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2023 Canadian Armed Forces General and Flag Officer senior promotions and appointments

The army equivalent is one hour rotations being the awake guy in a ten man arctic tent. Your job is to keep the stove and lantern lit and fueled but also keep everything else not on fire from the couple fires burning inside your tent. At some point during the night, while you’re buried face deep into your fart sac because the lights are literally still on (for heat), someone shines a red Petzl lamp on your face, gently bakes you and says “you’re on piquet!” You are now it for an hour.

A few things are inevitable: the stove and lantern, which are good for a few hours of fuel, will need to be refilled on your shift, probably cause the last guy was an asshole. They must be filled outside. Also, you have to piss and it’s -24. You regret the choices that brought you here.
A very good description of what tent routine can be like. Not only that, in a tactical situation the LPs and sentries must be manned. So the sentries have to know where their relief sleeps. -24C? Luxury


Shaking In Bed GIF by NTE Grøntforsprang
 
In real combat aircraft, pilots just do what the ACSO / AEC / AWC tell them to do.
AEC/AWC don’t tell us what to do, they inform and recommend. The success of mission falls upon the mission commander who makes the tactical decisions. That person is often flying a single seat aircraft.
 
The army equivalent is one hour rotations being the awake guy in a ten man arctic tent. Your job is to keep the stove and lantern lit and fueled but also keep everything else not on fire from the couple fires burning inside your tent. At some point during the night, while you’re buried face deep into your fart sac because the lights are literally still on (for heat), someone shines a red Petzl lamp on your face, gently bakes you and says “you’re on piquet!” You are now it for an hour.

A few things are inevitable: the stove and lantern, which are good for a few hours of fuel, will need to be refilled on your shift, probably cause the last guy was an asshole. They must be filled outside. Also, you have to piss and it’s -24. You regret the choices that brought you here.

Inevitable as well is that your shoulder and hips will depress your air mattress to the ground so they will slowly freeze . . . at least until the whole air mattress deflates to the point that all of your body is now in contact with the frozen ground and freezes.

Also the fact that within three days of Endex you start to weigh the chances that you can make it all the way through to the end without a further bowel movement.

🍻
 
A very good description of what tent routine can be like. Not only that, in a tactical situation the LPs and sentries must be manned. So the sentries have to know where their relief sleeps. -24C? Luxury


Shaking In Bed GIF by NTE Grøntforsprang
Lets not forget radio watch -
 
The army equivalent is one hour rotations being the awake guy in a ten man arctic tent. Your job is to keep the stove and lantern lit and fueled but also keep everything else not on fire from the couple fires burning inside your tent. At some point during the night, while you’re buried face deep into your fart sac because the lights are literally still on (for heat), someone shines a red Petzl lamp on your face, gently bakes you and says “you’re on piquet!” You are now it for an hour.

A few things are inevitable: the stove and lantern, which are good for a few hours of fuel, will need to be refilled on your shift, probably cause the last guy was an asshole. They must be filled outside. Also, you have to piss and it’s -24. You regret the choices that brought you here.

Inevitable as well is that your shoulder and hips will depress your air mattress to the ground so they will slowly freeze . . . at least until the whole air mattress deflates to the point that all of your body is now in contact with the frozen ground and freezes.

Also the fact that within three days of Endex you start to weigh the chances that you can make it all the way through to the end without a further bowel movement.

🍻
Strange how none of this makes it into the recruiting brochure.
 
Strange how none of this makes it into the recruiting brochure.
One less than successful, but very truthful, recruiter I worked with explained the Infantry as "It's just like a camping trip with guns. Except you have to fight your way to the campsite, carrying everything you own, and defend it once you get there while all the other campers try to kill you."
 
One less than successful, but very truthful, recruiter I worked with explained the Infantry as "It's just like a camping trip with guns. Except you have to fight your way to the campsite, carrying everything you own, and defend it once you get there while all the other campers try to kill you."

:)

“Dig a hole in your back yard while it is raining. Sit in the hole until the water climbs up around your ankles. Pour cold mud down your shirt collar. Sit there for 48 hours, and, so there is no danger of your dozing off, imagine that a guy is sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you on the head or set your house on fire.

“Get out of the hole, fill a suitcase full of rocks, pick it up, put a shotgun in your other hand, and walk on the muddiest road you can find. Fall flat on your face every few minutes as you imagine big meteors streaking down to sock you.

“After 10 or 12 miles (remember — you are still carrying the shotgun and suitcase) start sneaking through the wet brush. Imagine that somebody has booby-trapped your route with rattlesnakes which will bite you if you step on them. Give some friend a rifle and have him blast in your direction once in a while … run like hell all the way back to your hole in the back yard, drop the suitcase and shotgun, and get in.

“If you repeat this performance every three days for several months you may begin to understand why an infantryman sometimes gets out of breath. But you still won’t understand how he feels when things get tough.

- Bill Mauldin

 
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