For those of us not on Leave yet…….

By: Tpr J.D. Lajoie, 32A Gunner
13 March 2009

 

With the bulk of the Sqn on leave, there was some crew level training planned. The first topic for the week began with a turret refresher in the gunnery simulators, while the drivers received some more detailed cross training on how to operate within the loaders hole. This was routinely interrupted at the top of the hour for the muscle group of the day workout which helps to maintain our physical fitness outside of morning PT. The whole idea started when the troop gave their input about the training. Due to all the field time, we haven’t really had time to maintain our physical fitness to a standard that we would like, and suddenly the hourly workout came was born. The routine has started to catch on and more and more people are joining the workouts.

 

The next topic of the week was weapons recognition. We were all responsible to give a presentation on different weapon systems. The idea being that this will aid us in distinguishing the weapons we may encounter while on operation in Afghanistan. There were a lot of good presentations that detailed the weapon’s history right through to its independent specifications. We learned a lot about various weapons and how to distinguish them, but it also gave us a chance to practise our public speaking and presentation skills.

 

We also received an excellent TCCC (Tactical Combat Casualty Care) review that was presented by Cpl Thomas Hume. He basically gave an overview of the training that he received on his course and suggestions as to how we could better help them when dealing with medical situations. The highlight was definitely when the NPA (nose tube) was inserted into MCpl. Darryl Hordyk’s nose. Sorry, we don’t have any pictures available, (actually we are trying to save his embarrassment).

Thursday’s trip was to the LTF in order to brush up our skills in the SAT (small arms trainer). We carried out a few different scenarios with the C8, C9, and M72. After that, we then moved onto the IFT (indirect fire trainer). We learned how to call in artillery fire and make corrections to neutralize targets. Some of us got lucky and destroyed our targets while others got to practice adjusting fire.

 

This week was the last time that we will see some of our C Sqn family due to everyone heading off on pre-deployment leave. The next time we will all be together as a team is when we hit the ground in Afghanistan several weeks from now.