NationStates Jolt Archive

MoD Exercise Area, Anjou District, Bathame Duchy, Britmattia.

The north of Bathame Duchy is one of the coldest and most inhospitable pieces of terrain on Earth. Not quite as bad as Zvarinograd, but brutally cold and unpleasant nonetheless, leading to a dearth of population, except for the occasional reindeer herder.
The landscape is bleak, scrubby grass broken by occasional stands of blasted looking trees, and even more occasionally by oil derricks pumping noisily in their automated way. It’s flat, it’s uninhabited and it’s really bloody cold.
All in all, the Army hierarchy adores the place almost as much as the units deployed there hate it.
A tour in Anjou District would be a punishment tour in any other army, but in the Kingdom it’s the main exercise area, so time spent there is accompanied by the diversion of being able to blow things up, which, while not the only, or even primary, reason for joining the army, is a welcome diversion from the routine of peacetime service. Even in God’s own freezer.
So it is with mixed feelings that I’m undertaking this tour. It’ll be nice to be back with the Regiment for a while, but I really bloody hate the tundra. Especially for the exercise we’re going on, it’s our annual E&E trip, so nights out in the tundra, just as the season changes from spring (cold, damp and muggy) to summer (bloody hot and lots of dust and bugs).
Ah the joys of the soldiering life.

I’m currently at bugger all feet up as the Goose transport goes almost NoE for our final approach to the exercise area. Throughout the plane men are getting up and stretching, checking the Kingdom modified G36s which are standard equipment both for the Regiment and for the Paras, adjusting ‘chutes and gear bags so they ride a little more comfortably and generally doing the things sentients do at the last minute when getting off any sort of transport.
The Jump-Master starts beckoning us after him and the clunk of boots echoes through the transport, faint drone of the engines becoming faintly quieter as we move to the back of the plane.
The ramp slowly opens as we stand there quietly. I’m proud of being good enough to be in the Regiment, even more proud of the men who form it. They’re the best. I know every Special Forces unit in the world probably claims this, even those f---ing clowns in Allanea, but…well the Regiment is The Regiment. Nothing else comes close for a soldier of the King.
Anyway, as the ramp pans down I flip the visor of my com/com helmet shut, and give the traditional “Visors shut, weapons hot” command, signalling from this moment we’re officially at work.
The ramp is now fully open, the bleak, grey and beige landscape flashes below as the transport speeds above.
Fain, Sergeant Major Cloudmallet to anyone who’s never served in the Regiment, watches the first of our half-platoon jump into the flickering terrain, chute snapping almost immediately, as an other man follows him, and an other. He looks at me, grinning through a traditionally thick and elaborately braided dwarven beard. His helmet is still open; contrary to regs, but Fain is an institution in the Regiment, as is the position of RSM itself, so I don’t bother telling him to close up.
He remembers a very green Lieutenant’s first tour, and was there when that lieutenant killed his first man, so it’s always been tricky ordering him to do anything.
Just as well he’s a professional and will be closed up long before we jump.
He speaks, dwarven accent still present, even after a hundred and twenty years in the army, “Staell nut too late to drop ouut lad. Yae culd be haem in Royeess in a few ours, warm as bladdy toost with that bon lassy of yaers.”
I grin back, invisible behind my helmet, “Oh, I’m touched you care Fain, truly I am, but I do intend to keep my hand in, no matter what desk I drive these day. You could go home too you know, I’m sure you’re comfortably over pension age by now…Greybeard.”
He almost reaches for his beard, then catches himself, glares at me and mutters quietly, but audibly, about daft human southern poofs who’ve no business being on exercise as he latches his helmet.
I grin and let it wash over me. It’s nice to be back at work.
The last of the troops vanishes out into the slipstream, and I step up to the ramp, the Jump-Master counts under his breath for a few seconds, then gives me a thumbs up and I step out into empty air, ground rushing up to meet me for the few seconds it takes to drop to the minimum opening height for my chute. I grab the toggle, the ‘chute snakes out, then snaps into shape, and I drift the scant remaining distance to the ground.
As my boots thump into contact with the ground below I catch sight of the Goose haring off into the distance and hear the faint boom of artillery in the distance.
The exercise has begun.


Quick OOC/info notes
- The Kingdom has a substantial dwarven minority, hence Sgt Maj. Cloudmallet. The dwarven accent is meant to sound like Scots Highlander.
- Kingdom Modified G36 is a standard battle rifle model re-chambered for 7x43mm ammo (Kingdom standard).
- NoE – Nap of (the) Earth = Flying along the ground’s contours
- Goose – Standard transport aircraft of the Kingdom armed forces. Think of a big Hercules with jet engines. I know it’s probably a crappy idea, but I’m comfortable visualising the interior.
- Com/Com Helmet – Fully enclosed Command and Communication helmet, standard issue for Kingdom light infantry.

MoD Exercise Area, Anjou District, Bathame Duchy, Britmattia.

It’s amazing no matter how much is spent on a uniform, or indeed any sort of clothing, that cold will always find a way in to chill a chunk of your anatomy. In this case it’s my ears. Crazy I know, buried under Kevlar, nomex and insulation and they’re still cold.
Everything else is comfortably warm as I lie here in my ghillie suit watching the patrol patterns of our OpFor. The OpFor for this exercise is one of the territorial divisions, this one is from Birmingham Duchy, so there’s a lot of Gaullois chatter going back and forth on the comnet between the guards as they wander around their routes. Unprofessional, but then they’re not, no matter how well we train them.
It’s strange really, the Regiment, the most elite soldiers in our armed forces, have virtually the same equipment as the Territorial units, with almost no commonality with the regular army aside from vehicles.
I watch the Territorials stroll through their routines with the slightly sloppiness that all part-timers have. Little creeping errors, a visible path in a minefield here, sentries who take a cursory glance when they should scour the ground there, things like that.
Amateurs. I think to myself as I continue watching. I shouldn’t be so harsh really. The Kingdom has always maintained a professional military force, dating back the best part of a millennia and a half, soldiering is a cultural thing by now, so even our part-timers tend to be better at their jobs than some yahoo straight out of the slums of Der Angst for example. But we, and by we I mean the regular army, find this idea of huge militaries odd, even in our fourth generation on this world. The massive numbers utilised routinely in conflicts in NS Earth jar against a culture that evolved around a smaller, highly disciplined and mobile force.
But I digress; this is a journal, not a dissertation on the inherent superiority of professional soldiers versus draftees.
There’s something almost hypnotic about the patterns of camp life, vehicles come and go, Wanderer APCs and Sprinter LTVs mostly, the occasional Greyhawk chopper touching down. There’re still some Territorial divisions that use Blackhawks, the old choppers still soldiering on a generation after purchase.
Suddenly there’s a flurry of activity and everyone snaps to, officers scurry about, NCOs barking orders and everyone looking worried. I grin inside my helmet; this is what we’ve been waiting for. The Territorials are getting a visit from their Army commander and he’s whom we’re here to bag. It’s not fair really. The Regiment is the best, and these poor sods have no idea we’re here, nor will they do till we’re done.
I watch a Greyhawk touch down, two Osprey Attack Helos flying escort sweeping around the camp before it does. The Ospreys are flown by pros; the Army doesn’t let reservists near the multi-million realm choppers. A bean counter’s decision in my book, but not one that I can tinker with.
The commander moves out of the Greyhawk and is hustled into a tent; I designate it on the symbolic map of the camp in my HUD. I continue watching for an other twenty minutes, watching the camp gradually slide back to it’s normal readiness, then I slither into the snow and back to the igloo the squad is waiting in, about twenty minutes walk from the camp. Close I know, but one of the tricks to Special Forces is doing the unexpected.
I relay news of our targets arrival, smiles are visible from those who’ve unlatched their helmets, the sooner we “kill” the commander, the sooner we can bugger off, the sooner the exercise ends and we can go back south where it’s warm and you can take a leak without worrying for your conceptual children.
Rifles are checked and re-checked, the two squad MGs and our AT-7 Gauss gun are broken out, all three, as is unofficially usual in the Kingdom army, crewed by dwarves. It’s a cultural thing. Dwarves like big weapons and they’ve got the muscle to hump them, so they tend to end up with them. The species/speciality role also impacts on our Dwerry soldiers, having had to trade their bows in, nearly every sniper in the army is Dwerry, odd really when you contrast the gregarious nature of Dwerry with the solitary one of the sniper. I have no idea how these dynamics will change as we start integrating Dardanelle Ch’that into the forces, but I’m confident they’ll find a role.
The weapons are assembled and tested, the cold playing merry hell with the systems as usual, but we’re used to it by now, and cope.
The squad moves quickly on the twenty-minute hike between our target and us, sliding into position with ease. Then we settle down to wait for cover of darkness, ghillie suits cloaking our forms and BDUs set to active camo.
And my bloody ears are cold again. Damnit.


Notes
- Territorials – Reservists, volunteer part-time soldiers, roughly equivalent to the U.S National Guard.
- Birmingham Duchy – Duchy in Southern Britmattia, vaguely French. The locals speak a bastardised version of the langue de oc known as Gaullois.
- BDUs – Battle Dress Uniform, the standard uniform of the Special Forces and the Parachute Divisions. Contains numerous techno bits and bobs, including active camo and temperature control elements, along with CBW protection. There is also a Territorial/Armoured unit version that lacks the technological bits. The BDU is always worn in conjunction with body armour, either clamshell ceramic type (vehicle crews) or a more flexible vest version for infantry.
- Dwerry – A sort of demi-elf. Long lived (roughly 400 years), pointy eared, generally with purple or lilac eyes. Slight and averaging around 5’8” but still hardy and graceful like the more impressive strains of elf.
- Ch’that – Native species of the Dardanelle Continent, bipedal cheetahs, weighing around 50kg to 60kg and standing from 5’6” to 5’8”. For an example, see the Hassat Archers in Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna.

MoD Exercise Area, Bathame Duchy, Northern Britmattia

It gets dark late this far north in spring, as opposed to not at all in summer. Still, it does get dark. The squad moves quietly along through the night, trying to avoid making too clear a track in the days-old snow.
We approach slower than I left; caution is a word we live by, gliding through the dark like wraiths. Wraiths with guns.
We’re snugged down into the snow for long enough to verify the patrols haven’t changed in pattern, and that the OpFor haven’t tinkered with their defences in the interim. It’s a tense few moments as the point-men eel out to the wire and confirm we’re not blown. The faint crunch of the guards’ boots as they make their rounds is all that’s audible. Ever so quietly word comes back that the perimeter is untouched, and the squad heaves a sigh of relief. The rest of us eel forward to join the point-men, sparse grass and melting snow making for an uncomfortable crawl. Still, it’s what most of us are paid for. Mines are disarmed, wire is cut and held so it doesn’t flick back, men worm through the gaps and they’re clipped shut again behind us. We’re through the passive defences, now there’s only the minor matter of the troops inhabiting the camp.
Troopers flit from pool of shadow to pool of shadow. Thermal lined tents, APCs and the occasional rumbling generator are all that witness our trek to what we identified on the second day of observation as the guard tent.
The quiet is almost eerie, there’s no squad chatter, just silent, careful movement. As we reach the tent the squad splits, ten men move toward the guard tent, an other ten to the vehicle park to “sabotage” the contents.
The remaining five are four riflemen and myself. Our target is the General, and with a bit of luck, some of his officers.
His tent is darkened, and the guards outside are huddled around a brazier. We’ve timed our attack so my four boys and I will arrive when their relief, who by this time, as I can’t hear gunfire, have been subdued by the men hitting the guard tent.
I stroll out of the shadows, rifle slung, men behind me. I walk toward the men, who barely look up after initially noticing us, we’re wearing the right uniforms and are equally anonymous on this chilly night behind our mirrored commo helmets. The corporal of the squad nods affably to me as I reach the brazier. I nod back, hand on sling and belt. He cocks his head, then smacks the side of his helmet as whatever acknowledgement of relief he wanted doesn’t come. If I could see his face I’d probably see comprehension by the time the rifle I’ve flicked off my shoulder lands in my hands. But I can’t so I don’t. He’s trying to grab his rifle, but the movement of regular humans looks like they’re trapped in toffee to a post-human, my own G36 feels weightless in my hands and the slight recoil of the training round is nothing. “bamf”, “bamf”, “bamf”, “bamf”, “bamf”.
My men have moved and fired as I do, and all five of our opposition now have red paint-smeared visors. They sit down, misery evident under BDU and visor and probably already dreading the bollocking they’ll pick up for “dying” this easy.
I move into the tent, the General’s faint snores easily audible to my hearing. I pad toward his bed, he rolls over, one arm flung out of his sleeping bag. I kneel down next to him and fish into one of my belt pouches. A silent kill is impossible if I use a rifle, because he’ll wake up and yell from surprise, so I come out holding a lipstick, purloined from my wife’s dresser a few days earlier.
I carefully stripe a quick line across his throat, then cap it up and return it to it’s pouch. Arwen would kill me if I didn’t return it. He snores a little louder, and rolls back over. I return to my feet and back out of the tent. A faint but definite “Click” comes over the radio, the signal all the vehicles in the park have been “rigged”. I gather my men, and we slide back out, leaving the visibly depressed guards around their brazier.
Hustling back out to the wire seems to take longer, perhaps it does. We go back through the holes, unhook the wire and clip it back again, no point leaving more tracks than necessary.
More crawling, even with the chill I can feel sweat running down my back, exercise or no, it’s tense. Then finally, at last, we’re out of the immediate area. We clamber to our feet, just in time for a tremendous “BANG!” to echo over the camp behind us, the fake charges attached to the vehicles containing flash-bangs to simulate the noise of real destruction. Visors are flicked open and grins exchanged, and we trot swiftly back to our igloo and scoop up our pre-packed gear. Then we proceed to run like fuck for the south.
This is escape and evasion training after all.

Southern edge of the MoD Exercise Area, Southern Bathame, 321km later.

It’s a little after dawn, and my squad, foot-sore, weary and nearly out of food and paintball ammo, is concealed in one of the omnipresent birch woods. We won’t be moving again for a while, everyone is bloody shattered after a days-long running battle with the pursuit from the OpFor. No “casualties” for us yet, but exhaustion is taking it’s toll. My men are nearly comatose where they lie, even post-humans can’t run forever without consequences. I’m yawning into my commo helmet as I compose this. The four man “quad” on guard are talking quietly, one man flicking twigs at his partner whenever he starts to nod off. The other two are both smoking, occasionally glancing north and fiddling with their rifles.
The rest of the squad quiet, nearly all are asleep, breath pluming white in the air. Those who aren’t have their helmets unlatched and are either smoking or eating. A few are mumbling into their helmets like me, whether composing a journal entry or drafting letters it’s their time.
In a minute I’ll get up and dig a ration pack out of my pack. In a minute. We’ve got an other 50 miles to go today and I’m not looking forward to them. I yawn again and rub at a severely in need of a shave jaw. Thank Eru they’re tracking us by technological means, if they had dogs, or even senses like ours, they’d be able to find us by smell.
I stretch out, head resting on my Bergen, latch my helmet shut and close my eyes. Fain’ll wake me when it’s time to move. It’s what NCOs are there for after all.