Page 277 - Demo

273I am not sure when I ran my first LSE. I had to do it with the GSTO I had had a run in with and the first thing that happened was I changed the Operation Order for the exercise. I cannot remember what I changed but it was a fairly minor alteration of the schedule. He was furious and said I had no right to do that. He went to the CI about it and I was called in to explain. The CI said that they had just had a meeting and had finalised everything that was going on and it was fixed. I was not to change anything. I said that the Operation Order that he had signed was wrong. I pointed out that dates and timings were incorrect and that actually the whole thing was a mess. The CI said that did not matter and I replied that the whole point of the Op Order was to give information to everyone involved. If it was inaccurate then MT would send a coach on the wrong day and so forth. There was a lot of bluster but in the end the writing of the Op Order devolved to me and I made subtle changes as required. Interestingly, the syllabus for the exercise was laid down by Support Command and the Command CSRO who I liaised with. The Physical Education Officers had been running the exercise and were making it into a beasting exercise rather than a teaching one. For Example, when I took over the LSEs, the system had been that the students were taken up to Otterburn by bus, then transferred to our fleet of Landrovers and a mini bus, depending how many students we had. We then drove them to various drop of points and they did a walk to the first RV practising map reading skills. The PEdO got them off the bus and scattered their equipment about. The main things they had were a parachute and dinghy. The parachute they used to make a shelter and the dinghy they made into some kind of pack. Getting off the bus and chasing the parachute struck me as daft and not very fair. Whilst possibly realistic, it was better for them to work out how to do it in a calm atmosphere. I eventually got them to make their packs in the classroom. I slowly got my way, although it remained physically challenging for them.