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MANCHESTER AND SALFORD
UNIVERSITY
OTC
MLDP 2 TEST
WEEKEND
OCDT DONAGHUE
REME COMPETITION
WEEKEND
JUO BAGLEY
As a ragtag formation of Engineers, Historians, Politicians,
Musicians and Biologists (to name but a few of our skills)
came together on a Friday afternoon, a dream team was
conceived.
The competition began after arriving at Longmoor camp
and the first test was to get your hands on as many free
Corps T shirts as possible. As a result, every member of the
team now has a REME T-shirt for every day of the week in
XXXL. We were paired with another team for the weekend,
which happened to be Loughborough DTUS.
The competition consisted of a number of stands
involving the REME and randomly, a warrior section attack.
This is genuinely as awesome as it sounds, jumping out of
a vehicle and smashing two magazines into some pretty
scared looking recruits after a tank has pulled up to their
front is a beautiful feeling. Further stands involved getting
very wet for no reason in particular, always a joy. CRAARV
recovery, otherwise known as pulling a tank out of a ditch,
was a favourite, with all the recovery vehicle crew wearing
combat onesies (no lie, they were DPM onesies).
After doing awesome stuff with loud noises and shouting
(and who doesn’t love those things) we moved onto putting
rivets into a sheet of aluminium under the guise of “Battle
damage repair”. The remaining stands consisted of a lot of
posing with big guns and stepping on every IED in an IED
lane until we got to the Airborne stand.
The most ridiculous warm up followed (essentially just
press ups) and a lot of screaming of incoherent statements
coming from big men. More to the point, we beat the other
team on the stretcher race. The day came to an end with
the production of “WEAPON X”. This was a catapult that
fired golf balls with accuracy over a range of 3 metres and
involved a lot of green tape.
After a few hours power nap, we were marched around
a parade square and an assault course with a massive
wooden gun. This sorted a lot of heads out, and we went on
to put in a decent performance against tough opposition
who looked considerably more fresh than we did.
Awesome weekend with awesome performances by all,
we came 7th out of 12, be ating Liverpool and EMU massively,
not to mention a number of units who were solely REME
cap-badged.
Altcar was the location of
our final testing weekend
on the MLDP2 syllabus.
Everyone was feeling the
pressure at the barracks on
Friday afternoon; you could cut
the tension in there like a knife
through butter. Our packing
mainly consisted of checking and
double checking that the vital crib
cards, TAM’s and binoculars were
all present and accounted for.
Heaven forbid if you forgot one of
those! There was no need for the
usual warm kit and bivvy bags
though, because we were staying
in the relative luxury of Altcar’s
billets.
Shortly after our arrival
we were taken to our
accommodation. This gave us
time to compose our thoughts
for the weekend ahead. We then
made our way to our first timing
which was an introduction to the
weekend followed by a situation
brief and our warning orders. This
was our first test and the pressure
was on.
Luckily the well-oiled machine
that is the MSUOTC had no
trouble in extracting the relevant
information and forming a
coherent Warning Order. We
then moved from one triumph to
another and passed the signals
theory test - after this weekend,
anyone who doesn’t know the
frequency range of a PRC 351/352
needs to take a long hard look in
the mirror. With the signals test
completed that was Friday night’s
activities done and dusted.
Saturday reared its ugly head
all too soon and before we knew
it the MLDP2 cohort was eating a
nutritious fried breakfast in the
cookhouse. There was furious
debate and last minute revision
over coffees and French toast in
the Liverpool camp; Manchester
on the other hand were sitting
back knowing that the training
they had received was top class.
After tea and toast we were
broken down into syndicates for
the ‘Round Robin’ which took
place around Altcar’s Training
Area. It was a lovely day for it as
well - classic tanning weather.
Unfortunately for Manchester
we had our game faces on and
not even the hottest sun in the
world could distract us from the
7 Questions and our impending
orders.
Before all that though, my
syndicate were put through our
paces with the map reading test
and signals practical. These were
very much the warm up exercises
for us. After these stands we
moved on to the big challenges of
the weekend.
First we received our orders;
it all felt very realistic and we
got down to coming up with
a plan straight away. We were
placed in the position of 1 Platoon
Commander and it was our job
to get some rounds down on
Objective Valentine to support 2
Platoon, then turn our attention
to Objective Cromwell to assault
that position and destroy the
enemy. After that 1 Platoon then
got the job of fixing the enemy
on Objective Comet so 3 Platoon
could capture that position. All in
all a lot of information and factors
to consider but, armed with a
sharp mind and the correct crib
cards, Manchester were well on
their way to success.
The next stand we got round to
was the preparation and delivery
of our Seven Questions Combat
Estimate. This stand required
us to utilise the binoculars we
were issued with and they were
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