On 30 June, 19 cadets left for Longmoor training camp in Hampshire to complete a week of activities with other groups of cadets from around the country.
The week began with a day in the Urban Training Centre being taught how to fight in urbanised areas. Later in the day, and after hours of training, we conducted a full assault on a number of houses using paintball guns under the cover of smoke. The next day was spent on the rifle range with many good shows of marksmanship and some that weren’t quite as good. We also tried out a laser shotgun simulator going up against each other to try and win some prizes.
On the third day we took a break from our training and had a trip into Portsmouth to visit the D-Day museum and the historic dockyard. The D-Day museum proved to be a great experience with us being able to go abroad on one of the landing ships used at D-Day and seeing many other vehicles and artefacts that were used on the beaches. The historic dockyard was also a lot of fun getting to go aboard many of the great warships from the past including HMS Victory.
The day after that we were back out on the training area again preparing for our exercise phase of the camp. We had lots of lessons in the field on important aspects of our exercise such as patrolling and section attacks which were put into practice later that day and on the following day. We had a lot of fun on this part of the camp as we got to carry out multiple section attacks using blank ammunition in both open environments and in wooded areas as well as an ambush on the last day.
After the exercise we had a debrief and then started cleaning down our blocks in preparation for leaving the next day. This rounded off a great week of fun, training and bonding between the cadets who attended the camp which will help us work well together in the coming years as we move into more senior positions within the CCF.
Written by Charlie (Fifth Year)
