Cadets survive battlecraft

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 237, 29 March 1988, Page 5

Cadets survive battlecraft

The pressure went on our five officer cadets last week. But they were sticking to it. It was Week 11 and the first two quitters had dropped out of this year's junior class intake at the Waiouru Army Training Group Officer Cadet School. Normally a dropping out has an emotional effect on classmates, which is why the Army tries hard to eliminate

contact with a dropout and make it happen quickly and quietly. But the two who left had made it clear to their classmates they were leaving. Said John Ivil: "They'd had their ups and downs and just felt they'd had enough. No one thinks ill of them for it." Janet Hunt had heard that one of the pair missed his girlfriend too much and the other

A year in the life of Officer Cadets Janet Hunt, Tim j Dunwoodie, Brett Rankin, John Ivil and Ahmad Azahar.

~ was leaving to get married. Tim Dunwoodie, whose lively sense o f humour creeps into most of our weekly interview sessions, adds: "They're the smart ones." Week 11 included some field exercises in the backblocks of the Army training area at Waiouru. We visited the junior cadets on a battlecraft exercise in a valley near the Mowhango Dam on the Desert Road. It was a cold, windy day and the cadets were in full battledress huddled in groups while infantry training staff showed them how to handle M72 hand-held rocket launchers and Claymore anti-person-nel mines. Asked if they'd rather be doing anything different, our case-study fivesome answered: Janet Hunt: "I'd rather be sleeping." Tim Dunwoodie: "On a cold day I'd rather be in the classroom." Brett Rankin: "I like it out here." John Ivil: "Me too, I'd rather be here." Ahmad Azahar, the Brunei soldier: "It's OK here." Dunwoodie summed up what the group felt about handling highpowered weaponry: "Good fun.... it's a bit of a buzz." The Claymore mines intrigued our reporter. Each mine is just

25 mm thick, measures 30cm by 18cm, and contains 700 ball-bear-ings which, when discharged, spray a field 50m wide to a distance ] of 50m and a height of 2m. Such firepower is capable of wiping out a bunch of enemy soldiers and proved very effective in Vietnam as a form of night-protec-tion for soldiers bedded down in the field. Except when Vietcong soldiers crept up and j gently turned the mines around to face the Americans, and then i forced the mines to go off.