Some officer cadets took advantage of the offer. By the time the rest of us arrived back at our rooms, all evidence of the “quitter’s” presence in the platoon was gone. It was as if he had never existed. Even his bedding had been removed, as if anything that belonged to him would contaminate the group. Those cadets who understood the game being played found it a good deal easier to meet the mental challenge and actually used the knowledge to increase their endurance, whereas those who took everything personally had a very difficult time withstanding the pressure. What happened next, however, tested everyone’s endurance, mental and physical.
5: Field Training
“You’ve earned a rest. I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of every one of you. You could have quit and you didn’t. Well done.”
COLONEL “JIMY” DEXTRAZE
FOR AN ASPIRING infantry officer in the early days of the Cold War, excellence in the classroom was important. If some of us failed a particular test, though, there was a good chance we would be given more instruction before trying it again. No such compassion was evident when we started the practical field exercises. The NCO instructors had an obligation to the current generation of soldiers to protect them from incompetent officers, and the best opportunity to weed out weaklings soon presented itself when we mounted up and headed northwest to the Meaford training area.
The route from Camp Borden to Meaford meanders through some of the most beautiful countryside in Ontario. The view was impressive even from the crowded back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck, particularly when we made our way through the Blue Mountain resort area. The Meaford training area occupies a peninsula jutting out into Georgian Bay. Its northern limit stops at sheer cliffs overlooking Cape Commodore. During the Cold War, heavy weapons were fired from the cliffs at targets in the bay.
As we drove through the training area, we viewed the barren landscape with some apprehension. Our friends in the Armoured Corps had done a good job of tearing up virtually every inch of terra firma with their Sherman tanks, and as a result deep ruts ran in every direction, as far as the eye could see. These furrows might not impede the tanks, but to an infanteer with sixty-five pounds on his back, walking at night and with no moonlight, they were a frustrating obstacle.
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the trucks stopped and we dismounted with our kit. A single instructor appeared, and he explained that war was imminent and that we had been assigned a defensive position in this area. It was essential that we dig in as quickly as possible and be prepared to defend the area from all directions.
The next few days rapidly degenerated into a full-time battle merely to stay awake. Days lost their structure as daytime digging in and nighttime patrol rehearsals were followed by the patrols themselves and in turn by more digging in. Arguments ensued over what day it was as we all fought the effects of chronic fatigue. Throughout this period, each of us was indiscriminately yanked out of the “follower” role and placed in a leadership position. We all knew that failure as a student leader would result in banishment from the course, so a burst of adrenalin dissipated our fatigue—for about ten minutes.
We practised a combat decision-making technique called the Battle Appreciation. Mission was considered first, and was given to us by our immediate superior. Next we looked at the Enemy Forces—their strength and location. Then Friendly Forces— in other words, what we had available to do the job. Next was Ground. In the attack, this normally boiled down to attacking the enemy position from the left, centre or right. Finally, Time and Space, the consideration of which was usually interrupted by the sergeant instructor asking: “Well, what the hell are you going to do about that enemy fire that is trying to destroy your platoon?” Whoever was in charge had only a few minutes to make up his mind while the platoon returned fire. When the time came for the leader to issue brief orders to the three fellow officer cadets filling the subordinate section commander appointments, their burst of adrenalin had worn off and they had returned to their zombie-like state. And so it went.
Making matters worse—or more challenging, with the benefit of hindsight—was the fact that we couldn’t really dig in, but at the same time we had to get below ground. The red clay I remembered from my home in Nova Scotia had somehow also appeared in Meaford, except that in travelling between the two locations a perverse mutation had occurred and it was now the consistency of dried cement. There wasn’t a shovel in the world that could dent it. Picks were useless, so we unsheathed our bayonets and literally chipped away to create our two-man trenches. One foot down per night was considered pretty good going. When it rained, the ground couldn’t absorb the moisture, so we bailed our trenches of muddy water as millions of infanteers had done before us.
Food was a luxury and rarely showed up as scheduled, if at all. The instructors knew that reduced calorie intake would increase our fatigue and thus would enhance their ability to assess our performance under pressure. Combat, after all, is fatiguing, and regular meals in the front lines during the Second World War and Korea had been a rare luxury for most of our instructors. Now, in 1959, these war vets took pleasure in strolling through our filthy positions, sucking on a Dairy Queen milkshake and munching on a burger, making all the appropriate sounds of pleasure—just excruciating. A few cadets failed to appreciate the aim of the exercise and quit on the spot. They were whisked away within minutes, never to be seen again in uniform.
This exercise was scheduled to last six weeks. Halfway through the fifth week (as far as we could tell), a rumour shot through the platoon that it was ending a week early. Our spirits soared, and they went even higher when we were ordered to show up with all our kit at the instructors’ camp at noon the following day for a special announcement. Before leaving the positions we had chipped in the ground, we were ordered to fill them in.
At noon precisely, we stood in three ranks facing the instructors’ tent lines. There was a light breeze and a wonderful smell of food in the air. To our right was a sixty-foot-long ditch, about five feet deep and three feet wide. During the previous few weeks we had dug it as punishment. The ground at this location was mercifully soft, so progress was much faster than it had been back at our trench positions. Very early in the exercise, we christened the trench the “dinosaur latrine.” Anytime someone was caught sleeping on duty or doing something equally serious, he was sentenced to digging time in the trench.
Directly in front of us were about five six-foot folding tables. They were draped with spotless white sheets. The instructors approached as a group, took up positions around the tables and, as one, grabbed the sheets and whipped them away, revealing… food! There, before our bulging eyes and growling stomachs, was a smorgasbord of monumental proportions. Turkey, chicken, ham, salads, fresh fruit, cheesecake and pitchers of ice tea accounted for only a portion of what our brains could register. The senior instructor explained: “You will be departing for your barracks in Camp Borden in a few hours, but before you do, we thought you would appreciate a decent meal for a change—it’s all yours!” We lurched forward like Labrador retrievers chasing scraps that were falling from the table.
As we reached the object of our desire, our mumbles of enthusiasm were shattered by a scream: “STOP!” This, from every instructor. We froze. By this time the senior instructor had jumped the obstacle and was directly in front of us, with the ditch and the smorgasbord between us. “Gentlemen,” he started. “We have just been advised of a nuclear strike a few miles from here. All the food has been contaminated. Push it off those tables, into the trench, and get that trench filled in immediately!”
For a moment we were dumbfounded, but an order is an order, and most of us realized, in spite of our fatigue, that we had been set up. This was yet another test of our endurance. And what the hell, we were heading back to the barracks in a few hours anyway.
It took a good hour before dinosaur latrine disappeared. You could still smell the turkey, even after burying it some six feet under. We collapsed in a heap when the last shovelful ha
d been tramped back in place. We figured by then it must be about time for the trucks to show up and take us “home.” The instructors approached again. “Gentlemen (I grew to hate that greeting, and still do), it appears that some of you suffered radiation poisoning as a result of the recent attack, and Mr. MacKenzie, you have died as a result. The rest of you will conduct a field burial and graveside service. Carry on.”
Now, months earlier, we had taken a period of classroom instruction on temporary field burials, but we never thought we would actually have to do one until the next war—whenever that might be. I took up my “dead” position on the ground. Someone found a roll of hessian sack material, and I was wrapped in it from head to toe. Heavy-duty coated wire, normally used for connecting field telephones, was wrapped around my ankles and up to my knees, waist, chest, neck and finally head, at eye level. All the lateral wraps were then connected by a single strand running lengthwise along my body from top to bottom. I was now trussed up like a ham hock and getting mighty hot! It was a good 30°C that day, and the two layers of hessian pressed against my nose were interfering with my breathing, although the odour wasn’t all that bad. (Years later, the smell of the fireproof Nomex lining in my motor racing helmet reminded me of that pungent odour, and I actually liked it.) For some reason, everyone had disappeared and I was baking in the hot sun by myself, able to wiggle only my toes and fingers for mild relief. I found out later that my fellow students were off digging my grave, close to the buried smorgasbord.
What seemed like an eternity later, I could hear voices approaching. By this time, my sweat had mixed with the hessian, and the resulting mixture was burning my eyes. It was now impossible for me to distinguish shapes through the material, no matter how hard I tried.
The next thing I knew, I was lifted off the ground, dropped on what was probably a stretcher and transported over rough ground by presumably tired colleagues. About a hundred yards later, I was lifted off the stretcher and lowered into a comfortably cool place. Not bad, I thought, until I heard the service start. “We are gathered here to wish farewell and godspeed to our fellow soldier, Lewis MacKenzie.” That’s about all I remember comprehending, as I decided to concentrate on maintaining my composure. I assumed that as soon as the service was over, this particular exercise would end. A shovelful of dirt on my chest soon convinced me otherwise. Subsequent shovelfuls convinced me that this was getting serious and that I had better work harder at not panicking. I told myself that if they killed me, surely someone would get into serious trouble—so they would stop in time, wouldn’t they? They did, but then they left me to speculate about my fate in complete silence for a good fifteen minutes before lifting me out of my grave and unwrapping me. Later I was told that a number of my fellow cadets had wept during the service—not, presumably, because of their affection for me, but because the combination of fatigue, the recent “food” experience and their immersion in the role-playing of one soldier burying another had quite unravelled them.
A senseless exercise? Far from it. The instructors knew that much more demanding challenges awaited their student officers in the next war. What I had been subjected to didn’t even rate on their scale of mental endurance. One of them, Sergeant McPherson of the Royal Canadian Regiment, when he was a sniper in Korea, had spent up to three days in no man’s land camouflaged and unable to move a muscle while visually tracking the Chinese lines searching for a kill.
We didn’t realize that things were about to get worse.
It was pretty close to the time that we had been told we would depart for Camp Borden, more than fifty miles to the south. At the appointed hour, three two-and-a-half-ton trucks ground to a stop about fifty yards away from us. We could feel those soft beds waiting for us back at the barracks. It was Friday, so they might even give us the weekend off to recover!
Just as we started to gather up our kit and put on our webbing and packs, the instructors appeared from behind the trucks. “Gentlemen, the war has not gone well. The territory between here and Camp Borden has been captured by our enemy, the Fantasians,* and they are attacking the approaches into Borden as we speak. It will be your job to infiltrate on foot through the Blue Mountains to Camp Borden, as quickly as possible, to reinforce the garrison there. You will have to move primarily by night to avoid capture. As an exercise point, anyone who is caught will be interrogated and brought back here to start over again. You have ten minutes to form yourselves into groups of six and to reorganize your kit before you depart. By the way, our intelligence folks tell us the Fantasians are aware that you will be trying to infiltrate their positions, so over a hundred of their special forces and numerous police units will be looking for you day and night. Good luck, gentlemen!”
So much for a free weekend. Aching muscles and joints were now facing their biggest challenge of the summer. Sure, the month in Meaford had been physically demanding; but platoon attacks and patrolling had been followed by time in our defensive positions when there was some respite from carrying all that kit along with our rifles. Now we’d be spending the next four or five days, according to the most optimistic estimate, sneaking through the woods and valleys at night and presumably lying low but alert during the day to avoid capture.
Some of the cadets failed to see the point of the instructors playing yet another mind game with us. Later, after having conducted similar dirty tricks when I returned as an instructor myself, I understood that they were looking for cadets who said to themselves, “Screw you bastards. You aren’t going to break me, no matter how hard you try. Once I pass this course I might leave the army voluntarily, but you can‘t make me quit!” Or words to that effect.
For the next five nights we hobbled south along the slopes of the Blue Mountains, avoiding the valleys with their built-up areas and the mountain crests that would reveal our silhouettes and make us ripe for ambush and capture. During the day, when we took a few hours to sleep in rotation, we’d frequently curl up close to a herd of resting cows—they were excellent natural sentries, easily spooked by any approaching Fantasian patrol. We discovered that the Fantasians were actually a hundred-man company of the Royal Canadian Regiment from London, Ontario. They were dead keen on their role-playing as soldiers and were competing to capture officer cadets and put them through the wringer while they had the chance.
Northeast of Camp Borden and its adjacent town of Angus lies the Minesing Swamp. Measuring some twenty square miles, it presents a considerable challenge to anyone on foot, especially if silence is essential to avoiding capture; the sound of sucking boots being extracted from the muck can be heard for a considerable distance. Added to that challenge is the potential presence of Ontario’s only deadly reptile, the massasauga rattlesnake, in its natural habitat—something that would dissuade anyone from dozing off on an elevated dry spot.
Just before we entered the swamp, our accompanying instructor and assessor told us that if we made it through to the other side by 1600 hours on this, the sixth day of our infiltration, we would be met there by trucks from Camp Borden. We would be driven the last two miles to our barracks.
Our progress was good, considering the conditions. We could hear other groups from our platoon off to our flanks sucking their way along parallel routes. Occasionally someone would cry out in discomfort or pain as he tripped or stepped in a hole and slipped beneath the gooey surface of the swamp. No Fantasians were anywhere to be seen. Contrary to rumour, soldiers aren’t masochists; why hunker down in a swamp for a day when you don’t have to?
At 1530 hours we approached the point where we were told the trucks would be waiting. Anticipating an ideal location for an ambush, we approached the crossroads carefully, only to find the area completely unoccupied except for a number of our fellow cadets who had arrived before us. “Where the hell are the trucks?” someone asked.
“Gone,” replied one of the earlier arrivals. “When we got here thirty minutes ago, all we found was this note on a stake at the crossroads which accuses us of being late and advising u
s that we have to march the rest of the way to the barracks.”
This was a considerable blow to our morale and our aching bodies. I was told that the cadet who had been designated the company commander for the final day of the exercise had been injured and that the appointment was now mine: I was to get everyone organized and march them to the barracks. By this time we were all so tired and punchy that none of them questioned any order; they just sleepwalked into a ragged line. When everyone was accounted for, we stepped off in the direction of the camp, the pavement more than a little uncomfortable under our flattened feet and soggy boots.
Within the hour we arrived at the main gate of Camp Borden. From that point we were under the scrutiny, intentional or otherwise, of the cadets and staff from the other corps schools located at the camp. The Armoured, Intelligence, Medical and Service Corps all ran officer training courses during the summer. As far as we were concerned, they had it pretty easy, physically at least, and there was no way we were going to give them the satisfaction of seeing us in pain. So everyone sucked it up and managed to stay in step, more or less. Another forty-five minutes and we turned the corner towards the parade square in front of our Normandy barrack block. I came to a halt, and when the first platoon of the company was in position I gave the order, “Halt!”
Soldiers Made Me Look Good Page 7
