Duke's take part in army exercise

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 12, Issue 582, 18 April 1995, Page 6

Duke's take part in army exercise

By

Michele

Monaghan

Exercise Nemesis was conducted in Waiouru last week, run by the Officer Cadet School (OCS) in Waiouru, with seven teams competing. This year, as in the past five years, a team of Duke of Edinburgh gold award holders entered the competition that is designed to assess and develop leadership under conditions of physical and mental stress. The exercise is made up of 19 checkpoints with each checkpoint earning the team 1 00 points (200 if the checkpoint is reached between the hours of 6pm - 6am).

Just to make it more interesting two police dogs, a spotter helicopter and members of a reconnaissance platoon trail the teams, making the chances of getting caught fairly high. The price for capture is 200 points each time. Participants walked an average of 130 kilometres in four days, varying depending on whether or not the group was walking in the right direction. The exercise proper started at around 3.00am Monday morning, although the Duke of Edinburgh team arrived in Waiouru on Friday to practice their navigation, living in the field and cooking army ration pack skills. The Gold Award is the highest award attainable under the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, so for extra challenge award winners are invited to attend Nemesis. Two members of the five member team had completed the exercise before. They said they had forgotten how demanding the Waiouru training area is. "I don't know why I did it the first time," laughed JohnSutherlandof Wellington. "They say if s for character building. I think I' ve had enough character building to be schizophrenic." Andy Clare of Rotorua was the other second timer. "Last year, a couple of days after, I thought it was good fun. The first day this time, I thought why am I doing this again? Now that it's over, I enjoyed it." Ian Edwards of Christchurch got a blister on the bottom of his foot after the first hour of walking. "Mind over matter is a big thing. Forget about the blisters and they' 11 go away , until someone asks you how they are," he grimaced. "There was a lot of team building. It shows your true colours, how you can push yourself and how you can handle pressure," said Mr

Edwards. Mike Zandvliet of Wellington said that now it was over he could laugh. "While I was carrying the radio the only way I could keep going was to keep saying the word 'faith'. I don't know why that word," he shrugged. Katy Hyslop of Wanganui, the only woman in the team, suffered exhaustion during the exercise. The team had to stop and quickly settle in for the night. They gave Miss Hyslop a hot drink, made sure she had dry clothes and "listened to her babbling" before she went to sleep. "I think we all wanted to test ourselves," said Miss Hyslop. 'There were low points, but we bounced back. The team thing was good," she said. The team laughed at some of the comments that came out during their interview. "We're supposed to be saying things to get other people to do it." They all agreed that the team experience was the highlight, and having people with them that had done it before was a bonUs.