It is worth noting that the last time that a member of the 3rd Enfield attended the KGVI course was back in 1999/2000, when Adrian Bullock participated - while he had other members of Enfield Battalion there that he knew well, I had no such luxury! Also, the BB had decided to run both courses together, so the second years that were returning from before would be taking their course at the same time as us, although we outnumbered them about 25 to 8!
A few weeks before the course began, each person was sent a pack giving details about the course, which groups everyone would be in and the timetable for the week. It was quite nice to recognise some familiar names on the list (some from local areas and some from other courses), and I wasn’t entirely convinced that the timetable would be stuck to!
Upon arriving, the first thing to do was find out which room I would be sleeping (or not) in for the next week - as all rooms at Felden have two beds and there were a lot of people there, nearly everyone had to share, and looking at the list I found I would be sharing with one Richard Turner, star of our BB recruitment video on the Queen’s Badge Course I went on! After then turning around and being reacquainted with him, all of the people kept arriving, and talking in their little groups of people that knew each other.
The first proper activity, quite sensibly, was called “Getting to know you” which gave everyone an opportunity to put names to faces and also learn a bit more about the people we’d be spending the next week of our lives with! Also, obviously since the week is a training course, a lot of the time would be spent sitting listening to talks - I doubt many people would want to hear about the details so here are a few things from the week that sprung to mind while writing this:
Each day did feature a morning and evening prayers session, which allowed us to explore and think about our faith a little bit more - this was with the exception of Sunday morning, which featured a Church service (it was a Church in Hemel Hempstead - forgive me for not remembering the name!) which was actually led by the people on the second year course, who had been given just Saturday evening to prepare it! Nonetheless, they did a very good job though the minister did insist we wouldn’t be allowed to leave before the time the service was meant to end when they finished early!
Sunday also featured a session for photographs, meaning all of the groups could be photographed individually and as the whole course:
All groups on the course also had to prepare a prayers session, with the new entrants doing the evening ones. With us being group 1, we were the obvious candidates to go first! That happened on Tuesday evening, right after a talk from the Brigade Secretary (a tough act to follow by all means!).
At this point, it is worth noting a couple of things: firstly, KGVI participants do not tend to sleep to great extents! Secondly, with Felden being a place used a lot, it has to take health and safety into account and therefore have a fully functional fire alarm system. This proved to be the case on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when a group of us were sitting up talking at about 4am (yes, you read that right) while outside there was some lovely British summertime weather (which basically meant a lot of rain). A loud clap of thunder that followed, we think, triggered off the fire alarm and so everyone that was asleep had to make the struggle to get up! This meant going to the assembly point, which was of course outside, so some people that had to be more forcibly woken up had to run outside in whatever they were wearing!
Luckily there was no real fire, and the most sensible thing to do then was to go to bed! This was because the next day, a trip had been planned for everyone by the second years! Rumours were flying around the previous day that it would be a trip to London featuring some form of Monopoly competition, and this proved to be the case when we were told that we would all get into groups of four, travel to Green Park in London, each be given a camera and have the day to go around London taking pictures of the places on a Monopoly board! Points would be given for each, with bonus points for creativeness (i.e. being silly!).
Some people felt that the geographical makeup of the group that I was in would give us an unfair advantage - possibly true given that we had three Londoners (Ashley and Kweku from the 133rd London and myself) and one Mansfieldian (Richard from the 6th Mansfield)! However, I knew we’d probably get lost anyway…
While there was a competitive edge it was more about just having fun and working as a team, and there is a page showing our photos here. For the record we came second overall, after walking right past some obvious ones we missed!
Other things that happened included some workshops on the Thursday where we’d be able to learn different things, in my case it was a cooking workshop where I learnt not to go near a kitchen, if anything! Another popular free time thing to do was initiated by the second years, which was to play croquet on the lawn (well, why not?) - this was usually one for the evenings, with football happening in the free time during the day.
There was also one other challenge that ran throughout the week. There is a building next to the main building at Felden Lodge called the Thurso Centre, which used to be home to BB Supplies until it was outsourced. This meant the building was pretty much empty until it could be redeveloped into more accommodation, so before then it meant that we could have a bit of fun! Each group was given a room and £20 to decorate it, with the second years judging each room and deciding on a winner. Our room turned into a sort of racing track/obstacle course in a room (we couldn’t decide on anything to be fair!), and the other two rooms were a sort of beach themed room and a jungle! With what we’d done to the rooms, I wondered if the Thurso Centre would ever be the same again…
Of course by the end of the week everyone had made a lot of new friends, so it was a bit sad when Friday came around, meaning it was nearly time to go. Before that could happen, there was a Holy Communion session, and also every KGVI year features a formal lunch on the last day, where everyone has to wear uniform and it is attended by the Brigade Secretary and Brigade President, and has a number of speeches and the presentation of the certificates to the second years.
This report only really scratches the surface of what happened on KGVI, so much is there to take away from the week and I would recommend it to anyone that wants to be an Officer in the BB - I know I’ll certainly be straight back for the second year course in summer 2007!
Written by Tom Boorman