Welcome to another issue of Life in the Swedish Army, the weekly dump of entries from my
diary, being written as I go through
national service in the armed forces of
Sweden. See my wu in
this node if this is the first of the LitSA write-ups you've seen. It contains some background info which will be expanded later when I get to writing a proper LitSA
metanode.
It's been a great week, in preparation for standing guard at the royal castle in
Stockholm later this year we've gone through training to become certified guards, the kind you'd find working for
security companies in civilian life, except we, being military, get to carry
automatic rifles, whereas civvie guards don't. Well, not here in Sweden anyways. As part of our guard training we've also learned various things relating to
hand-to-hand combat, which is also quite fun, at least so long as you're not doing it too seriously.
Now for this week's diary entries, covering day 36-42, or July 22-28.)
22nd of July, 2002 - 07:25
Back! A wonderful holiday will now be followed by a hopefully equally wonderful week on duty. This week, we're going to do guard training, which according to rumours is quite an enjoyable bit of education. Compensating for the large amount of lectures and theory there are two large bits of
PE scheduled, but on the other hand we have all the evenings off. And thursday is
PAY DAY! Wonderful. The day so far has passed in normal order, despite a massive rainstorm. Ten minutes left of the morning calm ...
23rd of July, 2002 - 19:22
Another smooth day is approaching its end. The day began with a long but highly interesting lecture, followed by exercises in
self-defense (fun!). These lasted for four hours and were quite tiring, though I didn't get a lot of bruises, being quite a sturdy person already. We learned a couple of interesting moves, mostly different grips and defensive techniques. Like I said, it was a lot of fun.
(Notes)
Laundry exchange. Bedsheets, Towels, PE clothes, Underwear, Shirt 59, Shirt 90, T-shirts, Socks, Winter Socks, Other stuff, Earplugs.
24th of July, 2002 - 06:45
This rather nice morning had a small surprise in store for us: The main water pipe has burst, and so the entire base is without water, something which has quickly caused some bad things to happen, especially in the
lavatories and in the
canteen. According to reports the leak is HUGE, meaning it might take a while until we get our water supply back. Fortunately I've got roughly one
litre left in my water bottle, so I needn't be thirsty just yet. Hopefully what I've got will last until the leak has been repaired.
(Notes) Information needed when standing guard (
OBSLÖSA): Orientation, Watch area, Means of communicating with watch commander, Password, Opening fire, Position, Equipment, Time to be relieved.
(Notes) I've written a HUGE list of all the personal
equipment we soldiers have received so far. Quite a list, four pages long, I'll node it when I've got a lot of time to waste.
26th of July, 2002 - 08:55
Wrote a lot of stuff yesterday, but nothing diary-related. Oh Well. Yesterday was spent on even more guard training, some of the most enjoyable exercises so far, with a lot of physical exhaustion and various bruises as a result. Lots of
close combat training. In a bit, we're going to be doing our final practical exams before we're certified guardsmen. Everyone's kind of nervous, but I have a lot of faith in my own ability to pass the test. Today the day is friday and I've got a nice weekend coming. Oh and by the way, that water leak I wrote about before, they fixed it in two hours.
26th of July, 20002 - 10:37
I passed!
That concludes this week's entries. Sorry I didn't write more about the finer details of what becoming a certified guardsman includes, but it included a lot of listening to boring lectures about what's allowed and what isn't, and a lot standing still waiting for a
Bad Person to show up, taking care of him/her, and recieving comments on my performance from the instructor. So far I've only had to
shoot two people, though :)
See ya next week!
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day 22-28 |
day 43-49 -->