Soldiers shake off COVID rust in training operation
Soldiers at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright are “shaking the rust off” after the pandemic led to the cancellation of many training exercises last year.
Exercise Maple Resolve, Canada's largest military training exercise, typically involving 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers, was cancelled last year following the start of the pandemic. This year's operation, which got underway on April 27, was scaled back to roughly 2,500 Canadian soldiers and a few from the United States and the United Kingdom.
The majority of the participating soldiers are from 1st Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (1CMBG), which includes units in Edmonton and Shilo, Man.
Col. Wade Rutland, commander of 1CMBG, said if the exercise didn't move forward this year there was a danger of the brigade's readiness dropping.
“Since we started the battle procedure process on the 27th, we've conducted defensive and offensive operations,” he said.
“The skill level, the readiness, the resilience of the brigade is just going up and up,” Rutland said. “Every day, we're really shaking the rust off. Kind of like an athlete coming out of the off-season.”
The training is necessary as the brigade will be on standby for the entire year starting July 1. Rutland said they would be called on by the government in on missions for NATO or non-combat roles such as assisting with evacuations.
He said the quality of the training hasn't diminished, despite the reduced scale, as the focus has shifted from a brigade-level to battalions, which are smaller.
“It is actually a little faster pace because they don't have to wait for their headquarters to make many decisions,” Rutland said. “Aside from the fact that we're cohorted more, which means you can't interact as much with your fellow soldiers, and (we're wearing) masks and washing our hands a lot more, it feels like every other Maple Resolve.”
Rutland confirmed there were positive cases among soldiers but couldn't provide exact numbers. The cases were identified through screening when troops arrived in
Wainwright. He said they were expecting to have some cases.
“We did some modelling before we came here that said if you do seven days of isolation upon arrival you will have a certain percentage of positives,” he said.
“Because people were isolated in the cohort before allowed into what we call `the box,' which is the simulated training, we isolated the contacts as well so it didn't spread.”
Soldiers were also provided with their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Within four days, more than 90 per cent had been vaccinated. At its height, clinicians were processing more than 700 vaccines a day to those who wished to get immunized.