For the first time since the pandemic, reservists gathered for two big exercises at the Canadian Armed Forces’ 4th Canadian Division Training Centre in Meaford.
Nearly 400 gunners and infantry soldiers of varying ranks from mainly Southwestern Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area (and a few from BC) converged on the military training base last week for Steel Rain, an artillery exercise which could be heard around Georgian Bay as well as for Arrowhead Guardian, which is an infantry exercise.
Bayshore Broadcasting News toured the exercise Thursday afternoon and spoke to some of the reservists taking part.
Master Corporal Keelan Fischer is from Underwood, (Kincardine) and a member of the Grey and Simcoe Foresters out of Owen Sound. He says, “During the summer period, we do a one to two-week exercise as kind of a culmination for all of the training we’ve done throughout the year as proof of the soldiering skills that we’ve learned and re-learned throughout the training here.”
Fischer, who works as a mechanic’s apprentice when he’s not serving in the military, was acting as a section commander of eight to ten soldiers in Exercise Arrowhead Guardian. He has also taken part in a number of other exercises around Ontario, as well as further afield including Operation Reassurance in Latvia in 2021, in Norway in 2018 with Exercise Trident Juncture, a few exercises in the United States and two Arctic exercises (NOREX and NANOOK).
Fischer and a group of about 50 other infantry reservists were training under Captain William Assis of London’s 4 RCR. Assis says they were glad to be able to hold a large training exercise again, saying, “Everyone’s just super pumped to be here. Seeing people they haven’t seen since the beginning of COVID when there were a whole bunch of shutdowns.”
Assis, who like his company, had camouflage face paint on during the exercise, says part of the training involves camping out, setting up a patrol base or ‘hide,’ explaining, “We’re essentially going to be concealed in the forest, and that allows us to operate without, in the real context, the enemy knowing where we are.”
During these exercises, each person trains according to their different level of experience and rank, says 19 year old Olivia Lupsa, a Private from the 48 Engineer Squadron in Waterloo, who is training as a combat engineer and is a nuclear engineering student. She says, “I feel like it’s a very good opportunity for anybody, because even if you feel like at the time, you aren’t qualified or aren’t strong enough to be part of the military, the leadership takes very good care of you to make sure that you do make it to that level,” says Lupsa.
At the same time as Exercise Arrowhead Guardian, up to 200 soldiers of differing ranks took part in Exercise Steel Rain which is the culmination of summer courses led by the 56th Field Artillery Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery out of Brantford.
Public Affairs Officer Lieutenant (Navy) Andrew McLaughlin says Ex. Steel Rain allows reservists to test their new skills under the guidance and mentorship of their instructors.
Among other artillery equipment, reservists took part in live-fire training on C3 Howitzer cannons. That involved coming up with ‘firing solutions’ at the command and control post and relaying orders to gunners, who would fire live projectiles off into the distant landscape of the 4th Canadian Division’s old tank range. Another nearby exercise fired mortars.
Captain Bronwyn Leitch of the 56th Field Artillery Regiment is a recent university grad who works in a property management office and has been in the military for five years, and said of the exercise Thursday, “We’ve been ramping up the intensity, I guess you could say. It’s definitely been a lot of fun,” says Leitch, who laid out an initial local defense plan in the scenario that includes posted sentries around the site and three howitzer guns as well as light machine guns to defend their position if a mock attack were to occur.
While many of the new reservists are relatively young, some participants in the week’s exercises joined later in life including Private (soon to be Gunner) Jeff Butcher who is a family man from Jarvis who works in the steel industry, and joined the reserves as a ‘bucket list’ item at 44 years old. “It’s been outstanding. It’s been extremely challenging. Learning in a classroom is one thing, but putting a classroom, especially mathematical skills with mechanical equipment to the test in the field under inclement weather, very little sleep…it’s been a real uphill battle but that makes it worth it at the end.”
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