P1A course diary?

[posh_punter]

By some miracle, I managed to pass the phase 1 confirmation exercise and will be off to CTC soon, for a nice relaxing couple of weeks of FRONT SUPPORT PLACE!, yomping and ironing.

I remember reading a diary of the P1A course on here ages ago, but can't find it again. Could anyone direct me to it?

 

[blindman3004]

https://www.royalmarines.uk/forums/rmr-diaries.478/ Think its here mate, well done! How have you found it?

 

[posh_punter]

Ah you legend, thanks a lot.

Yeah mate, massive relief to have passed. We've had a few pretty savage weekends and a lot of us are now carrying knocks and injuries. Overall though it's been an epic experience with a top group of blokes and I'm really looking forward to getting down to Lympstone.

 

[Hamc]

When are you down for 1A? The troop I'm in are going down end of April.

 

[posh_punter]

Yep, same. Are you RMR London by any chance?

 

[Hamc]

RMR Scotland, I wonder if they will be merging all the units for the course.

 

[posh_punter]

Ah mate, will be good to meet some of the other units if they do.
You feeling prepared for it? Once we get through the first week it sounds like it gets pretty decent. I'm most worried about various injuries flaring up again to be honest.

 

[Hamc]

Should be good. Kind of, we had conformation weekend on the weekend past but we are doing an extra one the week before we go down, so hopefully that goes well. From reading the diary, it sounds quite good but hard work.

 

[posh_punter]

Yeah, we were supposed to have an additional revision weekend before confirmation, but it got cancelled because of the snowfall last month and lack of available 4x4s, so we went straight into confirmation ex this weekend. Bit of a pain really, as our night nav had to be called off this weekend, as the route they'd set us went right through a massive airsoft tournament being held in the training area and a few of the lads got ambushed accidentally by these civvies with BB guns....

 

[Hamc]

Ah okay, same with our troop for the night nav but for different reasons, it was going so well as well. Haha that is brilliant though

 

[posh_punter]

Honestly, it was hilarious. There were all these civvies driving around dressed as SF soldiers in pickup trucks with Russian writing on the sides and fake GPMGS attached to the back of them. Apparently they had some tripwire fired bb 'mines' which our blokes accidentally set off too!

 

[Hamc]

They must have been in for a shock when they realised who they had ambused

 

[posh_punter]

A load of nods who hadn't been issued any rounds? I guess we could have blown our whistles really loudly at them or splashed them with the nuclear strength hot sauce from the ration packs.

 

[posh_punter]

How come your night nav got cancelled?

 

[Hamc]

Yeah only if you had some blanks, that'd scare them. Guy got injured so they had to stop it all about a quarter of the way through

 

[thegingerone]

Honestly, it was hilarious. There were all these civvies driving around dressed as SF soldiers in pickup trucks with Russian writing on the sides and fake GPMGS attached to the back of them. Apparently they had some tripwire fired bb 'mines' which our blokes accidentally set off too!

Brilliant!

 

[Billyboy114]

Ah mate, will be good to meet some of the other units if they do.
You feeling prepared for it? Once we get through the first week it sounds like it gets pretty decent. I'm most worried about various injuries flaring up again to be honest.

You said it, the first week is the tough part. Take plenty of brufen and cover yourself in deep heat and you’ll be reet! Your training team will have prepared you well, I found that when we did our course the night nav and exercises were easier compared with what our TT had us doing on weekends.

Make sure you nail the post ex inspection and you don’t wrap and go to bed early, they are very picky on this inspection e.g. leave your water bottles upside down to dry them out the night before and your ‘dry kit’ is clean as well.

 

[posh_punter]

Cheers mate, will do.

 

[posh_punter]

Is going to be a shock spending that long in the field and then not having our post ex. Nandos session ....