'Spearpoint ' Reunion. -- 49 (Inkerman) Battery Message Board

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Subject: 'Spearpoint ' Reunion.

Author:
Jim Martin

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Date Posted: 15:12:57 05/17/05 Tue

Attended a Reunion in Coventry on Saturday night and met a few of the guys from my Lippstadt days. One who used to be an officer reminded me of the time that we did the biggest exercise in Germany 'Spearpoint' as part of a battle group as a forward OP with a Tank squadron. We had spent many weeks in preparation. As exercises go this was the nearest thing you could get to, without having to go through the real thing! Starting very near the border and working backwards. I remember that I had never seen so much Armour on the move at one time. Bombing about the countryside in the back of a Mk1. 432 was not my idea of fun especially when all the crew went down with fuel contamination in some form or degree. Health and Safety was not a prime consideration on an exercise that big!
I remember being leaguered up at the edge of a wood and all these Kraut families out on a Sunday stroll milling about looking at all this Armour on display. I remember thinking that it was like being in a Zoo with all these people looking into all this equipment seeing all these squaddies either zonked out or in various stages of undress. I remember certain elements of the TA digging slit trenches around our position. I was sent to see why we couldn't get any communications out of these buggers only to find them all crashed out, sleeping their heads off in the bottom of the slit trenches. Half of their guys went down with Hypothermia! To be fair they had only been sent over from the UK two days previous and they had not acclimatized. We had been out for weeks in the field so to speak! So much for these weekend soldiers! What say you?....

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