for leave that are denied because of formal reasons will be returned soon. I’m not looking forward to telling the guy who wanted to go see a comedian with his girlfriend and has booked tickets already months ago that he can’t go because “deadline was on 10th of July”.

After the rapport tonight there’s a little social round with our Captain, the platoon leaders and the senior NCO’s. My feeling is that people in general don’t really look forward to it as it feels a little contrived, and it should have taken place on Monday already ;)