Alright, I got a hold of the joining instructions as well as kit lists etc. You should all recieve these when you are course loaded, but I suppose most of you guys want these ahead of time for prep. PM me your e-mails and I'll ship you off the copies.
The best advice I can give you is bone up on your navigation and fieldcraft skills. You will use these constantly as the course focuses on section attacks and recce patrols. I'll give you a breakdown from what I can remember.
FYI, CAP and Ph3 Combat arms courses are now broken down into mods. If you pass a mod you will not have to do it again if you are medically recoursed or fail a portion. Keep in mind however this is at the discretion of the school commandant and if he feels you were a royal thud, then he can put you back to square one.
Mod 1-
Getting your army legs back. In clearance, general instruction, setting up for inspection etc. You will re-learn the C7 and do you weapons handling drills with it, as well as learn the C9 LMG. Can't remember if you hit any ranges during this mod, but I think you go for at least one day. Prepare for the Confirmation Of Combat Knowledge ladies and gents (C.O.C.K. and lots of it).
Mod 2-
Navigation, Navigation, Navigation. This is your bread and butter as combat arms officers so you have to know it left right upsidedown and sideways. It might say you'll learn the GPS as well (PLUGR), but all we got was 30 minutes of "you won't touch it, I don't like it, so I'm just going to whip through these slides". The only time I saw it brought out was once in the field when one of the students asked for a nav check (you get 1) while on her recce patrol. The Sgt brought it out, stood there trying to get it to work for about 10 minutes, got fed up and took out his civvy GPS and we carried on. You will have a field exercise that focuses on nav with a lot of practice. You will then have a day test, and a night test where you are sent on your own to nav from point to point. This is where your nav must be strong, we had a girl get lost and she just kept walking. She was found the next morning by range control 12 km's from her last point. The legs are roughly 400m-800m in length depending on the letter you get to nav to. A little tip, pay attention very closely. When you're doing your practice during the day and you come upon a point, don't just write the information you need down for your nav write everything down that is on that piece of paper. All the letters and grid squares. You will understand why as you spend more time on the nav course.
Mod 3-
Now comes the fun part. Section attacks. You will get walkthroughs and everyone will get a practice run. Then it's the big show. You will feel tired and sometimes like you can't continue on, but looking back now it wasn't that bad. It always seems worse when you're being assessed, so just relax remember what you've been taught and you'll do fine. You also go to Argus Coy Defensive position and call in mortars (or if you're lucky arty) for indirect fire control orders. That was a fun day.
Mod 4-
For our platoon this mod sucked because our platoon commander got bored and hammered us into the ground with inspections all weekend, and platoon attacks on our free time in the evenings. For the other platoons it was a nice break in the course. This is not meant to be a hard mod. This portion is for you to learn the grenade, pistol and as well get your RSO qualifications so you can run a conventional range. Depending on your staff this can be a fun week, or it can be a week of hell. Bring some horseshoes and pray.
Mod 5-
Here's where it all comes together. You have a 10 day field exercise where you do everything. It begins with 3 days straight of recce patrols. The sections were split in half to create 4 man det's. The way it worked is one det would do their patrol for 8 hours, while the other was in the patrol base eating, doing security and racking out. Then the patrol would rotate. The next guy in the breach for testing would also be doing battle procedure as well. This wasn't so bad, except that for the first 18 hours it rained more than it had all summer long and was so black you could barely see your hand in front of your face. It was exhausting though. From there we deployed at about 2am to where we conducted our defensive operations. We dug our trenches, sat in the mud, got wet. Fortunately we didn't do that for the full 6 days. In between this we did vehicle check points, urban patrolling, presence patrolling, QRF taskings or general stand to watches in our trenches. I just about lost my marbles at one point because we kept going from 25% to 100% stand-to back and forth for about 5 hours straight. I think over this 6 day period I slept about 6 hours. However after that, it's pretty much all done. Granted the C.O.C.K. is still around, but it's not as bad because by this point you've proven yourselves somewhat.
Remember, pay attention, put forth 100% effort at all times even if it's just walking over to put your rucksack on the staff see it, and always maintain a good attitude. If you turn into Johnny-shuterdown when it's not you that's being assessed, you're going to get your butt driven into the ground I guarantee it. Even if sometimes you can't keep up, never give up, always put your maximum effort in. It doesn't go unnoticed.
Hopefully this information helped you guys and gave you some insight. I also hope it didn't scare you, because it really wasn't that bad. While you're there you'll think it's hell and that you'll never do anything worse, but it always seems worse when you're going through it than to look back on it trust me.
