Swiss International Military Competition

Thursday, 7th May arrived; at 1830 the team, plus admin, were assembled in the MT square, there was a certain nervousness as Cpl Hetherington was travelling down from Wales and had by 1900 still not shown up. Just as we were about to leave, a panting Cpl Hetherington appeared.

The mini bus was packed up to and including the roof, ten team members, two admin staff and all the associated bergens and paraphernalia made for sardine conditions. The diesel mini bus pulled reluctantly away from'95'; the first hill we reached gave us a taste of things to come, to mere mortals it barely registered as a hill, but the bus crawled up at 30 mph!

By the time Dover was reached it was clear that it was going to be a journey to be remembered for lack of speed and comfort.

Having negotiated a misunderstanding over the ferry ticket we boarded and sat down to a first class dinner.

We disembarked and proceeded through French customs without event. The night passed peacefully as we crossed the battlefields of two wars, many of which feature prominently in the regiment's history. Mr Norman's attempts at the history lesson fell on sleeping ears! By 0700 we had crossed into Germany and were heading south towards Basle and Switzerland. The mini bus came into its own on the Swiss mountain roads, by some miracle we arrived in Bellinzona by about 1500.

Bellinzona is a small medieval fortified town on the Swiss / Italian border surrounded by awe inspiring snow capped mountains, with a large river running through the centre.

The remainder of the afternoon was occupied by personal admin, sight seeing and visiting local hostelries. The team HQ was set up in a bar run by a Portuguese family - L/Cpls Fraser and Cattarino came into their own, most unexpectedly, on the linguistic front.

Registration was chaos, no one seemed to know what was happening and who was supposed to be where. After a number of attempts at orderly queuing this was abandoned for the European queue system - each for himself. It proved a success and in no time we were registered and installed in our accommodation, a nuclear bunker, a most comfortable home which beats a nissen hut hands down.

Dinner in the evening was a team effort in the town centre, yet again the Portuguese team came into their own, finding a waitress of similar nationality.

Saturday morning - reveille was at 0500 ready for the first team's departure at 0625 which was Cpl Hetherington and Pte Aitken. The weather was wonderful with a temperature of 70'F, bright sunshine, no breeze, just the weather for a ten mile tab!

As the morning progressed the teams set off in their pairs. The start point was some miles outside Bellinzona which was reached by Swiss four tonner. The competition was, on paper, very unclear as to degree of severity so the team had prepared for the worst, which was as well. The course was over 10 miles and had to be completed in over 3 hours but not more than 4 hours.

All the teams departed from the start point at the double and set off for the infiltration phase; it loses something in translation. It was a straight map read taking in a couple of checkpoints covering AFV, judging distances, grenade throwing and finding areas on the map being given only a tiny cut out section showing the area to be identified.

Fortunately, there were periodic stands handing out isotonic drinks, without which the casualty level would have been high.

The orienteering stand was bad news, the contours on the map were so close the entire area was red! Having set off, each team had forty-five minutes to visit as many check-points as possible. When Sgt Martin and Mr Norman arrived, being team 139, no British team had passed the finish line within time, consequently all had forfeited their points. With the aid of a stop watch, team 139 managed to come in with a reasonable score and ten minutes to spare.

More isotonic drinks. There followed a further run to the first of three shooting stands, two of which involved firing the new Stig rifle currently being introduced to the Swiss Army; all teams fired at 200/300 metres in which near perfect scores were achieved with an unfamiliar weapon.

The final task which was listed on the programme was a surprise and it certainly was that! The Swiss Army use horses in the mountains; much to the disappointment of all we did not get a chance to ride. The surprise competition was throwing the horseshoe! All the finishing teams managed to score one shoe around the post, much to each others amazement.

By this stage all the teams were fairly sore and exhausted, however only a mile to the finishing line.

Cpl Hetherington and Pte Aitken who had started out first had managed, having completed the course, to enjoy a very relaxing day in Bellinzona!

All teams were home by mid afternoon, back in the bunker, where a serious attempt was made to shine kit that had been crushed into small spaces for the journey.

The first parade and prize giving was held in the main square of the town's medieval castle. The GOC of the area presented the awards with a number of local dignitaries making speeches in French, German and Italian; only the GOC spoke English.

Great credit and congratulations are due to Pte Stokes and Pte Te Paa who came 3rd out of 110 of the non-Swiss teams and 26th out of 142 overall. Mr Norman and Sgt Martin came 49th and 84th respectively. Cpl Hetherington and Pte Aitken coming 53rd and 88th respectively. Pte Fraser and Pte Goldsmith came 76th and 112th respectively. The remaining team, Pte Higgins and L/Cpl Catarino were defeated by the time constraint.

These scores should be considered in light of the fact that very few of the competitors were TA. In the top 50 British teams there were two other TA units, the remainder were regulars.

The evening was passed celebrating our achievements at a number of local hostelries, having first eaten dinner of pizza and beer.

The return journey was without event and home was reached in the early hours of Monday morning.

A commendable effort was made by all team members particularly attending pre-training which certainly paid off. Having done it once it will be easier next time.

Last updated 5/3/01