Unlike most other national armies that had only ten-week basic training courses, the IADT Basic Combat Training (BCT) course for IRDF inductees was 24 weeks long. This lengthy training was necessary because of the IRDF’s strong emphasis on rifle marksmanship and the need to teach infantry tactics, crew-served weapons familiarization (all the way up to 155mm artillery), advanced first aid, and citizen’s arrest procedures to every soldier. There was also a lengthy outdoor survival course included as part of the first three weeks of BCT, to prepare IRDF troopers for the rigors of the Ilemi Republic’s climatically harsh and inimical environment. And while the soldiers in most other armies fired less than 800 rounds of ammunition in basic training, the norm for all IRDF troopers was 3,000 rounds. Follow-on Advanced Individual Training (AIT) branch-specific courses (Infantry, Artillery, Ground Mobile, Aviation, Intelligence, EOD, Medical Service, and so forth) ranged from three to nine months each. Exceptional students could also be selected to take a second branch course, and some of these troopers later trained as full-time cadre NCOs or officers.
Because cycles of AIT courses were not taught continuously, they could be scheduled at any time following their basic course during an IRDF trooper’s three years of IADT, at the convenience of the IRDF cadre. College deferments were fairly common but strictly limited to students continuously carrying at least 12 semester credits. And completion of IADT during break between completion of a baccalaureate degree and graduate degrees was strongly encouraged.
Chapter 17: First Class
“Keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics -- that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.” -- James Madison
Solus Christus, The Ilemi Republic -- April, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate
Forming the new Ilemi Republic Defense Force (IRDF) started almost immediately after the pioneer settlers arrived on the Mtume Plateau. For the first three months, everyone with military experience informally cross-trained those who had little or no prior military service.
In March, the first cadre meetings were held in leaky tents to plan and organize for the first-round Intake of Basic Combat Training. The initial IRDF cadre consisted of six Israeli Defense Force (IDF) veteran NCOs, three former South African National Defense Force (SANDF) NCOs, and a former U.S. Army Infantry Captain, François Deschamps, a Moroccan-born mining engineer and veteran combat engineer Captain formerly with the French Foreign Legion. They were led by the IRDF’s commander, Colonel Petrus Kamwi. Kamwi decided to personally lead Intake 1 and to set up the entire curriculum. He also personally taught several classes on strategy, tactics, armor, counter-armor operations, and mechanized infantry operations.
There were just 23 trainees in Intake 1, all between the ages of 18 and 25, and all lacking any former military experience. Thirteen were men, and ten were women; after this first cycle, training platoons were separated by gender. In the first BCT class there were six native-born Ilemis, five Americans, four Israelis, five South Africans, one Dane, one Nigerian, and one South Sudanese. About all that they had in common was faith in Christ and some experience playing the computer war game Call of Duty: Freedom Fighter III.
The first challenge for the IRDF was getting everyone to understand each other. The Israeli-born instructors and trainees had trouble understanding speech in a South African accent. And everyone except the Nigerian had trouble discerning English in a heavy East African accent. So one of their first classes, on radio-telephone procedure, began with teaching trainees the international phonetic alphabet. They would chant together, “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo…”
There were some peculiarities of speech (like the South Africans saying “Keen-yah” instead of “Ken-yuh”), but remarkably little chafing between ethnicities. Because of the language barrier, an intentionally slow manner of speech with crisp enunciation soon developed and became the norm in the IRDF. This became known as “Urr-Diff Talk” or “IRDF Special English.” When using it, instructors often paused to spell out acronyms and to even spell out technical terms phonetically. In one memorable classroom exchange, it took fifteen minutes to explain the concept of enfilade rifle and machinegun fire. The exasperated instructor, an Afrikaner from the Natal Province of South Africa, grew red in the face as he repeated himself. On the third attempt, he shouted, “What we are talkeen abut heeere is the French word enfilade -- and I spell: Echo November Foxtrot India Lima Alpha Delta Echo, by which you will slay thine enemies by the hundreds like Samson, but without the aid of ‘a jawbone of an ass.’ No, instead you will use an FN-MAG and you will hit them from their flank and knock them down and they wuun’t be getting up again. And the corollary to enfilade is defilade, where you uuzze natural or artificial cover and concealment to protect yourself from being engaged by enfilade fire by the enemy.”
There were some differences in Drill and Ceremonies (D&C) standards among the instructions, and this led to a lot of confusion, laughter, and extra push-ups. Eventually, they settled on an American-style hand salute, but British Commonwealth style formations and parade close order drill. Since the IRDF’s emphasis was placed on combat skills, D&C was kept to a minimum and only practiced early in the morning. Marching around in the noonday Ilemi sun was, all agreed, cruel.
At the same time trainees were getting their first dose of D&C and radiotelephone procedure, they also got hands-on training in outdoor survival. Their instructor for much of this was a 20-year old Ilemi trainee -- a cattle herder from the Toposa tribe named Mwenye Lokwacuma. He taught everyone how to find water by digging beneath the curves of dry wadis, which plants were edible and which were poisonous, and all about the snakes, scorpions, and spiders of the Ilemi. Colonel Kamwi was impressed with the depth of Private Lokwacuma’s knowledge of local flora and fauna and declared, “Nothing I learned at Sandhurst prepared me for simply staying alive in the wilds of the Ilemi bush. The plants and animals here are quite different than Namibia, where we have our own meaning of the word ‘harsh.’ We all have a lot to learn from this private trooper. He swings one mean panga. The Bible teaches us that ‘the least shall be greatest and the greatest shall be least.’ And this young soldier is a fine example of how the IRDF should embody that Biblical teaching. Some of the best and most tactically-sound ideas in the IRDF will always come from the bottom up, and let’s never forget that. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, has some special skill or knowledge to contribute, Tig-Tig. The IRDF will always have Unity of Command, respect for rank, and obedience to lawful orders, but we must also wisely accept respectful input from the bottom up.”
One trainee in Intake 1 who stood out was Pamela Møller, a 23-year-old Danish woman who received a four-year basketball scholarship from American University in Washington D.C. There, while majoring in journalism, she was controversial for taking a Christian stand against lesbianism, which had become rife in collegiate athletics, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Upon graduating cum laude (while on probation for “causing discord”), she was offered a position with Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten (The Jutland Post), the largest news organization in Denmark. But she turned it down and instead enlisted in the IRDF’s recently announced Solo Soldier Program. Another interest lay in creating a commercial blog on Ilemi culture and current events following her IADT service.
Patterned on the Israeli Defense Force’s Garin Tzabar Lone Soldier program, the Ilemi Solo Soldier Program was intended for 18- to 28-year-old Christians from around the world without any family connections in the Ilemi to enlist in the IRDF, with the key benefit of fast-track free citizenship. Each enlistee was paired with a host family in the Ilemi Republic as their home away from home.
Pamela Møller was 6’1” with a pretty smile and wavy blonde hair. She was one of the few females in the IRDF who could hold her own in physical training and on forced marches alongside the men. Her endurance earned her the nickname “The Pamazon.
” A photo of her running in IRDF camos and carrying a Galil at the high-port position soon made it to the IRDF Solo Soldier Recruiting public web page, with the caption: “Ready For Some Thrilling Heroics? -- Join The Ilemi Republic Defense Force.” This fetching photo was later turned into a much sought-after recruiting poster. She became the unofficial heartthrob of the nation, and that image of her was one of the main reasons the Solo Soldier program was chronically over-subscribed, with more than 120 candidates turned down for each one selected. The Solo Soldier selection committee chose only the best of the best. The majority of those selected had foreign military experience, were multilingual, earned highest academic grades, and achieved top intelligence test scores. They were without exception skilled athletes with remarkable physical stamina, favoring cross-country running, Iron Man competitions, biathalon, pentathalon, and Kenyathalon.
Because the IRDF’s fairly standardized Sikorsky helicopters had seating for 11 troops, it was decided that the IRDF unit organization be based on ten-man squads (or “sticks”) consisting of two five-man fire teams and either a patrol leader or a forward observer. This squad size also worked well with IRDF Mechanized Infantry, because the majority of APCs were eight-wheeled Badgers, each of which seated ten troops. The vehicle commander position could also be occupied by a patrol leader. Thus, either four helicopters or four APCs could carry a full platoon.
The IRDF soon developed an informal lexicon that was a conglomeration of military terms and slang from around the world. From Afrikaans came words like kraal (corral) and laager (defensive encampment), and spoor (tracking sign). But they discouraged the use of the word koppie (for hill), because it sounded too much like the radiotelephone term Copy. There were, of course, many French military words like camouflage, enfilade, defilade, rendezvous, reconnaissance, commence, bivouac, magazine, terrain, materiel, latrine, espionage, sabotage, canteen, barrage, fusillade, esprit de corps, retreat, surrender, cordon sanitaire, and maneuver--which had all become ubiquitous in armies worldwide since the Napoleonic era. And even though there were no German-born soldiers in the IRDF, the German words kaserne (for barracks) and ersatz (substitute) also slipped into their lexicon. And, in a joking play-on-words, “Ersatz Israel” became a local nickname for the Ilemi Republic.
Other foreign words commonly used by the IRDF included the Arabic words wadi (for stream or streambed) and keffiyeh (for scarf). Then there was the American military slang: chopper (helicopter), goat rope (a useless exercise), crunchies (dismounted infantry), farmer armor (improvised vehicle armor), gaggle (a loose formation), Gone Elvis (for anything or anyone that was missing), klick (kilometer), Ma Deuce (the M2 Browning .50 caliber machinegun), Old Man (commanding officer), O Dark Thirty (pre-dawn hours), unsat (short for unsatisfactory), and a huge host of acronyms including KP (kitchen police), PLF (Parachute Landing Fall), FO (Forward Observer), FDC (Fire Direction Center), and many more.
Hebrew and pieces of Israeli slang surfaced, too. These included Eser -- Literally “ten” -- meaning awesome or wonderful; Sof ha’olam smola -- meaning “at the end of the world, turn left!” (used in the context of “in the middle of nowhere”); Kravi for combat, Mimiyah for canteen, Shmirah for guard duty, Shpitz to describe a great soldier (“He’s the Shpitz”), Ad matai? for “Until when?”, BeSeder for “okay”, and Tash for relax or “chill out.”
British terms used by the IRDF included recce (reconnaissance), Chinese Parliament (a before-action conference with rank intentionally ignored), brew (making tea), pukka (authentic or excellent), tiffin (lunch or a snack), and kit (for field gear).
The day before Intake 1 graduated, the trainees were each presented a tan and green horizontally-striped Stable Belt packaged in a zippered butyl rubber pouch designed to reduce tarnishing of their large buckles. The buckles were engraved with a tall, treelike cross and the stacked lines of the Five Solas: “Sola Scriptura, Sola Christo, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Soli Deo Gloria”. The belts were a gift and personally presented by Kim Rhee; presentation of these articles became a tradition, for each graduation, at considerable expense. The buckles were cast of heavy sterling silver. The first few belts and buckles were special-ordered from Moore Leather in England, but later, the buckles were produced locally by Heston Mint.
Chapter 18: Au and Ag
“We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors and a ruined people.” -- Daniel Webster, Speech in the U.S. Senate, 1833
Solus Christus, The Ilemi Republic -- April, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate
Having a silver coin as the nation’s circulating currency matched the libertarian ideals of most Ilemis, both native-born and newcomer. While NEuros and Bitcoin were widely used for the first year of independence, eventually the Ilemi Silmo and Centime predominated for all local day-to-day transactions and most banking. Using Silmos sheltered Ilemis from the ravages of NEuro inflation, which by the late 2040s was averaging 7% per year, a rate which had been even higher before the Ebola DRC pandemic.
Pacific Mint initially handled coin production for the Ilemi Republic in the United States at their facility in Nevada. But later, the company set up a mint operation in Solus Christus, where they produced Ilemi Republic Centime, Silmo, Gilmo, and Pilmo coins. Soon after this mint proved to be a profitable operation, it was bought out by Harry Heston for an undisclosed sum and renamed Heston Mint.
The Silmo (Silver Ilemi Monetary Ounce) had the same diameter as a one-ounce U.S. Silver Eagle (40.6 mm), but it was thicker; it had an extra one-tenth ounce of antimony hardener added, giving it a total weight of 1.1 ounces. The design of the Silmo featured an elephant on the obverse side. The fractional versions (1/2 ounce, 1/4 ounce, and 1/10 ounce) had more simple designs with prominent fractional markings (such as “.25 Ounce, Silver”) with reverse-side designs featuring the oryx, zebra, and eland.
Similarly, the Gilmo (Gold Ilemi Monetary Ounce) had the same dimensions and hardened composition as a South African Krugerrand. The design of the Gilmo featured a Cape buffalo on the obverse side. The fractional versions (1/2 ounce, 1/4 ounce, and 1/10 ounce) had more simple designs with prominent fractional markings (such as “.25 Ounce, Gold”) and reverse designs featuring a reedbuck, sable, and waterbuck.
Platinum Pilmo (Platinum Ilemi Monetary Ounce) had exactly the same dimensions as the one-ounce U.S. Platinum Liberty. Because it was not intended to circulate and because it was anticipated that some coins might eventually be melted for industrial use, it was made of .999-fine platinum, with no hardener added. The Pilmo featured the profile of a lion on the obverse side. There were also fractional versions (1/2 ounce, 1/4 ounce, and 1/10 ounce.
The trading ratios between Silmos, Gilmos, and Pilmos were not artificially pegged by the Ilemi government. Instead, daily trade ratios between the three metals were based on the global spot markets, the ratios were posted at the Heston Mint websites. It would have been foolish to peg a ratio, because the price ratio of silver to gold had gradually fallen for the preceding three decades. In 2015, the price ratio averaged 75-to-1, but because large quantities of silver were not recovered from industrial use, by the late 2040s the price ratio had fallen to 22-to-1. Except in circumstances where space and weight were at a premium, silver was generally preferred over gold by investors, who anticipated that before the year 2100, the silver-to-gold ratio would eventually slip to around 16-to-1.
The Ilemi Centimes were unusual: They were not original coins. Instead, they were re-minted from existing U.S. nickel five-cent coins. Centime coins were used for small daily shopping transactions and to make change for Silmo coin transactions. One hundred Centimes equaled 1/10th ounce of silver, and 1,000 Centimes could be exchanged for a full one-ounce Silmo. To eliminate hand sorting, automated sorting and re-minting machines based on Harry Heston’s specifications were eventually ordered from Belgium and installed at H
eston’s vault storage company and at the Tulloch Field passenger terminal in the Arrivals Area.
Arriving passengers could dump loose nickels into a hopper. A rotating disc sorter with a magnetometer then automatically divided the coins into two bins equipped with digital counters. These two bins were marked Genuine Cupronickel Nickels and Hand Sort. The Hand Sort bin caught oddities such as Canadian nickels, other foreign coins, and even a few 1942- to 1945-mint date U.S. War nickels. These last were highly prized, because instead of being the common 25% nickel and 75% copper, they were composed of 35% silver, 56% copper, and 9% manganese.
The bins of sorted standard U.S. nickels (75% copper and 25% nickel) could then be dumped into another hopper atop the larger half of the combination machine — the automatic reminting press. This seven-ton press re-impressed the surface of the coins into Ilemi Centimes, with hardened dies. The standard exchange ratio of nickels to Centimes was one-for-one.
The Centime coin design featured the head of a dik-dik, the smallest member of the antelope family in the region, with Ilemi Republic on the obverse side and “ONE CENTIME” on the reverse side. The machine spat out completed Centimes in rapid fire, at a rate of about one per second. Watching this machine work was particularly fascinating to children.
Once word of the “Nickels for Centimes” exchange machine got out, both immigrants and tourists brought rolls and sacks of U.S. nickels. The exchange was a good deal, since U.S. nickels were no longer legal tender, and the exchange netted customers Silmo silver coins at just under the spot price of silver. The exchange law allowed some flexibility for the minter, in the event that prices of copper and nickel ever diverged too far from their traditional ratios to the price of silver. If that were to happen, the minter could charge a seignorage offset fee and the customer would then receive less than 100 Centimes for each 100 Nickels submitted for re-minting.
Land of Promise (Counter-Caliphate Chronicles Series Book 1) Page 17
