They Have Survived…

During the last week of training, the soldiers of a Hungarian rifle company, drawn from the HDF 5th “Bocskai István" Infantry Brigade, executed a non-arctic winter and survival training program. In conjunction with Canadian instructors, the Lithuanian trainers introduced them to survival situations which may occur in winter conditions. Unfortunately, one part of the winter training schedule, cross-country skiing was cancelled due to the weather, i.e. the lack of snow.

On the first day, the soldiers of the 3rd battalion of the Royal Regiment of Canada introduced their items of equipment and their use, and shared the lessons they had learned during near-arctic winter training programs. The next day a lecturer from the Lithuanian training centre introduced those basic items of equipment which soldiers may need in order to survive under normal and extreme circumstances. Afterwards, in executing the tasks, the trainees had, for instance, to take water out of their rucksack while on the move, or change clothes during a short stop.

On the day before the long-distance practice, the designated personnel of the company participated in training activities on five different locations, where they were prepared for the training and the wintertime conditions. Joined by the trainers of the King Mindaugas Hussar Battalion, the Canadian instructors demonstrated survival techniques like, for instance, building shelters, starting fire, finding food and making caches. The most interesting part of the day’s program was when they jumped into an ice-hole and got out of it, which presented a great challenge to all participants.

At the end of the training week, the Hungarian soldiers executed a 24-hour route march, during which they covered 40 kilometers. On reaching certain control points during the daytime march, they had to demonstrate to their instructors the tricks of the trade they had learnt during the week, the main task being land navigation on an unknown terrain. The nighttime execution focused on covert movement, as the OPFOR team of the Lithuanians and two police patrols with tracker dogs were making their advance more difficult. Still, out of the nine teams that had set off on the march, only four were captured by “enemy forces", the rest of them managed to get across the surrounded area. Of course, those who were “captured" were allowed to continue executing the task, but they had to hand over one of their items of equipment.

Speaking about the training, Capt. Gábor Vastag, the company commander of the Hungarian forces deployed in Lithuania told us that “everybody has learned a lot of useful lessons, as no Hungarian soldiers have so far had opportunity to participate in such a training program in Hungary. This was a very good training session, and their striving for successful task execution also gave the soldiers motivation on some level.

The completion of this training marks the end of Exercise “Baltic Training 2014" and the start of the Hungarian troops’ redeployment to their home stations in Hungary.

Photo: Facebook