‘A good gauge of skills and the ultimate patrolling challenge’
THE world’s toughest patrolling test staged in Wales is marking its 60th anniversary.
Years ago, soldiers would drag their weapons, packs, tentage and bedding and trudge their way on a marching contest from Hay-on-Wye to Maesteg – a route that took them over 74 miles and many of the peaks of the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons – known as the Cambrian March.
The contest for Territorial Army soldiers keen to show their prowess in fitness and map-reading ability was a different scenario in the late 1950s and early 1960s as they also faced the challenge of their newly-issued, uncomfortable and leaky British Army footwear known as Boots DMS.
It is a world away from the global challenge which attracts the very best from international armies who now take part in Exercise Cambrian Patrol.
Lifelong memories have been entrenched into the minds of the tens of thousands of soldiers who have sweated, blistered and heaved their way across the Welsh Black Mountains over the course of six decades.
Exercise Cambrian Patrol is an annual event put on by the Brecon-based Headquarters 160th Welsh Brigade.
Exercise director Brigadier Alan Richmond, head of the Army in Wales, said: “When I took over three years ago we were just starting to shift this event back up to a level we wanted it to be, as an army.
“We had been on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long that it was time to refocus our aim of enhancing the world-class feel to this exercise and I think we’ve now achieved that, taking it up a notch each year.
“Cambrian Patrol is also a very good gauge to test the basic soldiering skills of units, both Regular and Reserve, in the British Army.
“It is a 60kms-plus patrol over challenging Welsh terrain, within a fully immersive tactical scenario and any team of eight, with basic soldiering skills, good leadership, navigation and bags of grit and determination can excel. Of course they also have a live enemy and the Welsh weather to contend with.
“What is clear today is the esteem to which international armies from across the world hold this event. Many see it as the ultimate patrolling challenge and this year we have 34 countries visiting us to take on the challenge – that’s a record and shows how far this event has come on from the days when it was classed as a march.”
He added: “In 1985, General Sir Peter de la Billiere, who was then General Officer Commanding Wales, decided he wanted to re-tune the event and establish it as an exercise in order to test basic military skills. We’ve stayed true to his vision and in the last few years, we’ve really upped the game in terms of the subject matter expertise that we apply to this exercise.
“For example, if we’re testing basic life-saving skills, we’ve got the British Army’s experts there to design and validate the training and that’s the same whether it be for chemical biological radiological nuclear drills and all the other disciplines we have on the exercise.
“But also we are now using some of the most state-of-the-art simulation that’s available and again on the basic life-saving skills, the realism of some of the dummies, some of the casu you find, is what you’d find on a wood film-set, it’s startling.
“It really does seem absolutely r the exercising troops and that’s we’re there now at the standar aspire to.”
The unique exercise is the larg its kind with worldwide entrants h to battle it out to take part in the c by fighting through their own do competitions, such as the infantry contest entitled the Duke of Glou Cup which is staged by the Aust Army, with the winners competi Brecon.
More than 130 patrols are takin in this year’s event, which first kick in 1959, when a group of Welsh Te rial Army soldiers designed a we training event, featuring long dis marching over the Cambrian M tains, and ended up with a sho match on the Sennybridge Tr Area.
Glyn Powell, who as a Lieuten the Territorial Army in 1961, le Brecon-based team, 638 Light An craft Regiment, Royal Artillery, th the endurance test to first place gaining “667.5 marks”.
Mr Powell, 87, now living in S bridge but who was also a school