Mettle detectors

Report: Joe Clapson
Pictures: Steve Dock

DESPITE undergoing an extensive pre-deployment training package, serving personnel who have not been to theatre will not necessarily know how they will react when faced with a life-or-death situation.

As realistic as preparation has become, it is impossible to perfectly recreate the dangers of the battlefield during an exercise away from Afghanistan.

But for troops engaging in adventurous training (AT) on the creaking glaciers of the Swiss mountains, they are entering an environment where calculated risks are necessary and danger is part of the task.

For the third consecutive year, the Joint Services Mountain Training Centre (JSMTC) took a group of mountaineers of varying abilities to the snow-peaked Alps to teach them new skills and to truly test their mettle.

From a tented base in Saas Grund, 130 personnel from the Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and the University Officer Training Corps fastened their crampons and took up ice axes at the Joint Services Alpine Meet (JSAM).

Expedition leader Lt Col Simon Hall (RM) explained that although a summer stint working on the challenging peaks enables Service personnel to improve their CVs, it also provides them with valuable operational benefits.

“JSAM is really a symposium, a meeting of minds and an opportunity for all three Services to gain qualifications and further experience in an Alpine environment,” said Lt Col Hall, who has summited Mount Everest.

“But the main focus is preparing for operational capability – nobody should be exposed to their first real risk on the battlefield and on this you are achieving things you cannot achieve on an exercise.

“Racing up a mountain ridge in bad weather is a real danger which has to be overcome.”
Although all members of the trip had experience of mountaineering, some had never set foot on an alpine peak. Others had detailed climbing logbooks and were aiming to qualify as Alpine Mountain Leaders (AMLs) or Alpine Mountain Instructors.

Private soldiers worked alongside brigadiers and lieutenant colonels on the ice, but military rank played no part in the proceedings. With the constant danger of falling into a cavernous crevasse – a potentially-lethal crack in the ice – the most experienced mountaineers were in charge.

Lt Col Charlie Sykes, commanding officer of 1st Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, said: “There’s only one person in charge up on the mountain and that’s the instructor, so rank doesn’t get you very far.”

Working together on a dry glacier, soldiers, sailors and airmen prepared for the worst-case scenario of rescuing someone who has tumbled into a crevasse. Attached to a rope, personnel took turns to slide into the 15-metre-deep hole.

Up on the earth’s surface, other members of the team clamped their ice axes into the snow, created a roped bilay using an ice screw and winched their colleague from the forest of stalactites.

Training officer Maj Andy Fowle (APTC) said: “On adventurous training you are taken to a very different environment and required to adapt – just like the British Army, which can be taken just about anywhere.

“Every person practices every skill, there’s no sitting at the back of the classroom – everyone goes in the hole and is pulled out.”

Operating above the clouds and surrounded by more than 50 snow-capped mountains with summits higher than 4,000 metres, those on JSAM were training in ideal alpine conditions.

Mountaineering may have been the core skill being developed but Lt Col Sykes was quick to emphasise the importance of AT for soldiers.

“On something like this you learn to map-read and navigate to a high level, which is invaluable,” he explained.

“You also learn efficiency of kit and you constantly use command techniques.”

In order that best practice is taught to the Servicemen and women, five British mountain guides, three trainee guides and three military mountain guides were drafted in to pass on their expert knowledge.

British mountain guide Peter Rowlands, of the JSMTC, said: “The amount of courses being delivered at JSAM and the decentralised training it will facilitate is amazing.

“This meeting is on top of the pyramid and the 130 guys that are here will go back and deliver training at their units.”

Far from being a lazy fortnight on holiday, those on the expedition were treated to 0400 wake-up calls and were required to rock-climb in the dark and move quickly across perilous glaciers as they thawed.

But Capt Ross Mckenzie (8 Regt RLC) was pleased he made the trip. “JSAM is awesome and is exactly why I joined the Army,” he said.

“The AT ethos is about pushing yourself and dealing with fear, which will obviously transfer very well back to your work – it really is just fantastic to have the opportunity to access the kind of expertise available.”

Those who gain the AML qualification are given the green light to take their own groups on AT exercises, introducing scrambling, short-roping, moving on coils and climbing ropes to a new generation of Service personnel.

“If one of the attendees goes back to the UK and trains another person and that person goes on to have a lifetime of enjoyment, then that’s superb value for money,” said Maj Fowle.

To some, mountaineering might conjure up the image of a solitary, bearded explorer struggling through the cold and suffering from frostbite.

But through the JSMTC and JSAM, serving military men and women learn to trust teammates, focus on the job at hand and make calculated decisions on how to tackle risks – and have fun.

Each person on the mountain will have faced and dealt with a real fear. Before stepping onto a battlefield that can only be a good thing.