It was quite obvious that the GST course had been cobbled together
in the hope that what seemed to be half a dozen good ideas, if brought together,
would form one huge big great idea. The language
they used gave an indication of where they had gathered their good ideas from. We were to be processed through the course in
groups of six known as ‘syndicates’, the same groupings used at Biggen Hill. In the old days when you were promoted you
were given a slip of paper and sent to clothing stores where you were issued
with your new rank. Now, you had to
attend and successfully pass GST. The GST
course was supposed to teach you about leadership and man management. Of course being the armed forces there was
only one way to learn about man management and leadership and that was by
marching.
It was quite similar to what was happening in civvie street,
complete bullshit dressed up as professionalism, but there was one significant difference
which did surprise me. In the old days
you could wing your way through a course and then argue about your conduct or
ability at the end, what they did at Hereford was to give each syndicate a Sergeant
who monitored each activity and continually spoke into a dictaphone. This was a problem as every slight mistake you
might make would be recorded, and as the notes from the dictaphone were typed
up at the end of each day, they would be a hard and fixed record at the end of
the course which would not allow much discussion.
There were the usual introductory methods where we each had
to stand up and give a five minute presentation about some subject of our
choice. I can’t remember what mine was
about, probably something safe, unlike one fellow who spoke about free-fall
donkey embalming. I understand they
tightened it up so that you now have to give a talk on how your trade fits in
to the delivery of air power. We were
informed about the timetable for the course.
There would be two practical leadership blocks. For each block we would each lead one exercise. For the first leadership block we would each
be given a practical exercise; however we were supposed to learn from each
exercise and therefore the standard would be expected to rise after each
exercise. After the first block of
exercises we would be graded, so the strongest leader would lead the first
exercise in the second block, leaving the weakest leader to lead the final
exercise.
We would also have various lectures covering all sorts of service
related subjects. One I remember was where
we had to sit and watch a video about a fight in a bar. We then had to fill out the appropriate forms
for disciplinary action to be taken against the perpetrators. One lecture was to instruct us how to search
someone. The course was housed in long
wooden huts. Each hut had two entrance
doors, on one side of the building, with one at the front and one at the
rear. We were all seated, in neat little
rows, by syndicate, watching an instructor at the front. “Today we are going to learn the proper way
to search someone,” he said.
Next thing you know is that the rear door of the hut burst
open and someone ran in firing a machine gun.
Naturally we all ducked down. By
the time we were brave enough to look up we saw some people exit the hut by the
front door, leaving some poor sod leaning against the blackboard at the front
of the room with his jumper up and over his head and his trousers down around
his ankles. A small group had run in,
disorientated us with the machine gun fire, they raced through the classroom,
grabbing the unlucky sod, who sat next to the isle on the front row, and threw
him against the black board. Jumper up,
trousers down, job done, and left.
“That’s how you search someone,” said the instructor, and
from that point on we all had eyes in the back of our heads. I suppose we were being taught some interesting
things like how to search a car for bombs, but I could never see myself use
such training. We were on our way to a
training area for our first practical leadership exercise when we were stopped and
told to pick up a telegraph pole. We
then had to hold it above our heads and march, in double time, along the road. All I could think of was that the instructor
had watched far too many American war films.
I don’t know what six people marching along a road holding a telegraph
pole above their heads has to do with man management.
When we got to the exercise area a volunteer was asked for
and I jumped at the chance. As this was
the first exercise in the first leadership block I should be allowed to get away
with murder, the remainder of my syndicate were still holding back. We were standing in the middle of a field and
the instructor pointed at a pile of wood and some rope. “This area will be flooded in thirty minutes
time, to a depth of three feet. You have
got thirty minutes to build a platform that will hold you, your syndicate, your
kit and you weapons three feet off the ground.
It felt very like the exercises we had to go through in the hangar at Biggen
Hill but there was no real formality to it as there had been at Biggen.
I can’t remember how we got on with my exercise and the only
other one I remember was when we had to build a platform that would hold an observer
ten feet above the ground using three telegraph poles and a piece of rope. They seemed to love their telegraph
poles. We still had to march everywhere
and I was told that they loved our syndicate as we would always be singing, so
even in the dark they knew where we were.
You’ve probably seen military flavoured movies where marching bodies chant
out ditties and songs. The one we liked was
the ‘knock knock’ song. If I was in
charge I would shout ‘Knock Knock,’ my syndicate would reply, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Lenda,’ I would cry, ‘Lenda who?’ was the response and then we would all join in
shouting, ‘Lendus a fiver and we can
have a gang bang, oh yes we will, because a gang bang gives me such a thrill,
when I was younger and in my prime I used to gang bang all the time.’ Now you would move on to another name and continue
as before.
If I ever had to march the whole course, my own syndicate members
would try to get the whole body shouting but one or two people would complain
that we would get into trouble so I was never able to get the whole course going,
that would have been fun. It was a good
laugh and took our minds of what we were actually doing. They even taught us battlefield signals and
commands and gave us detailed training on how to maintain and operate light
machine guns. I was tempted to tell them
that I had been fully trained in the light machine gun by Slim on 92, but decided
against it, as knowing what end the bullets came out might not have been seen
as being very professional.
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