Sleeping on the Savannah
The footie is done for a few weeks so in the interest of moving away from our tribal tensions and inspired by Mike’s trucking stories from a few weeks back, I thought I would share an experience from the army with you. Don’t worry, no war stories, I want to concentrate on an exercise we did in Kenya, or more specifically the interactions with the wildlife.
There is a permanent British army base in Nanyuki in Kenya, where this exercise is run all year round. At this base you have a permanent bed space where you leave the majority of your kit, however you’re only there for a day or two at any one time, the vast majority of the time, you’re out on the Savannah and having grown up a bit of an Animal Planet geek, I couldn’t wait. There were too many incidents to share them all so I’ll narrow it down to three that stood out. If the article is enjoyed by the community, I can always do a follow up.
Our first night, the transport dropped us off in the bush and we quickly set about making a boma before dark. For anyone unfamiliar with what a boma is, you basically encircle yourself with thorny bushes and would generally build a fire in the middle, both things being designed to keep the wildlife at bay and are effective for the most part. We had razor wire so no requirement for all the bush cutting, however as soon as it got dark if you shone your torch out into the darkness, you would catch the eye shine of dozens of pairs of eyes looking back at you. Quite unnerving to say the least but night two was when shit got real…
The elephant
Elephants are beautiful, intelligent creatures but notoriously grumpy and not to be messed with. Africa’s third biggest killer, behind hippos and buffalo. Assuming you see them first and give them a wide berth (which we did most days) they would leave you alone. One night in particular however, that’s not how it panned out.
We were due to carry out a dawn attack on a specified target and we had a 5 mile ‘insertion tab’ which basically means you’re dropped off 5 miles from the target and would ‘tab’ (tactical advance to battle) the rest of the way. Being fully tactical, there’s no use of white light so you stand approximately 1 metre behind the man in front, in one long snake formation. Literally all you can see is the man in front and you just keep following him. About an hour into the tab, the still of the night air was broken by a sound I can only describe as somebody angrily blowing the worlds biggest trumpet. It was so loud and it was THERE!! I mean right f**king there!!! We froze, unsure what to do. There was a second deafening trumpet, we started to back off and then it charged. I never saw it, only heard it but what I could hear was trees coming down and the ground shaking. Safe to say, any essence of remaining tactical went right out the window, as about 100 squaddies chucked their weapons and kit and scattered into the darkness. It was absolutely terrifying. The only one of us who actually saw it was the platoon commander who was point man (at the front). He said afterwards the only thing going through his head was “Oh no, not like this…”
On this exercise, we had sensors fitted to our body armour and weapons and after every section of the exercise, a team would turn up with a flat screen and projector and show you all what you’d just done. Little figures similar to an early computer game would appear on the screen with our names above it. It was a training tool to show what you did well/not so well etc. Safe to say, it was funny watching afterwards as this neat snake formation suddenly scattered in every direction. I’ll never forget the sound of that first trumpet though. That was the first but not the last time I felt genuine primal fear on this trip. That sudden realisation that getting out of this is far from a foregone conclusion.
The leopard??
So I’ve headed this the leopard but that’s just an educated guess as we didn’t actually see what it was on this, the most harrowing night we spent.
We’d finished for the day and went to set up what’s known as a harbour area. Basically we would push into an area of cover and move into a triangular shape for all round defence, two men in each ‘basher area’ under your poncho, spaced about 10 metres apart and three stag positions at each point of the triangle. Generally for the last hour of daylight, you’re allowed to move about ‘non-tac’ (non tactical) so you can cook, smoke, use white light and generally shoot the breeze. As soon as it’s dark though, no white light, no flame, no talking, stag positions manned and everyone else gets the head down.
The peace however was being disrupted by some furious whispering coming from a nearby basher area. Safe to say this got the attention of our sergeant who barrelled over demanding to know what was going on. This was audible from where we were and I could hear one of our guys adamant that there was something in a nearby bush. In the interests of safety, the sergeant investigated using white light but nothing was found and he promptly scolded the offender and told him in no uncertain terms to keep his trap shut. Which he did… for approximately 10 minutes before unleashing the most blood curdling scream I’ve ever heard. We jumped up, white light on and found in one movement, he’d been dragged 10 metres out from under his basher area and he had four holes in his leg, around an inch deep where the canines of the animal had pierced his leg through his sleeping bag.The size of the bites and strength of the animal led us to conclude this had to have been a leopard but none of us had eyes on it and safe to say, there wasn’t much sleeping done in that particular harbour area after that. Knowing you’re being hunted is not a nice feeling.
The lions and the herd
So after 7 long weeks, the final night of the exercise. We were coming off a sleep deprivation week and the one final push was an all night insertion tab and then a dawn attack. The rain was coming down in sheets as it only does in Africa, visibility was extremely poor and the mud bath the ground had turned into, made for difficult progress.
We’re all issued night vision in the shape of a monocle which attaches to your helmet and can be pulled down over one eye to provide your night vision. It has its downsides however. Everything is slightly magnified and because it’s only over one eye, that messes with your depth perception and the green light you see through, destroys your night vision when you remove it so generally, point man will wear his and everyone else just follows his lead.
About 6 hours into the tab, point man raised a fist signalling ‘Go firm’ or ‘Stop’ in civvy speak. The platoon stops and takes a knee, none of us sure what he’s seen. At this point the low growls start from our right hand side. Being the aforementioned animal planet geek, I knew exactly what the sound was and a quick peek through the thermal scope on my weapon confirmed it. Lions! They weren’t hunting however, they were sheltering from the rain. One unfortunately was right in our path so all we could really do, was wait until it moved. Little did we know however that on the left side of the track was a herd of buffalo. They must have caught the lions scent because they started to stampede, which was what brought them to our attention. Now this was terrifying, I’ve never heard or felt anything like it. The noise was deafening and the ground shaking as if there was a minor earthquake and it was so loud, you couldn’t make out what direction they were coming from or headed and the only place to run was straight into a pride of lions. We knelt there in the pitch darkness and pouring rain, trying to make ourselves as small as possible and just waiting to be skittled by the stampeding herd. Thankfully, after what felt like 10 minutes but was probably no more than one, the noise started subsiding as they moved away. Happily enough, they had also caused the lion in our path to shuffle off out our way and with that, we pushed on and competed our exercise. Safe to say however, that moment left an impression on us. The realisation that you’re not even close to being too of the food chain, is humbling.
Maximilian
Ok, so I know I said three but knowing the sense of humour of some of you, I’ll finish with this, knowing some of you will no doubt find great humour in it 😉
Our final week in Kenya wasn’t part of the exercise, it was what the army call adventure training but really was a bit of a holiday, doing some tourist stuff and having a good drink at night. One of the places we went was a chimpanzee sanctuary, predominantly full of chimps who had seen their families massacred by poachers and had been taken to the sanctuary, often as babies because they wouldn’t survive in the wild alone. As such, most were afraid or aggressive towards humans. One such chimp, went by the name of Maximilian.
So we’d been walking around, doing what you do in these places when suddenly a huge male chimp comes charging out the bushes on two legs, frantically swinging his left arm like a windmill. It was amusing for about two seconds, at which point it became clear he was winding up a half brick. He launched it through the wires of the fence and hit me square in the mouth, splitting my bottom lip and leaving me with a scar that can still be seen today, although frankly I was lucky to escape with my teeth.
Safe to say, sympathy and empathy are in short supply amongst squaddies and rather than come to my assistance, my platoon promptly rolled about laughing. I had the last laugh however, as one of them laughed so hard he fell into the electric fence. Now THAT was funny. Or it would have been had I not been spitting out mouthfuls of blood…
Anyway troops, that’s some of my experiences of sleeping on the Savannah. Hopefully it will have been of interest to some of you and if not, the footie will be back soon. Walk on!
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