In Kenya’s wadis, British soldiers stretch ‘to the point of defeat’ in epic war games
The size and scale of exercise is unusual: only Suffield in Canada and England’s Salisbury Plain allow something similar
High on Kenya’s Laikipia plateau hundreds of British soldiers spent a recent half-moon night fording a river, marching across wadis and over escarpments before attacking a mocked-up army training camp.
This is where — and how — British soldiers learn to fight, in regular six-week training sessions culminating in a simulated assault, this time involving 1,000 troops.
“This is among the most demanding training that we do,” said Brigadier Nick Perry, commander of Britain’s 16 Air Assault Brigade, who was in Kenya with three companies of Gurkhas, a storied regiment made up predominately of Nepalese recruits, with their signature curved kukri knives.
The size and scale of the British war games in Kenya is unusual: only Suffield in Canada and England’s Salisbury Plain allow something similar.
In recent years, infantry units were sent to Kenya for their final training before being deployed to Afghanistan and, for the “rapid reaction force” 16 Air Assault, being always battle-ready is a point of pride.
“I need soldiers to be ready to go on operations at very short notice,” said Perry.
“Kenya allows large-scale exercises so the whole battle group — the infantry, the artillery, the engineers, the intelligence and surveillance assets — can be tested alongside each other.”
They also work alongside the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), of which a 150-strong company swept across a hillside dotted with acacia and euphorbia trees in one of the final moments of the recent training exercise.
“Increasingly, operations around the world are multinational. It’s pretty rare now to find a single nation at conflict, and as Britain we’re not in that game.” Britain hasn’t gone to war alone since 1982 when it fought a two-month battle with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. British troops are currently deployed as part of multinational forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and as peacekeepers in South Sudan and Somalia.
Simulated violence
Battle groups come to Kenya several times a year, training with live fire at Archer’s Post in the centre of the country and on private land in Laikipia.
British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) commander Colonel Nick Wood said the British military presence in Kenya is worth around $57 million to the local economy. “We’re very much part of life here,” Wood said. The aim of the training isn’t to inflate soldiers’ confidence with easy wins, but to push them, sometimes to the point of defeat.