A Song of Ice and Mud
By Capt Chris M. Lee
It was a cold and windy month in the Baltics. Latvia continues to suffer one of the coldest winters in the past couple decades. Despite the effects that extreme weather has on the vehicles, soldiers were able to prepare for the field and get on with their tasks through sheer grit and determination. The cold isn’t anything we are not used to. Years within the Wainwright Training Area does that to us. We have braved the cold thus far, and we shall keep our spirits high and our minds busy.
To keep our tactical brains firing, the Sqn kicked off a Combined Arms Rehearsal (CAR). We constructed a 3‑D terrain model and broke out the trusty wooden tanks to run battle procedure. Everyone talked through their actions-on, arcs, and battlefield geometry while tracking their “vehicles” across the model. Everyone acted at the next level to simulate realistic training and to put into practice the saying “2IC take over”. It was a perfect low‑risk, high‑reward opportunity for leaders to get out of their comfort zone.
Task Force Lāčplēsis – force projecting a presence of NATO soldiers east and conducting outreach with the local population – was under the command of Capt Griffin Brophy and WO Mark “DYNAMITE” Weir. After many long nights of preparing training plans and range orders, they deployed with their multinational Assault Troop. The multinational Assault Troop consisted of both Canadian and Italian soldiers aiming to integrate with both Latvian soldiers and the civilian population closer to the Russian/Belarusian border. They conducted multiple days of complex small arms ranges and presence patrols, culminating with four days at a former Soviet Juvenile Detention Center. Here they conducted force-on-force battles with Cpl Paul “Million Dollar Man” Rodrigues De Carvalho leading the defenders to victory thanks to Tpr Cameron “Q” Mckeown sweeping waves of attackers down with their machine gun.
Concurrently, Capt Chris Lee deployed with their Tp on Exercise SHIELD, the Multi-National Battle Groups defensive focused exercise. Warrant Officer Corina Collier and Sgts Kyle Job and Andrew Radford, thrilled to be back in their natural habitat, dove head-first into their pieces of the defensive pie. The brisk mornings, tied with constantly changing readiness states tested everyone’s Perseverance. However, having spent so much time in the hide, soldiers were able to put to the test their hide routine and really see the extent to which hide routine is an endless cycle. They constantly upgraded their camouflage and concealment of their tanks, and fortified their defensive positions – shell scrapes became larger, observation posts became more defensible, and tanks slowly blended into their surroundings.
As we approach the halfway point in our tour, and the snow and ice give way to mud and puddles, B Sqn had the opportunity to promote 5 soldiers to Tpr. The ever-lengthening days and the shining rays of the sun leave the soldiers ready to make their roaring marks on the Adazi Training Area with the behemoths that we are so fortunate to call home – the tanks.