At around 4 pm, we arrived at the site where we were going to set up camp. After a brief explanation from the site owner, we started pitching the tents and, little by little, more members began to arrive.

Once everyone had arrived, we went to the bar at around 8 pm, where we held the briefing and explained the training weekend. The schedule was, of course, ready, but we kept the participants in the dark as much as possible. After a few games of darts and some refreshing drinks, we went back to the campsite and it was bedtime.

Saturday morning began as a crisp, dark morning. At 06:00, a whistle blew and everyone was roused from their beds. The participants had 15 minutes to get dressed; however, it wouldn’t be a training weekend if a time wasn’t met and the whole process started again. So, back to undressing, back into the sleeping bags, and once again the participants had 15 minutes to get ready. They made the time and had 3 minutes to spare. Then it was time to wake up. A quick run and some exercises in the form of games are ideal for this. After the morning exercise, the first lesson began on how to keep yourself clean in the field. Throughout the day, there would be other lessons covering topics such as ranks, the structure of the US Army, marching and hand grenade throwing. We did this using boules balls.

For breakfast, lunch and dinner, we’d prepared makeshift rations to see them through until the next day, so they wouldn’t go hungry. Despite the rainy weather, spirits remained high, but by the end of the day, fatigue was starting to set in. We decided to give the participants a moment’s rest until it was dark enough to start the night game. A red lamp was hanging in the woods and the participants had to try to reach it without being caught by us, the hunters. In the end, one of the participants managed to get to the lamp.
A training weekend wouldn’t be a training weekend without a watch, and the watch rota ran from midnight to 3 am. As we weren’t a very large group and the participants were quite tired, we did rotations of just 45 minutes, but this did add to the experience.

The following morning, we had breakfast and did a brief recap of some of the previous day’s lessons. Afterwards, the participants got ready to carry out a final exercise. The scenario involved a patrol during which, at a certain point, an artillery attack occurred, resulting in two casualties. One was slightly injured with a wound to the right hand, and the other was seriously injured and had to be carried back to camp on a stretcher. Thanks to teamwork, communication and a bit of hard work, we made it back to camp and could look back on an exciting and educational experience during which we were able to put into practice many of the skills we’d learnt.

After a brief debrief, it was time to tidy up the campsite, and thanks to our good teamwork, this was done quickly. Fortunately, we had good weather on Sunday morning. All in all, it was a busy, intensive and educational, but above all an incredibly cool training weekend.