So after a chilled 3 weeks of all things non-military it was back into the RMAS factory but fingers were crossed that I would only be in Lucknow for another 3 weeks before getting back on course. But not before Weeman rang me asking if I fancied doing an “adventure” race the Sunday before getting back on course. Thinking it would merely be a 10K jog through a couple of trees and along a nice and level gravel track. However what it actually entailed was a 10K race from hell. The clue was in the name Brutal 10K. IT involved 5 water crossings all of which required the breaking of 2-inch thick ice, lots and lots and lots of hills and the last 2K was all over sand dunes. I still being fat and unfit from firstly not having done much exercise since breaking my wrist and also stuffing my face over Christmas struggled to say the least finishing with a very mediocre 1 hour dead and placed 70 out of 250.

 

First thing first on a Monday was a uniform inspection before heading off to the gym to get back into the rehab and burn off all the Christmas pounds. Due to a shake up in staff it meant all the guys on return to training had nothing to do until 11:30 so it was over to the NAFFI for a coffee and cookie and make chit chat about everyone’s Christmas leave. Come 11:30 it was time for the first PFA of the term – and a we were to find out what we would be doing every Monday morning. First things first was as many press-ups possible in 2 minutes and having not done any in 6 months and the surgeon telling me I wouldn’t be able to do any for another 4 months I was a little sceptical how many id manage, 69 were cracked out followed by 65 situps. On to the run. My last 1.5 mile run time was down to 8.05 minutes but considering again that was 6 months ago and when I was over a stone lighter I wasn’t holding out much hope. 9.21 minutes later I crossed the finish line in a gasping, wheezing mess. Still a pass is a pass.

Tuesday involved a quick run first thing in the morning then we were lucky enough to be invited down to HMS Ark Royal. This is the air craft carrier that has been recently decommissioned by the government a good few years early meaning that we no longer have any carriers in the sea. But considering we don’t have any planes that can fly off them any way its not as bad as you’d think. On turning up at the ship we got a good 2 hour tour all around the ship and also an hour on HMS Victory, Lord Nelson' ship he sailed in and commanded the british fleet from to win the battle of Trafalgar.

The tour around was by some miserable old geeza who had clearly been giving tours far longer than he cared to have but none the less he knew all the info. We went through to Nelson’s quarters, around all the living quarters for the sailors and pretty much every other knook and cranny he could fit us all into. Ship building has come on some what since those days - for starters if your over 5ft 5 then you were doubled over trying to get through doors, down stairs. On the upper decks we were shown the exact place where Nelson was shot in the shoulder which turned out to be a fatal injury. Considering the distance away of the enemy's ship, the conditions and where Nelson was located to say it was a lucky shot to hit is an understatment. We were than taken down in to the lower decks and shown where he was operated on and then where he died. They also have the same barrel that after he had died they but him in and pickled him in Port to preserve his body so he could have a proper buriel on land instead of just being thrown over board like all the other sailors would have been.

Towards the end of the tour around Ark Royal a number of us were used as demonstrators for a fire control. This involved 5 of us with fire hoses pretending to fight a fire which in effect meant the 5 of us looked like complete berks and entering what can only be described as the first stages of hypothermia having made sure each and every one of us was soaked to the skin. The evening involved dinner in the officers mess, or ward room if you’re in the Navy, on board Ark Royal then a few beers in Pompey.

Wednesday morning back to camp first thing in the morning for 3 days of gym in the morning and then gym in the afternoon. But luckily Lucknow being what it is it meant I got most of the weekend off! Friday eve straight up to London for what can only be described as one of the worst comedy shows I have ever been to. Sunday was early doors back to RMAS for Colours to chapel. Before heading into chapel we had an inspection from the platoon commander in our No.1’s. t turns out there was still a substantial amount of dirt marks on the back of my trousers from last term resulting in me picking up a show parade. Brilliant.

 

 

With Ex Broadsword and long leave weekend over and done with it only left me with 2 weeks in RMAS before I headed of for my operation. Both of these weeks were pretty uneventful with just the usual inspections most mornings in 95’s back in change in to tracksuits then off back to the gym till 12. Have lunch (consisting of a bowl of either coco pops of cheerios) then some bone lecture in the afternoon. Although on a number of occasions the lectures would get chinned off so we would be left to our own devices for most of the day – which sounds great but when it happens time after time it gets a little boring especially when your used to the intensity of the commissioning course.

 

Finally operation day was up on the 2^nd of November. All pretty standard stuff going in and then after 90 minutes of surgery and another screw heavier I came round from the general anaesthetic. Feeling slightly groggy and having had a bit of banter with the nurses (average age being about 60) I was shipped back to Sandhurst where I spent another night in the MRS. The MRS is a strange place in comparison to the commissioning course, much like Lucknow Platoon, it takes a bit of getting used to as all the nurses and some of the doctors are civilians and such actually treat you as human beings with the nurses bringing you tea and biscuits at least 3 times a day plus 3 hot meals a day. Luckily for me I was only there for 24 hours before I was shipped out of RMAS and headed west down the M4 to go and stay with mother for a few days and then ship myself back down to Bournemouth. The next couple of weeks were mainly spent drinking tea, eating more than was humanly necessary and watching more TV than I had watched in the whole of the last 6 months since starting on course in May.

With a 2 week check up in Frimley/Grimley park in Camberley I headed back up the M3 and then back in to camp to get myself signed off on another 2 weeks sick leave. The next two weeks were mainly filled with drinking beer, going to watch a few rugby games and basically chilling out. Which was nice. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and as such I headed back to Lucknow platoon with 2 weeks left to go before getting out of there for another 3 weeks Christmas leave.

With the cast now removed I was attempting to be extra cautious about what I could and couldn’t do which meant the only good bit of Lucknow, being able to get fit, I was able to partake in. so most of my time was spent on treadmills and carrying out specific physio on my wrist. With Christmas just around the corner every one seemed to take their foot off the pedal and their were numerous trips to the pubs in the evenings and Nandos for some good that wasn’t utterly stomach churningly awful and to also just get away from what was starting to feel for most of us as a prison.

During the last few weeks a number of the guys disappeared off on regimental visits. Myself and one other being the only to “lads” left in the platoon decided we’d break into one of the other guys rooms and play a prank on him. The prank involved two trips to Tesco and 600 M’s of cling film but the desired effect was more than achieved after the guy came back the next morning with a massive hangover and just wanting to go to sleep only to find every single item in his room cling filmed. Including pillows, duvet and mattress.

On the last week I was asked to head up to Edinburgh to give a presentation to all the new cadets starting in January with the Royal Regiment of Scotland down as a choice about RMAS and what kit to take and what to expect etc. All in all a good couple of days away from camp and hopefully managed to give some of the younger guys a slight insight into the mind boggling first day of RMAS.

On the Thursday night 3 of us headed to the “local” which is about a 10 minute drive away for a quick beer – where in fact we ended up getting pretty merry and winning a pub quiz and as such a free meal for 4! There may have been a bit of iPhone cheating on the go but that’s only because the 2 other competing teams were also both cheating. And full of chavs.

 

 

Well Monday kicked off with the usual Monday morning blues of a latest rise as possible but still allow me to get a shave, into breakfast and then back to the luck now ante room for the morning brief. As with any other Monday morning there was a kit inspection to be had, which meant re-ironing all your kit to make sure it was in good nick and then smashing a quick layer of polish on to the boots. From here it was back into tracksuits and over to the gym for another 4 hours of morning CV work. Due to my injury I am only allowed to do lower body work outs and as you can imagine 4 hours of this every morning can get pretty tedious. So I cracked on with a session on the cycling & running machines then on to all the cabled weights for an hour.

After our naffi break where I devoured yet another mocha and muffin and as the guys where heading off to the pool for some water polo I managed to cut away back to the lines to do some “admin”. In the afternoon we were meant to be having 2 lessons. Firstly we were meant to be getting a lesson from the signals wing about various bits of kit (all stuff that I had already covered in juniors) and then the second lesson was on BCD – Battlefield Casualty Drills. As usual the first lesson was cancelled which meant we had from 1230 through till 1500 to chill out and work on our presentations for the BCD lesson. We had all been assigned a certain drill out of the hand book and mine was to be heat and cold injuries. Luckily the other guy I was doing it with was of the same mind set that we would just free style it. It quickly became apparent that the whole platoon had also decided this is what they would do! Needless to say that the Staff and Colour Sergeants were not too impressed. Post the “I’m very disappointed” speech I headed back over to New college and had dinner, beer and an episode of Inbetweeners with the guys from my old company.

 

Tuesday was ear marked as a pretty important day as it was when I would find out how long it would be before I received surgery on my wrist. First things first it was off to the gym for the usual 4 hours of CV bits and pieces, but luckily again as they were heading into the pool for the second session I managed to slope away and head back to the lines to get some more admin done. Post lunch it was off to the hospital. All in all it was a good visit as I only have to wait 3 weeks for the surgery and that as my wrist was effectively still broken and they would “fix what eve r I break” they kindly left my cast off! So I have 3 weeks of freedom to do what ever I like without having a horrible sweaty cast on! Back to camp for some more admin mid afternoon then over to new college again in the evening for some catch-up beers.

 

Wednesday was to be the start of what others had called a 10 day holiday! The majority of my platoon were to head out on exercise in Longmoor and act as part of the civilian population for the Seniors urban exercise. I had also been dicked with being the village elder and local governor called Daoud! So whilst all the other guys got to go and kick off about sheep being lost and wives being raped by ISAF forces I was to try and quell the masses and also keep them on the side as much as possible so as to get them to vote! Firstly I had to attend a physio appointment which was pretty standard stuff. She wiggled my wrist around for a bit and insightfully told me “yup that still looks broken as your movement is pretty restricted” – brilliant.

 

Tuesday afternoon myself and Mr Small beezed down to Longmoor for kick off at 1400. Our accommodation was to be a derelict house but one with electricity so that was a bonus and to my utter surprise there we’re also portable showers with hot water just outside our house! Once down and all the kit into our house it was down to EXCON (exercise control) to find out when my first serial was to be. Kindly they had given me the rest of the afternoon of, unfortunately they had also setup 2 shura’s for Mr Daoud – one at 0200 and another at 0500! For the first couple of days I was to be relatively quiet in terms of discussions and rioting, as I had to seem as impartial as possible.

 

After pretty minimal sleep and a pretty rough breakfast I again had the best part of the morning off to do not a lot other than sit around drinking tea and playing Fifa on the PS3 one of the guys had brought along. The afternoon consisted of a couple of meetings with various security teams around the village and a couple of meetings with the leaders of the other tribes! Thankfully a full 7 hours solid sleep was had even though their were people kicking off through the night and a bit of gun fire!

 

Thursday things were starting to pick up for myself in terms of intensity and aggression towards the ISAF troops. A couple of the serials involved Irish, so called as he is from Ireland. Unfortunately due to his past he seems to have an uncanny knack of handling himself in situations involving violence, aggression and arguing! Some of the one liners had me bent over double but at the same time not trying to show it and ruin the situation that was unfolding for the office cadets that were being assessed and for Irish who was now clearly into his character! Thursday nights sleep was not so great with a number of Shura’s to be sat in on and being pretty quiet in and also a couple of mini riots to attend.

 

Friday was the day we’d all been looking forward to! It was the day of the main act, the massive riot. Through the day things were getting progressively violent with the CIMIC centre being over taken a couple of times and a number of sections trying to attack the main FOB. At 2130 I had to attend a health and safety briefing on the riot that was to follow at 0200 at 2230 I then had to attend a DS briefing where all the instructors are told exactly how to manage their cadets and what and when things need to happen. Was pretty interesting being on the other side of the exercise like this to see just how much work and planning goes into our exercises and also at times when we don’t realise it our DS are doing a lot more work for us than we think. By the time all the briefings were complete and the company had been through a walk through talk through of how the riot is meant to pan out I had about 50 minutes to try and get my head down. As Daoud I was the only one from Luck Now platoon that would be attending the riot as we’d heard it can get quite violent and casualty’s can be quite high. So whilst the rest of my platoon were catching up on their beauty sleep I was watching 90 cadets dressed from head to toe in riot gear take on and control 90 cadets armed with nothing but a pair of safety glasses, a sharp tongue and as many potatoes as they could physically manage and a couple of lucky cadets were chosen as the petrol bombers. As the riot unfolded each platoon was pushed down a certain alleyway all until they were all pushed tight up against the rear of the village. Whilst this was all going on I was stood to the side of the rioters chanting and shouting down my mega-phone to try and whip them up into a frenzy! This was all going swimmingly until the mega-phone broke. I thought I had a reasonably load voice; turns out it is not loud enough to shout over 180 rioting cadets, 30 DS all cutting about shouting at the cadets getting them to do things. So at this point I become pretty redundant and merely watched it all unfold. Once all rioters were pinned back a fire team dived into a house known to be housing some potential Al’Queda suspects and once the rest of the riot force saw this it was their signal to start de-escalating the situation and withdrawing. The crowd remained in place taunting and shouting at the company who now looked like something out of a horror story being covered head to tow in potato, set on fire and their helmet visors wither splattered with potato or so steamed up they were tripping over each other! Once the rioters had disappeared off it was my signal to finally go and get some shuteye. It was now 0330.

 

Saturday kicked off with a couple of early serials – my first was to go and beg for food. As it was only the company’s 3^rd serial of their hole urban cycle which was to last 3 days then the aggression and violence was to be at a low and it was to stay at a calm conversation level. This may have gone out the window when they didn’t stop me when I went to walk through security and straight into the OP’s room! After a bit of pushing and man handling I was ushered out in to the guarded area where I continued to have an argument about how fat all the ISAF forces look and why couldn’t they give me some food.

 

The next was a pretty easy one telling them that I was a refugee of a certain tribe and needed some accommodation for the elections to be happening within the next couple of days. What the were meant to do was press me for information to find out how many others there might be and whe mthey might turn up. They didn’t and just fobbed me off with a crappy ecuse so I just walked off leaving them in the dark.

 

Another of my serials so far was to head straight into the CIMIC centre without being searched and kick off as I was blaming the ISAF forces for raping my daughter. So I went in pretty irate and wanted to kick off, but unfortunately the cadet dealing with me was pretty good and as such calmed me down to a point where I just had to walk away and tell him if he didn’t sort it out within an hour and hand me the officer that did it I would come back with the rest of my tribe and murder every last ISAF soldier. I didn’t. I headed back to my house for a brew and another game of Fifa!!

 

For the third and final spin of the exercise I was back to being Governor Daoud for the next 3 days, which meant going back to being relatively calm and carrying out pointless shura’s at stupid o’clock when every one else was asleep. The next few days very much followed the same schedule as my first 3 days apart from the very last morning and the final riot. As the DS have to keep the students guessing they have to try and make each 3 day slightly different so the guys who were civilians in the first spin don’t get it easy on the last. So instead of just having 3 platoons rioting in 3 different places then being forced into one mass then the crowd just dispersing because they had been told to by the DS in the final riot on Thursday morning once the 3 platoons got forced together the riot continued for a further 20/25 minutes and it was company Vs company; so effectively 95 people on each side trying to knock seven shades out of each other. What made this one a little different was that the cadets in the public order kit were the company made up of 70% guys and 30% girls. Any sexism aside the company didn’t really stand a chance! As the riot continued and turned into a 95 Vs 95 riot more and more people where picking up injuries and having to drop out, with the standard weapon of choice was the potato some being the size of large stones, there were a number of blue-on-blue incidents but due to the amount of testosterone and adrenaline rushing round these seemed to cause relatively few casualties! Within 30 seconds of the final riot kicking off one cadet ran flat out at the public order cadets and unfortunately for him said cadet decided that the best form of defence was offence and smashed the cadet in the face with a form arm smash with his 6ft shield! Cue lots of blood and 2 front teeth missing!

 

By the time endex came around the rioters looked pretty spent and the cadets in the public order kit, the ones that had survived, were either badly bruised, covered in blood or in many of the females cases in floods of tears! As a spectacle it was great to watch and gives you a good taster about what to expect come seniors! From here it was back to Sanditz to clean up sort kit out and then straight back out on a long weekend. As I’m now writing this in Decemeber I have no idea what I did with my days off!

 

 

Monday of week two kicked off with relative ease with a few hours in far-away hall. We had 3.5 hours researching and discussing what leadership is and its relevance on operations etc. So once given our title the 5 of us disappeared down the NAFFI and got a coffee and chocolate brownie whilst we discussed what and how we planned on tackling the question. After an hour had swiftly passed with no real advance in our plan we headed over to the library and cracked on. With a few notes scribbled down on a piece of paper we headed back and gave the presentation. All in all it went well, I mean it was only 5 mins long split between 5 of us!

Unfortunately a few people got far too in to their presentation which meant we were running late for our next lesson: remedial drill!!!! It was a uniform change quicker than superman throwing all the green kit on the floor into my drill kit and on with the most uncomfortable boots ever – this all mixed with my “spas” hand all made for a lot of swearing, sweating and much frustration! Still made it out just on time and so began a very very sweaty 45 minutes of being drilled up and down the parade square of New College. Considering 24 platoon isn’t exactly a dab hand at drill and we’d not carried any out since about week 10 of the Junior term we didn’t do too badly! The afternoon cracked off with eating/drinking/defecation drills whilst in our CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) suits! The effort to eat whilst you have a respirator and nuclear protection gloves on is massive not to mention going for a number two! With the huge sausage fingers you get from the gloves merely undoing the ties on your trousers is hard enough and the probability of catching what you’ve just got rid of in your chemical trousers during your defecation drills is also worryingly high! The day finished with a 4 hour lecture marathon on defensive operations.

Tuesday kicked off with 3 hours of CBRN information overload! We had to run through the different signs that are used for different types of attacks. How to react to certain attacks and how long the suit lasts in each type of attack. The British Army’s tactic for the soldier to survive a nuclear attack?!?!? Get into a ditch face down and lie in a small a position as you can get into. That will definitely work! This was followed by a session of pys post lunch. For me it meant 15 mins on a bike and then a bit of lower body weights stuff. It was only the second time I’ve been in a gym and not even broken a sweat! Post the heavy work out in le gym we moved to the halls of study whereby we received our orders for the exercise coming up in the following Monday, Worst/First Encounter. The day was closed off with a couple of hours in the skill at arms wing (this is where you go to do all the weapon handling) for a second lesson in how to coach your rifleman. This is all well and good but when yuo have people who themselves cant apply the basic firing principles trying to then teach and coach some one else doesn’t always produce the best results!

Wednesday went down in the book as one of the most boring days of my time at RMAS! From 0730 throught till 1830 we were on the ranges.Which is fine if you can use a rifle! Obviously with my spas hand I wasn’t allowed to use a rifle and as such could only coach people and stand in the firing butts workoing on the targets. Not a great day in the whole scheme of things.

Thursday was all about defensive operations in build up for Exercise Worst/First Encounter the following week. It kicked off with a demonstration from the Ghurka’s on the lawn of New College. The whole thing lasted about an hour and had the whole intake lined up on the bank watching as they went through every part of initialising your defensive harbour. From here we moved back in to the halls of study with the platoon commander for a debrief and recap on everything we had covered before we headed out on to the local training area to carry out a TEWT (tactical exercise without troops). In essence you head out un-tactically as a platoon get split up into groups and told to carry out your estimate as you see the ground then the DS will go through your plan and then the group gets to debrief itself as each member stands up to deliver a section of their estimate.

With every one knowing exactly what they had to do come the First Encounter Friday was scheduled for another full day on the ranges. Luckily for me though this day was broken up with a lovely trip down to Frimley A&E to get my cast removed and finally crack on with some remedial physio and back to smash the commissioning course able bodied! I managed to dive out the ranges a little early to head back for a brew and shower before being picked up. Being nice and early I was hoping that it would be a quick stop in the cast removal room and then a swift x-ray and back to camp for tea and medals. This is not quite how it panned out. Firstly the queue for every part of the process was an hour! So from getting into the ward I was an hour before seeing the consultant. He then said get the cast removed and head for an x-ray which surprisingly also then took another hour. During having the cast removed the head nurse was saying about if it didn’t feel right then surgery might be the way forward and that they would have to do a hip bone craft. I accepted her wealth of knowledge as a nurse and at the same time instantly dismissed it thinking that’s not an issue for me, my wrist is fixed.

Post x-ray I headed back to the waiting queue to go in and see the consultant whereby he delivered the morale-shattering blow. My wrist was in fact still buggered and due to the displaced fracture that was still present after 2 months in a cast I would require surgery. This was quite obviously the end of my attendance on commissioning course 102. Arse. I headed back to camp in a pretty fool mood, after the head nurse had to smugly re-apply a new cast to protect it whilst I wait for an appointment with the hand specialist, and informed my platoon sergeant who moved it up the chain of command and within an hour I was told that I would in fact be moved into Luck Now Platoon. This is where any one who is injured or unable to continue on their course gets put to hold until they are fixed and can slip into a new platoon and carry on the commissioning course at a later date; this is the platoon that every one dreads being put in. Whilst no words can describe how de-motivated, angry at the pillock who walked out in front of me and just generally pissed off with the situation I was I some how felt it hadn’t quite hit me yet!

Saturday morning I carried on with the platoon as normal as nothing had been passed my way officially and I didn’t really want to sit and fester in my room by myself! So I headed to the gym and did a lower body work out whilst they got smashed on circuits then I headed up with the company to the CS chamber.

The point of the CS chamber is to firstly give you the confidence that the kit works well, introduce you to CS gas as you have to remove the mask before leaving the chamber whereby the sergeant will make you sing a song of his choice until you are out of breath and are required to inhale a lung full and thirdly to again prepare us for First Encounter as the exercise is not just about digging but the potential for an enemy to gas us. The whole morning was pretty funny watching people coming out of the chamber in pieces with tears, snot and bile flinging every where with a number of people loosing the ability to stand up!

Saturday afternoon was standard sports afternoon so headed and meet the SCUBA club for the first time and had a chill out session with them and sat in on one of the lectures. The evening was to be taken up with a last minute dash up to Clapham for a night out to celebrate me leaving the platoon and the others having to go without sleep for 5 days and dig at least 6 WWII style trenches! We headed for a bit of a mini bar crawl down the high street at which point we decided it would be funny to try out the local gay bar. On getting to the front door and seeing it packed to the rafters with what can be only described as a bar full of 1980's stereotypical german-esque bumders. The night, for some reason, took a drastic turn down hill after we each brought ourselves a paddle of 10 shots in Rev's. From here we swiftly moved on to the classy establishment that is Inferno's. This place is well known for the very reason its a shit hole and a massive cattle market effectively! The drinks are overpriced, its so big you loose every one (which we did on a number of occasions), the floor is so sticky its easy to loose your shoes when they stick to the ground and theres a couple of poles to dance on! Come the end of the end everyone had pretty much split up and gone their own way with myself ending up in a random house arty, one sleeping in his car, one loosing his jacket and the hotel and one sleeping with that can only be described as a Gorrillapig. The rest of the weekend was pretty much a write off with returning to camp at around 22:30.

Having had an extra weeks leave compared to everyone else due to my broken wrist I returned to RMAS refreshed and ready to hit the ground running. I rocked up on Saturday afternoon to get my room squared away and find all my kit from the halls of study before it became a massive cluster on Sunday when the 250 strong company descended up one room to find their kit. Back in on Sunday to start trying to make my room my own as this was mine for the next 6 months, providing I didn’t get back termed! The room tidying and sorting lasted about 4 hours which was then followed by another 5 of just ironing the clothes that had just been thrown in a box and left to crease for a month! First things first Monday morning it was straight back to the MRS for a check up with the doctor’s to see what I was fit to carry out whilst I still had the cast on my arm. I got the amber light to continue but only with light duties meaning no phys and a minimal participation in the first exercise on Wednesday, Royal Return. I missed the initial fitness test carried out on the Monday and having managed to push myself into the 300 club on my previous attempt I was keen to get stuck in and try and improve but the obvious constraints meant I had to stand and watch al my counterparts getting stuck in; not a nice feeling but one I was about to have to get used to for the exercise.

Royal return was a basic refresh/shake-out exercise to get everyone back into thinking green and back into thinking how to close in and destroy the enemy. For the exercise I was observing with the aim of trying to help my peers by watching the advances to contact and giving debrief points when prompted by the platoon commander. In reflection it was also beneficial to myself, although it didn’t really feel like it at the time, as it allowed me to get a completely different aspect into how officer cadets attack a certain problem and where the frequent problems kept occurring. Back in late Wednesday night we then prepped all our kit for early doors thursday morning as we were off to the ranges to start zeroing our rifles and in the background get hands on the pistol and riot control weapon. All of which I had to stand on the periphery and watch.

Friday was followed by a round robin on various stands of information for the next exercise, First/Worst encounter. The main emphasis on this exercise is defensive ops, and as such we have to dig a number of stage 3 trenches. Due to injury unfortunately I wont be participating in the digging but in the company CP, which even though will be far less physically demanding I am jealous that every one else will be going through this exercise together and I will be in the biff team, which no matter what you are doing always feels like people are looking at you and thinking your faking it to get out of the hard work; even though I have a cast on my hand.

We had a nice day out on the Tuesday to Chrivenham which is the defence academy for the British army. It was basically a day away from RMAS and we got shown some old armour and tanks and then some gucci future weapons that had the MOD not been broke might be in service by the time I retire. We also got to crawl around some logistics wagons and artillery guns. 24 Platoon managed to get 18 people inside the cab of one lorry. I record that we kept for the day.

The weekend started with a few lectures then onto sports afternoon, although with my spas hand this somewhat limited my participation in the triathlon club! From lunch time on the saturday through to 0100 sunday morning we were to decorate our lines. This meant creating and mounting literally 100's of posters, pictures and anything else we could think of to make them look our own as Monday morning we had a college commanders inspection. With this inspection he was also inspecting a select few bedrooms which meant these had to be squared away but also personalised to look our own. So with this in mind myself and my far shorter and lesser haired mate headed out to woking to go and buy some personality! This ranged from printing off a number of photos from the hard-drive having spent the best part of an hour trying to find the ones which would, at least try, to make me look like i had a personality! £40 later i know owned 25 photos, a poster of Rocky another of Megan Fox and a union jack flag cup the size of my head my room resembled something that could pass as having been personalised! Sunday was oculars to chapel so again every person within RMAS files into the chapel sings their heart out for 45 minutes then heads off for tea and biscuits! Sunday eve was filled with some last minute decoration of the lines, ironing, drinking cups of tea and moaning about being back at sandhurst!≤br≥≤br≥ ≤br≥≤br≥ ≤br≥≤br≥ ≤br≥≤br≥≤br≥≤br≥ ≤br≥≤br≥ ≤br≥≤br≥