98: White Troop

The Caledonian countryside rolled gently by in the windows of the minibus, empty but for a Marine Corporal and four new trainees for the School of Armour.  The running joke regarding the school’s location was that if you could drive a tank in a peat bog, you could drive one anywhere.

The chartered minibus was cleared through the gates of Ruthven Barracks, home of the 3^rd Armoured Division.  The School of Armour was technically a separate unit, but it was small enough that they operated as an organic part of the Third Armoured; the intake from each graduating class of recruits rarely rose above ten new trainees, and never more than a dozen.

The bus drew to a stop outside an admin building and the five passengers were transferred onto the back of a UM-2D flatbed, which then took them away into a maze of small barracks blocks and long rows of sheds with huge doors on the sides; the eastern quarter of Ruthven Barracks was the home turf of Bravo, Charlie and Golf Squadrons of the 14^th Cavalry Regiment, 1^st Armoured Brigade.  The truck stopped at the end of one alley of sheds that were marked four-foot-tall letters on the walls that read ‘G SQN’.  The four trainees dismounted and hauled their seabags onto their shoulders.  The Corporal led them down to the third and last shed on the left and in through a side door.  Someone grumbled that the truck could have at least taken them all the way down the alleyway.  The inside of he shed was a mess of gear and parts, looking like nothing so much as an auto-mechanic’s workshop.  Fluoro tube lights bolted into the bare metal ceiling cast a greeny-white glow across wooden workbenches, boxes and trolleys of tools, spare tyres, and random chunks of mechanical gadgetry.  Where the shed differed from an auto workshop was that instead of souped-up boy racers with flashy paintjobs and ridiculous wings on the back, the work bays were filled with monstrous tanks and tank-like vehicles decked out in various shades of brown and green.

“Welcome,” said a loud Canadian voice, echoing in the cavernous space, “to the White Troop workshop.”

Well, thought Veraa, whoever the OC is, he has a flair for theatrics.  Sure enough, the Officer Commanding stepped around the front of a nearby tank, ducking under the huge barrel of the main gun.  The metal rank pin—a pair of crossed swords—on each shoulder of his shore duty uniform marked him as a Major, and therefore the head of a cavalry squadron, presumably Golf Squadron by the markings on the walls.  The Major eyed the four trainees kindly.

“I’m Major Coonan, your OC for the next six weeks.  The School of Armour—or White Troop, as we call it—is one of the four troops in Golf Squadron.  Red, Gold and Black Troops are regular armour, but in White Troop you’ll operate cavalry and armoured vehicles alike, and even do some basic training in Mechanized Infantry roles as well.”

“Veggie bins,” chuckled the Corporal.

That afternoon, after a battery of safety lectures and procedural briefings, the four trainees were shown around the insides of an MT-14 main battle tank; ‘shown around’ in the sense that a couple of instructors stood on top of the turret and pointed things out through the hatches as the the trainees crawled and thumped around the cramped insides of the hull.  Veraa wound up in the Crew Commander’s seat at one point, in the right-hand side of the turret and squashed in next to the huge breech of the main gun.  There was a bank of screens in front of her and a hatch above her head.  One of the instructors pointed down at her through the open hatch.

“Okay, Kul’hura, between your knees there should be a lever.  Sit back in the seat and push it downward.”

She felt under the edge of the seat, leaned back, and pressed the bar downward.  The seat rose smoothly until her head and shoulders were sticking up through the hatch.  A pair of stirrups under the sides of the seat allowed her to stand pigeon-toed with her entire top half outside the turret.  From the commander’s commanding viewpoint she could see all the way around the hull, though she felt terribly exposed.  Tanks aren’t exactly subtle, and anyone standing on the roof would be an easy target.  She sat down again and pulled the bar upward, and the seat dropped smoothly back down into the hull.

After their illuminating lesson inside the MT-14, they were introduced to the rest of the armoured and cavalry line-up.  Veraa’s favourite was the Light Cavalry Reconnaisance Vehicle—LCRV, supposedly pronounced ‘L-Curve’—which was a heavily modified LM-2 jeep with only two seats.  Lightly armed and virtually un-armoured, the LCRV was built for high-speed scouting missions, soon to be Veraa’s specialty; it had no roof, doors or windshield, but it did have a sturdy rollcage and a machine gun facing the rear.  Two large cargo bins over the back wheels held water, rations, ammo, the crew’s packs, and precious little else.  The idea of zipping around behind enemy lines excited Veraa.  She remembered her mild disappointment and envy at watching a Longline buggy zipping off without her into the radioactive wastelands of Earth II.