Final Exercise

I’m writing this more than two weeks after the rotation training ended. The reason for this is simple: in the final four days of the training, there simply was no time to update my blog. From Monday evening to Thursday afternoon, there was an exercise, in which most of what we had learnt so far was put into practical use. During those days, I got to sleep a total of seven hours. On the last day, we were all busy returning our equipment to the stores, filling in the final paperwork etc. On the journey home, I fell asleep as soon as I got on the coach. It took me surprisingly long to recover from the physical stress and sleep deprivation of the last days and the course in all. The following week, after coming home from work, I just didn’t feel like sitting down to write – it was much more fun to go out with the dogs for a long walk.

The final exercise was very well planned and put into action. There was a lot to do with enough freedom of decision-making about how it should be done, and perhaps most importantly, enough feed-back after each separate exercise or case. After a quick feedback and discussion or debriefing, the exercise scenario continued. I especially liked the interviewing exercises, which were done with real officials and organisations of the municipalities surrounding Säkylä. This forced us to really focus on the matter at hand, even after only a few hours sleep on the previous night. There was also an exercise in which live ammunition was used. This was done as realistically as it is possible within the safety regulations. We loaded our weapons outside the firing range, mounted our vehicles and drove into an (expected) ambush. The aim was to suppress the enemy by returning fire and fall back. The exercise was repeated four times in different variations. The dark hours in late August are few, but it was still dark enough so that we got to use all of our night-vision and thermal imaging gear. The night-vision sight for our assault rifle turned out to be surprisingly useful for its compact size. The same goes for the hand-held thermal imager.

On the last day of the exercise, the future commander of PRT MES, a Swedish colonel, paid us a visit. That day was also ‘media day’, but fortunately our team managed to avoid all cameras and interviewers. The course received quite a lot of media attention, as the hostilities in our area of operations has escalated. The situation 'down south' has not in the least deteriorated morale, not with us in the rotation, nor with the troops in the area. On the contrary: From what I've learned, the challenging security situation only encourages each individual to do his/her job as well as possible.

It is now less than two weeks to the flight. I've packed most of my kit and am anxious to get finally under way. I was supposed to leave right away after the rotation training on 12. August, but the rotation was delayed due to the presidential elections in Afghanistan last week. The new date and time of the flight is easy to remember: 09/09/09 at 9 p.m.(!) Here's some pictures from the last days of the rotation training:

Getting ready for the exercise at the barracks. My bunk is second on the left.

Checking that the NBC-mask don't leak is done with CS gas.

Vehicle patrol ambush exercise with live ammunition.

Lay-up position (LUP) or night position (NP).

The bright moonlight made our night-vision equipment almost unnecessary.

On the final evening, supper was served at the Officer's Mess.