Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Army visit


Far out! That’s cool!
Red and purplish blue smoke grenades whizz over onto the field leaving a few coloured marks.
“Can we run through it?” Alex says casually.
“Yeah you might as well,” says a medic named Hamish.
All the rest of my group run through but it had basically fizzled out by then so I didn't really bother. We finished that station and went on to the ration station. A ration pack is food that is dehydrated so that it lasts for a long time and is energy for the soldiers. In the field all the food was packaged and brown which is a big plus as it does not reflect the sun.
I think this is a clever design idea. Imagine this ... a sniper with a rifle sees a reflection in the sky. He looks down and there you are. Bang! You are gone. Dead. Lying on the hard sandy ground. Boiling and in a pool of your own blood that is rapidly getting soaked into the sand. 
One of the medics, a corporal, has been to Afghanistan. I reckon that’s good because she can help other people. I can't imagine what it would be like over there. Medics are in a no combat zone and only some carry a sidearm. 
I learnt that most medics train as nurses and work in hospitals before they go into the army. Only people who need special training, like a trauma doctor, train in the army. I thought that they trained in their country’s army to be a nurse. 
I learnt a lot about the army from their visit and it made me imagine how hard it would be to be living in Afghanistan.