Med Man 5 (15th september - 28th october) 11 Armd Coy, Forward B Platoon

After a hectic year of training and exercising in Germany we were finaly off to BATUS. The best training grounds the British Army has, you can fit all of the British Army training areas inside it and still have room for a Mac Donalds.

So Septemeber came along and we all started to board our planes to fly to Calgary to support Scots Dragoon Guards Battle Group. After landing at calgary with jet lag starting to set in, we set off for our nice 3 hour coach drive to Suffield, where we would call home for the next 6-8 weeks.

On arrival it was all hands on because being the last exercising Batlle Group of the season the vehicles where in a bad condition and we had to make sure they would survie another 5 weeks on the Prairie. so after a week of burning the midnight oil we where finaly in a situation to deploy on the live firing phase of the exercise which would last 10 days.

We deployed out of BATUS on a sunny sunday morning along the "Rattlesnake" (which we would all come to know and hate), to setup just behind the small arms range to do zeroing and pairs fire and manouver. However as normal things never goto plan and it wasnt long before we where out recovering and fixing vehicles normaly after 2300 which is now know in BATUS as REME hour.

We managed to get most of the platoon throught the live firing package which was great fun and finished with a night shoot with mortar support. we then moved onto the TES EX phase of the exercise which would put all our Vehicle Mecheanic skills to the max. It turned into a routen of sleeping in the day and working at night, once the Battle Group had finished its days training. Normaly every 4-6 days would either be a rehab or maint day for the battle group, this would mean a 36 hour non-stop "one stop shop" for us to repair any problem so that the battle group fitter sections could also have a break. As the Amy Winehouse song goes "you tried to make me go to rehab!! but i said no no no !!" became a song sung just before these days.

BATUS is a great place to exercise and the experiance gained is second to none. 5 weeks living in the field with long hours and no junk food or beer is hard! belive me! But the pride of the REME always comes through and to give the Battle Group Commander a min of 90% vehicle availablity says it all.

Obviously on return to Camp Crowfoot at the end of the exercise there is lots of beer,pizza,burgers and stagering around drunk.

Now we all start Op Telic Training for our deployment next year. stay tuned for more photos and some from Telic Training

Pete Barrett 2007

Camping behind small arms range	Platoon Fitter Truck	Challenger II pack change
I knew the REME syncronised swiming team would come in handy	Scimitar	Warrior Track Change with HMT in the background
SSgt McKay Hiding something with his CRARRV	Trojan	The Rattlesnake