Another cold and dismal dark night sees three open land-rovers driving out of London heading for the wilds of Stanford PTA.

The crews are as usual looking overweight, having tried vainly to dress for warmth and comfort rather than looks.

Cpl Foot has already set the standard by bringing a German army sleeping bag along, which he wears for driving. It makes him look like some sort of slug or maggot, and is the cause of many jokes as well as enquiries. How much? Where did you get it?

So, another recce weekend has started. This time we are to provide enemy for the Royal Yeomanry, who are starting the new year with a series of warm-up exercises. We are not really expecting a great deal, having already been told that we are to man several stands where each troop will go through a set piece exercise.

We arrive at our RV with the Yeomanry early to find no one around, and eventually move off to set up a hide. On moving half a mile down the road we find them at a different location to the RV given.

Recce park up for C/Sgt Randal to get his orders and the rest of us are sent away to get a drink of tea.

The tea is dished out but we soon discover that there is also soup which for some reason is only for support troop. Resourceful as we are, recce changes unit as well as sides and we all had soup and bread. No one is any the wiser, as no one seems to know who is who.

In the early hours we leave camp to set up our various stands and wait. The idea is that we provide an ambush, a defence post and a mobile force to attack an OP line.

Most of the day is spent waiting around until required to do our bit, but is reasonably fun.

As night falls recce meets up with the Yeomanry for orders and replen. The next phase is a night exercise during which we attack their replen park. This attack was led by Cpl Kempster and was very successful given the severe time limits within which we had to work.

After our attack volunteers were called for to take part in a patrol whose objective was to penetrate the Yeomanry's hide area and report on their vehicles. During this phase Cpl Kempster was offered a cup of tea, though they realised something was not quite right when he said, "No thanks mate!" Cpl Foot meanwhile almost persuaded one guard to search the woods with him because he had heard noises.

On Sunday, we provided a mobile enemy screening force which the Yeomanry had to push from one defensive position to the next. It all seemed a little slow from our point of view with little sight of all the vehicles we had seen on the Friday night.

Our ammunition eventually ran out on our final defence line and we were overrun.

It had been a cold but interesting weekend and on our return to London found that we had managed to miss a lot of snow.

Having spent the winter with stripped down rovers we now looked forward to stripping down a little ourselves and developing a nice tan.

Last updated 7th July 2000