Tok
Tibet
Mountain Warfare School
"Come on you stinky girls, is that all you can do? And you call yourselves soldiers. Do you want tampons my dearies? Bloody fairies, the lot of you."
The Drill Sergeant is bellowing in the faces of two elite soldiers of Royal Cochin Special Forces.
A Battalion from 23rd Special Forces regiment has been training at this facility for the past three weeks.
While the first 2 days of acclimatisation to the sheer cold and thin air of the Tibetan plateau was hell itself, the days succeeding made them think their intensive training regimen of initiation was pure vanilla.
Now the two commandos, both combat vets and with ranks of E5 Sergeants are having their backsides chewed to a pulp by a Squad Sergeant E6. The Sergeants had to deactivate a nuclear warhead. That in itself would not have been overtly taxing to these elite soldiers who between them had enough working knowledge to shame a University Professor. However the fact that they had to hack a hole in a perma frost lake and dive 30 ft under the surface to reach the warhead and they had to all that with a bare standard dive suit, no underwater breathing apparatus and only a weak penlight definitely put a cramp in their working.
This two man team attempted their first test today and it failed miserably. After 30 minutes in the bone chilling water they both were recalled to surface on the verge of hypothermia.
"You sodden fools, in a live situation by now you would have been dead and your genitals would be flying in a cloud 9 kms up in the sky. Now let us see what went wrong." The admonition from the instructor was particularly harsh for its decrease in vulgarity and forceful delivery. The Captain commanding the course took the team through video tapes that recorded their performance. Instead of alternating between one on bottom deactivating and on on surface maintaining the breach, switching positions every 50 seconds they both dived and when after 60 seconds came up for air found the breach in surface ice closed leaving only a small air gap. They had to expend a further 60 seconds to breach the ice.
The Captain then delivered the team to the hands of Squad Sergeant who would educate in a more forceful manner.
The Mountain Warfare School was set up as a joint venture between Kingdom of Cochin and Tibet. Before his soldiers could be tested this way their officers had to undergo an even tougher regimen. They had arrived three weeks earlier itself and had gone through the regimen with an even greater thoroughness. The very same Squad Sergeant had in fact questioned the very same Captain about the estimate numbers of fathers he possessed. Only after passing the tests would an officer would be permitted to command his soldiers to do the tests.
While the underwater exercises were going in one section of the lake , intense survival tests were being performed by still more commandos at an other part of the shore. Here they had to swim in the ice cold lake wearing only their uninsulated swimming trunks. They had to swim a distance of 100 meters and back and then had to pass a shooting range.
Meanwhile at some distance another group of commandos were doing a hard jog through the towering Himalayan mountains carrying a full combat load of 56 kgs. They were also being led by their officer who was packing a similar load. Shaming them and leading them were their drill sergeant a diminutive Sergeant First Class E7 who was jogging on the craggy and treacherous path carrying a non standard 60 kg path yet not breaking even a bead of sweat.
That was the standard these soldiers are aiming to attain.
For this was the toughest combat school devised for soldiers of Royal Cochin Defense Forces.
Only best units are permitted to come to the School and they must all be either combat veterans or have scored more than 500/550 in a Live fire field exercise. Even then enrolling for the program is voluntary as the School boasts a very high rate of attrition both in fail to pass as well as in deaths, for the harsh environs of Himalayan mountains test the commandos more than the craziest of the Instructors of the School.
The Mountain Warfare School is situated in a knoll of hills 13 kms west of the rustic village of Tok in northern Tibet. The lake of Dyap Tso is a perma frost endorheic lake. To further east of the school is a glacier that goes on to feed the lake Manasarovar further South.
On arriving at the rough landing strip supporting the base the recruits spend 2 full days acclimatising to the thin mountain air of Tok. During these days the recruits stay in well heated camp buildings and are fed with high protein and high fat diets.
On the third day the grueling initiation begins. Moved from their warm rooms to field tents adequately exposed to the nature they are henceforth given only standard combat rations. Each day begins at reveille at 0600 followed by a 5 mile run in the mountains. After 2 hours of running they come back for breakfast and freshing up.
At 0900 teams are assigned to various instructors for various physical tests of the day. Lunch will be at 1300 and will have to be carried to their test sites by the recruits themselves.
In the afternoon the recruits attend various lecture demonstrations and combat classes. In the evenings yet another endurance jogging is in store for the recruits now with full combat loads.
After the first week of joint training, recruits are divided into batches and tested batchwise. Their next lecture classes would be a hellish 21 days ahead.
The tests include further endurance marches, underwater weapon deactivation, Arctic endurance swimming, Arctic paradropping etc. On the 30th day of training the recruits board a couple of jeeps and are taken to a monastery nearby. There they shall be shown the spartan way of life followed by the monks. They would be taken then to several remote caves where ascetic Hindu sages would be in penance. These sages who live in the arctic conditions wearing only their bare loin clothes and swim in the freezing water and subsist on barely nothing would be visited by the soldiers. The sages had been persuaded to tolerate this interruptions by the King of Cochin himself who had come to visit them and seek their blessings when the camp was being set up.
On the next day individual commandos would be issued with a regular Special Forces combat load and paradropped into the Himalayas. They would be dropped individually at a distance of 100 kms from the base camp and have to find their way back alone. Each team of 4 shall have a particular base camp where they would have to reach successfully. They are given coordinates of base camp, a school atlas and a compass for navigation.
If a recruit found himself unable to cope with the harsh conditions or fell in some accident he could activate his alert beacon and be rescued by a team of CSAR helicopters on standby at the School.
Once the final endurance test is passed the recruits are given the Mountain Warriors Badge in a spartan ceremony at the Mountain Warriors School.
However that day is still far ahead in a distant future for these 2 Sergeants as they finally passed the test on their second attempt and moved on to the next test.
Showing posts with label Special Forces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Special Forces. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Going Beyond Endurance
The 45 kg pack is cutting into the weary muscles of his shoulders. The toughened boots are now soggy after hours of marching through the incessant rain. Soon he would have to stop and change socks, he knew, else it was only a matter of time before he would lose his feet.
Lt. Aswin Sethi wiped off the perspiration from his brows and paid a glance at the view around him. Had he not been debilitated by this inhumane exhaustion, the beautiful vision of cloud covered mountains and lush green trees would have enchanted him. But now the mountains were omens of more pains to come, the trees were giants set out to block his path.
'Won't the rain ever stop? Why does it never stop?'
In one area of his conscience Aswin knew the answer to the questions he asked himself, but it was unlikely that that answer would satisfy the conscience that asked it. Wet, cold and hungry, Lt. Aswin Sethi trudged on. In Mawsynram, the rain never stops.
It seemed to Aswin that his entire body was wet, everything around him was wet, the heavy trees and the moss that formed an adornment over their thick trunks, the brown earth which had not been dry since the day it eroded its path out of some long forgotten boulder, the sky which is a continuous torrent of rainbearing clouds, pouring its contents steadily, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, in a never ending procession. Even the very air seemed wet, the heavy breath he drew in seemed wet enough to choke him.
His Battle Dress Uniform was long since sogged, the green fatigued jungle boots were drenched to the point of deterioration, the state of his under wear and the contents they were supposed to shield are better not contemplated. The combat pack with the water resistant explosives and detonators, the three boxes of ammunition and his assault rifle were all sogged. The only thing that could not get sogged is the map. The A2 sized topography map was laminated with heavy duty plastic and thus the only thing that was guaranteed from being absolutely drenched in this climate. Using this map and a compass Lt. Aswin Sethi has set out on the combat march to reach Base Camp Whiskey. Trekking alone over such wilderness without a single human contact or any indication of human presence for the past 5 days, Lt. Aswin Sethi is far beyond the pale of normal human sensibilities.If you ask him, he would not even be sure what year it is right now, he would not be surprised if an Allosaurus peeked at him from behind a clump of trees.
The ordeal had begun for Aswin five days earlier when he had parajumped from a Metac on to his Landing Site. Lt. Sethi is on his graduation trek as part of his training course at Jungle Warfare School, Silent Valley, Nilambur. After the gruelling three month long training at the Special Forces Training Center, the Red Bereted commando was tasked to survive and trek his way to a coordinate marked only by the map. A long shot away from the Equatorial Rainforest conditions of the Silent Valley, the Himalayan Rainforest conditions of Mawsynram is designed to take away the comfort factor of operating in familiar terrain. From his HALO jump from the Metac Lt. Sethi had to figure out where he had landed, plot the way to his objective and make it there. Alone. For food he had 5 kilograms of rations but was otherwise expected to live off the ground. For that purpose he had a combat knife and a machete.
Any hope he had to live off the ground comfortably was lost after his first day of trek here, after which he had to resort to the contingency measures he had been taught at the JWS, measures which were deemed last minute but were the mainstay of his survival in this trek ever since his meagre rations of food were lost on a tree top on his landing.
He still remembered the dirty taste of the first Copperhead Rat Snake he had eaten on the second day of his trek, raw. Latching his combat knife onto a wooden staff and striking the rat snake after tracking it for two hours. Then severing its head, peeling its skin off and eating its unholy meat all the while trying not to vomit by trying to visualize what he is eating as succulent Gulab Jamun. The unfulfilled satisfaction of having at least some sort of nutrition in his stomach and then moving on.
Now after 5 days of trekking Lt. Aswin Sethi started having a little optimism. After that last bend of trees he should be able to see Base Camp Whiskey. He was almost exactly at his designated target coordinates. There would be two camouflaged tents there, along with a Tatra truck. His objective was to activate three dummy explosive devices at the tents and truck to have the mission completed.
Aswin has no idea how to complete the task. At his level of physical exhaustion and mental depravity, he would just as well pleased to go rock and roll with his assault rifle and its tracer rounds. But no, mission has to be completed, going rock and roll would mean mission failed. An RCSF Commando never fails. So drawing on his last reserves of strength and sanity Lt. Sethi crept towards the clearing, his assault rifle at the ready.
As he finally looked over into the clearing, Lt. Aswin Sethi received a massive surprise.
There was nothing in the clearing.
Absoluitely nothing.
No tents.
No trucks.
No soldiers.
No sign of human presence.
He was absolutely devastated. Had he made a mistake in plotting his route. Had he misjudged his landing coordinates? Had he taken a wrong turning somewhere?
No. Not possible.
He brought out his topography map and checked his position with other visible natural features. He was in the correct position.
Had he taken too long? Did his trek take too long causing the camp to go back?
Had they forgotten about me and my training mission?
Am I truly alone?
No. No point in crying about it. I need to get out of here, well there is that alternate destination. I am sure I can hitch a ride in some truck if I reach this road. What is another 25 km in this unholy terrain? Peace of cake for an RCSF Commando.
Having thus decided, Lt. Aswin Sethi stood up and prepared to march along the new route he plotted with his map and compass. As he put on his combat pack again he heard a soft voice whisper behind him.
"Off again? Without even sharing this lovely cake with us?"
Shocked to the core of his existence the bedraggled commando turned around to see a few spectral images emanating from the green undercover.
"Well done, kid. This was a rather special twist set up by the Colonel here and you smarted your way out of this pretty well."
Even more surprising was to hear the voice of Sqd. Sgt. Naresh Yadav, his Squad Instructor coming from the spectral image. The other taller specter then removed the camouflage from his head and talked to him.
"What are you looking at us like that for? Haven't you seen us in Ghillies before, Kid?"
The shock of seeing Col. Takbir Singh, Commanding Officer of the 24th Special Forces Regiment momentarily caused the green Lieutenant to forget to salute.
"Forget about all that BS, kid. Today, is your graduation day. The frills and pomp we would leave for parade ground later, today you have earned your laurels to stand alongside the best of the best of Royal Cochin Special Forces. Congratulations, Kid. Now go and lighten the load of our Sergeant Yadav here, who had been lugging all those bottles of rum for the past few days.
"Yeah, we had been following you from Day One, though we had cheated, we had toblerones and lots of water. We did not want to reduce the Serpentine population of the region. So tonight we eat, drink and sleep. Tomorrow at 0900 Command would send a chopper here."
Thus laughing the three soldiers broke out the food and bottles of rum to spent a rough and fun night as soldiers in the field.
Lt. Aswin Sethi wiped off the perspiration from his brows and paid a glance at the view around him. Had he not been debilitated by this inhumane exhaustion, the beautiful vision of cloud covered mountains and lush green trees would have enchanted him. But now the mountains were omens of more pains to come, the trees were giants set out to block his path.
'Won't the rain ever stop? Why does it never stop?'
In one area of his conscience Aswin knew the answer to the questions he asked himself, but it was unlikely that that answer would satisfy the conscience that asked it. Wet, cold and hungry, Lt. Aswin Sethi trudged on. In Mawsynram, the rain never stops.
It seemed to Aswin that his entire body was wet, everything around him was wet, the heavy trees and the moss that formed an adornment over their thick trunks, the brown earth which had not been dry since the day it eroded its path out of some long forgotten boulder, the sky which is a continuous torrent of rainbearing clouds, pouring its contents steadily, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, in a never ending procession. Even the very air seemed wet, the heavy breath he drew in seemed wet enough to choke him.
His Battle Dress Uniform was long since sogged, the green fatigued jungle boots were drenched to the point of deterioration, the state of his under wear and the contents they were supposed to shield are better not contemplated. The combat pack with the water resistant explosives and detonators, the three boxes of ammunition and his assault rifle were all sogged. The only thing that could not get sogged is the map. The A2 sized topography map was laminated with heavy duty plastic and thus the only thing that was guaranteed from being absolutely drenched in this climate. Using this map and a compass Lt. Aswin Sethi has set out on the combat march to reach Base Camp Whiskey. Trekking alone over such wilderness without a single human contact or any indication of human presence for the past 5 days, Lt. Aswin Sethi is far beyond the pale of normal human sensibilities.If you ask him, he would not even be sure what year it is right now, he would not be surprised if an Allosaurus peeked at him from behind a clump of trees.
The ordeal had begun for Aswin five days earlier when he had parajumped from a Metac on to his Landing Site. Lt. Sethi is on his graduation trek as part of his training course at Jungle Warfare School, Silent Valley, Nilambur. After the gruelling three month long training at the Special Forces Training Center, the Red Bereted commando was tasked to survive and trek his way to a coordinate marked only by the map. A long shot away from the Equatorial Rainforest conditions of the Silent Valley, the Himalayan Rainforest conditions of Mawsynram is designed to take away the comfort factor of operating in familiar terrain. From his HALO jump from the Metac Lt. Sethi had to figure out where he had landed, plot the way to his objective and make it there. Alone. For food he had 5 kilograms of rations but was otherwise expected to live off the ground. For that purpose he had a combat knife and a machete.
Any hope he had to live off the ground comfortably was lost after his first day of trek here, after which he had to resort to the contingency measures he had been taught at the JWS, measures which were deemed last minute but were the mainstay of his survival in this trek ever since his meagre rations of food were lost on a tree top on his landing.
He still remembered the dirty taste of the first Copperhead Rat Snake he had eaten on the second day of his trek, raw. Latching his combat knife onto a wooden staff and striking the rat snake after tracking it for two hours. Then severing its head, peeling its skin off and eating its unholy meat all the while trying not to vomit by trying to visualize what he is eating as succulent Gulab Jamun. The unfulfilled satisfaction of having at least some sort of nutrition in his stomach and then moving on.
Now after 5 days of trekking Lt. Aswin Sethi started having a little optimism. After that last bend of trees he should be able to see Base Camp Whiskey. He was almost exactly at his designated target coordinates. There would be two camouflaged tents there, along with a Tatra truck. His objective was to activate three dummy explosive devices at the tents and truck to have the mission completed.
Aswin has no idea how to complete the task. At his level of physical exhaustion and mental depravity, he would just as well pleased to go rock and roll with his assault rifle and its tracer rounds. But no, mission has to be completed, going rock and roll would mean mission failed. An RCSF Commando never fails. So drawing on his last reserves of strength and sanity Lt. Sethi crept towards the clearing, his assault rifle at the ready.
As he finally looked over into the clearing, Lt. Aswin Sethi received a massive surprise.
There was nothing in the clearing.
Absoluitely nothing.
No tents.
No trucks.
No soldiers.
No sign of human presence.
He was absolutely devastated. Had he made a mistake in plotting his route. Had he misjudged his landing coordinates? Had he taken a wrong turning somewhere?
No. Not possible.
He brought out his topography map and checked his position with other visible natural features. He was in the correct position.
Had he taken too long? Did his trek take too long causing the camp to go back?
Had they forgotten about me and my training mission?
Am I truly alone?
No. No point in crying about it. I need to get out of here, well there is that alternate destination. I am sure I can hitch a ride in some truck if I reach this road. What is another 25 km in this unholy terrain? Peace of cake for an RCSF Commando.
Having thus decided, Lt. Aswin Sethi stood up and prepared to march along the new route he plotted with his map and compass. As he put on his combat pack again he heard a soft voice whisper behind him.
"Off again? Without even sharing this lovely cake with us?"
Shocked to the core of his existence the bedraggled commando turned around to see a few spectral images emanating from the green undercover.
"Well done, kid. This was a rather special twist set up by the Colonel here and you smarted your way out of this pretty well."
Even more surprising was to hear the voice of Sqd. Sgt. Naresh Yadav, his Squad Instructor coming from the spectral image. The other taller specter then removed the camouflage from his head and talked to him.
"What are you looking at us like that for? Haven't you seen us in Ghillies before, Kid?"
The shock of seeing Col. Takbir Singh, Commanding Officer of the 24th Special Forces Regiment momentarily caused the green Lieutenant to forget to salute.
"Forget about all that BS, kid. Today, is your graduation day. The frills and pomp we would leave for parade ground later, today you have earned your laurels to stand alongside the best of the best of Royal Cochin Special Forces. Congratulations, Kid. Now go and lighten the load of our Sergeant Yadav here, who had been lugging all those bottles of rum for the past few days.
"Yeah, we had been following you from Day One, though we had cheated, we had toblerones and lots of water. We did not want to reduce the Serpentine population of the region. So tonight we eat, drink and sleep. Tomorrow at 0900 Command would send a chopper here."
Thus laughing the three soldiers broke out the food and bottles of rum to spent a rough and fun night as soldiers in the field.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Khmer Ultimatum - Mission Stint
Background: This is a storyline I wrote up in July 2009, involving war with Vietnam. A diplomatic delegation to Vietnam (RP'd as Khmer Empire here) is assassinated thus becoming a casus belli. This two post commando operation is being conducted to retrieve the dead bodies of the Cochin diplomats including a Brigadier General of Royal Cochin Army.
The Alpha Company from 24th Special Forces Regiment is tooling for their mission. They are in the Air Craft Carrier CNS Trichur having come aboard a couple of days ago through a Naval METAC which picked them from their regimental base.
Alpha Company is the current MARCOS Team in Duty Rotation.
Having arrived in the carrier they were briefed extensively by case officers from NIA and NRA. They had scoured the satellite images of the city of Hue, its neighboring environs and especially the town of Lang Van Cu around 9 kilometers north of Hue. The exhausted NIA officials who had worked 30 hours days to gather the information informed the elite commandos on what and whom to expect in the region. The NRA official provided them with a stream of high resolution imagery, infra red as well as optical, taken by satellites and Raven flights.
After extensive briefing the 16 man team huddled over the information to prepare a plan. Though the highest ranking of them was only a Captain the Royal Cochin Special Force prided on not taking any mission unless planned by them. As combat hardened vets, each of them, had a contemptuous irreverence for the REMFs. In a planning session that lasted for 6 intensive hours the commandos agreed upon a plan. Each soldier was by now thorough about his role in the mission.
They knew about the crimes committed against their Kingdom, to their brother soldiers and were proud of the retribution meted out to their enemy. But their mission was also very vital, it was the basic tenet of their Kingdom. Because of the importance of the mission the soldiers shrugged away the voluntary acceptance forms, because extremely perilous as the mission was if they withdrew from this they would lose the respect amongst their fellow soldiers. The Black beret wearing Special Forces were indeed the elite amongst elite. They formed a special command of Royal Cochin Defense Forces with their special flag and insignia.
After the plan was finalised and christened Mission Stint the Captain of the team was on call to the the RCSF HQ in Bishkek for the additional units that might be needed for the operation.
Within 6 hours the equipment had arrived and the teams rigged them and got ready.
The Mission Stint was about to go.
Alpha Company is the current MARCOS Team in Duty Rotation.
Having arrived in the carrier they were briefed extensively by case officers from NIA and NRA. They had scoured the satellite images of the city of Hue, its neighboring environs and especially the town of Lang Van Cu around 9 kilometers north of Hue. The exhausted NIA officials who had worked 30 hours days to gather the information informed the elite commandos on what and whom to expect in the region. The NRA official provided them with a stream of high resolution imagery, infra red as well as optical, taken by satellites and Raven flights.
After extensive briefing the 16 man team huddled over the information to prepare a plan. Though the highest ranking of them was only a Captain the Royal Cochin Special Force prided on not taking any mission unless planned by them. As combat hardened vets, each of them, had a contemptuous irreverence for the REMFs. In a planning session that lasted for 6 intensive hours the commandos agreed upon a plan. Each soldier was by now thorough about his role in the mission.
They knew about the crimes committed against their Kingdom, to their brother soldiers and were proud of the retribution meted out to their enemy. But their mission was also very vital, it was the basic tenet of their Kingdom. Because of the importance of the mission the soldiers shrugged away the voluntary acceptance forms, because extremely perilous as the mission was if they withdrew from this they would lose the respect amongst their fellow soldiers. The Black beret wearing Special Forces were indeed the elite amongst elite. They formed a special command of Royal Cochin Defense Forces with their special flag and insignia.
After the plan was finalised and christened Mission Stint the Captain of the team was on call to the the RCSF HQ in Bishkek for the additional units that might be needed for the operation.
Within 6 hours the equipment had arrived and the teams rigged them and got ready.
The Mission Stint was about to go.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
