A taste of action

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 234, 8 March 1988, Page 16

A taste of action

A year in the life of five officer cadets

It was a toss-up between nightlife and firepower. In the popularity stakes they got an equal vote from cadets of Waiouru's Officer Cadet School who have just returned from a week in Australia as part of their training. The entire school of nearly 80 cadets went to Australia primarily to see a firepower demonstration. The transTasman exercise was code-named "ElAlamein". According to one of the five cadets who the Bulletin is following in this year's course, the objective of the exercise was "ostensibly to show budding platoon commanders the weapons he has at his disposal and to aid in choosing corp allocations which will greatly affect a young officer's future career." "The highlight of the trip was an all-corp firepower demonstration staged in searing 35degree heat on the Puckapunyal Range near Melbourne." The firepower display started with a dazzling show of marksmanship

by an Australian sniper team. Targets remaining after this were quickly wiped out by machine guns, self-loading rifles, grenade launchers and anti-tank weapons. The infantry weapons segment was finished off by a finale that would be hard to beat in any Star Wars film. The Milan anti-tank missile costs about $A20,000 per missile; its accuracy and explosive power brought an appreciative round of applause from the New Zealanders. A pyromaniac's dream in the form of an American flamethrower proved that the scorched-earth policy is available even at platoon level. The Australian Armoured Corp was not to be outdone and proved to the crowd that it could provide "shock action" and "controlled violence" in an effort to defeat the most hardened enemy forces. The corp showed it would provide startling

mobility on the ground. to complement this the Aviation Corp demonstrated its capabilities in the air. The Kiawa and Iroquois helicopters showed great agility and speed performing remarkable feats in lowlevel tactical flying. The finale of the day firepower demo came in the form of bomb and strafing attacks by FIII and F15 Hornets. The bombing runs were performed by crews based in Queensland some 2000kms away with timing that was as close as two seconds. Night demo This was to pave the way for the night demo which began two. hours later. What the night demo lacked in showing a grand overall view it made up for in visual splendor. The night was full of orange balls of flame and red streaks of trace. The 'piece de resistance' of this cut being a demonstration of FVGAS which was remarkably similar to the

explosion at Hiroshima some 41 years ago. With that the night drew to a close and the cadets headed off back to the barracks to prepare for the next nights foray into Melbourne where Kiwi-Australian relationships would be further cemented. Nightlife Australian nightlife occupied a significant place in the exercise There were trips into the downtown areas of Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. But the outings were governed by 1a.m. curfews and this meant that after travelling for an hour or so there was not a great deal of time for carousing. To the dismay of many of the cadets they were not allowed into some nightclubs and had to content themselves with shopping, playing the "pokeys" in Returned Services League clubs and nightsightseeing. Cadet Timothy Dunwoodie reports that RMC is much like the NZ school except that it is far bigger with 150 cadets in its junior

class, which is just one of three classes, compared with 74 cadets in NZ. He says: "The main differences noted between the two establishments, apart from size and their accents,was the speed at which they did their drill movements. Our movements are almoSt twice as fast and this led to a lot of jokes about the Australian intellect. "To improve this "suspected deficiency" the Australians built the Australian Defense Academy. This is a uni-versity-type setting for the three armed forces. The campus itself is amazing. Costing $A130 million it has many of the top teaching facilities in Australia. Waiouru preferred Although the Australians had bigger and better facilities, the Kiwi's preferred the smaller, closer-knit community of the Waiouru school which concentrates on people more as individuals rather than numbers."