7WnHB Battalion hone skills in Waiouru

By Carey Clements

Exercise Somme 2010 offered even the most experienced soldier inside the 7th Wellington and Hawkes Bay Battalion something new.

Based entirely inside Waiouru Military Camp, the two day weekend exercise was aimed at both assessing and identifying potential junior leaders in a team environment.

Soldiers hone their skills at crowd control (AW-10-0819-2).

At the start of Somme, 80 soldiers from Gisborne to Wellington were divided into four oversized sections before being told the locations of the four different stands situated inside the camp.

The remainder of the day saw the soldiers attempt a number of different tasks from trying recover a 'bomb' inside a contaminated area with the use of only a few aids, to directing blindfolded team-mates by projecting only animal noises.

Aside from the leaderless stand, the three other stands consisted of coming across various fire and manoeuvre scenarios (including one set on a boat) at the Weapons Training Simulation (WTTS) centre, bayonet drills (which included a jungle lane) and riot control, which included having to deal with burning Molotov cocktails.

A Territorial Force soldier for the past 20 years, Lance Corporal Eddie Surowiez found that the team building exercise brought out a lot of good collective ideas from all ranks.

"Unless you were high up in the ranks you were expected to listen to the orders without saying anything and carry out the tasks in the past," LCpl Surowiez said.

"However this exercise demonstrated that even the least experienced soldiers could produce good ideas to bring out desired results in getting the objective achieved in as short a time as possible."

LCPL Suroweiz said he personally found the WTTS system an interesting training device.

"By use of this system, I found that the soldiers could relate to the scenarios and what was happening a lot quicker than they would if they were in the field and as a result they were able to see the bigger picture."

Second Lieutenant Adam Bright felt it was a 'brilliant weekend' as it allowed him to see how different command levels operated in different scenarios, while Private Christian Evans felt that the introduction to such areas as riot control would stand him in good stead if a peacekeeping opportunity arose.

On the last morning of the exercise, the NCO's and Officers undertook Combat Estimate training, which included the newly promoted Lance Corporal Jason Ngatai from Bravo Company.