A Company, 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment are on Exercise Mayan Warrior.
The British Army say that across the six-week-long exercise the soldiers will be living in the jungle for extended periods, developing their ability to look after themselves and their kit in arduous conditions, while learning how to tailor their infantry skills to the demands of the jungle.
“The training is to ensure that the Colchester-based paratroopers have the skills to operate in any environment as part of the Air Assault Task Force, the British Army’s airborne rapid reaction force, which is held ready to deploy at short notice on operations anywhere in the world.”
Major Mike Thwaite, Officer Commanding A Coy, 2 PARA, said in a news release:
“The jungle is an incredibly demanding environment and it’s important that we’re familiar with it. By the nature of our role with 16 Air Assault Brigade we could find ourselves deployed on operations in the jungle at a moment’s notice – this training gives us credit in the bank.
We’re out on our own in the jungle for 26 days straight, which is a real test of our soldiers’ ability to live and operate with minimal logistic or medical support. It’s about their personal administration and the low-level tactical awareness and skills that are the real foundation of everything we do as paratroopers.”
G’luck you will come back a lot slimmer than when you arrived!
Iqal as ever wrong on about every count and and offering little other than an acid reflux from the provisional wing of the Marxist International.
No
Booooooring troll chuff! Toddle off son, grown ups talking. How much spare time does a sad troll actually have trolling a number of military interest sites!
Harden them as soldiers? Wow, you really are clueless wind up merchant aren’t you!
A terrible stain on an otherwise fine regiment.
I have actually met the brother of Daniel Hegarty at the ‘Free Derry Museum’, it is perhaps the most biased museum I have ever seen but it is interesting to see the hardcore nationalist perspective.
But what I believe is that this incident doesn’t represent what the British Army is or what it is meant to represent. As for Soldier F, on one hand, the BA should be held to a higher standard than those IRA/UVF/whatever other acronym scumbags, and if he did wrong he should be tried.
But on the other hand those IRA/UVF scum got away with a pardon and now roam the streets free, so this old man should be free from everything as well-this is the one I lean to a lot!
Keith, many thanks for the reasoned and moderate post. I think that people from
all sides who killed should be bought to justice. The peace in NI is strong enough now more than 25 years later for the men of violence to account for all they have done.
I don’t think that most ordinary people will agree that men who killed should be able to hide behind the uniform, flag and ode to duty. The British forces have been involved in many difficult but successful deployments without committing crimes eg Sierra Leone.
We need to restore confidence in the forces for future deployments to have public confidence, as the Syria vote shows, this confidence has been lost. The Heggarty family themselves say they bear Soldier F no I’ll will and simply want an accounting in court rather than to simply punish this ex soldier. Age shouldn’t limit the search for justice. Many ex Nazi officers are even today being investigated and prosecuted into their 90’s.
This has more to do with failure by politicians during the Troubles and poor training and leadership than trying to portray the British Forces somehow equivalent to the Wehrmacht or SS or similar. Hopefully the prosecutions will concentrate the minds of the powers that be to ensure soldiers are not put in the same position again. Lessons should be learned.
You do raise a good point about justice. Twenty years after hundreds of terrorists walked free from justice and thousands of families where told to forgo justice for the sake of peace we are wasting hundreds of millions of pounds and putting veterens through hell to appease sinn fein. The double standard is unbelievable. If there is not justice for all then it should be justice for none. There is no way I would encourage my children to join the armed forces under such a wretched political system.
wow, that is tough soldiering. a truly uncomfortable environment