Interest Peaked!
Article written by Captain Alan P. Vincent, OC Bravo Company
Westmount, Quebec – 23 March 2019: On Friday, 8 March 2019 members of Bravo Company presented themselves to the armoury where they were treated to a professional development session given by Mr. Kevin “Yoda” Whitenect of Tier1SOF, a Canadian military contracting company.
The Friday evening half-day session served as an eye opener to many as “Yoda” spoke on the history and development of tactical combat casualty care (TCCC). Whether lecture, storytelling or demonstration, the instructor had the infanteers attention from his first words until the very last. B-Coy soldiers came away with a new understanding of the importance of situational awareness and even more impressively, the survivability of soldiers in combat based off these simple life saving techniques.
Saturday, 9 March 2019 saw B-Coy introduced to a bit more stress and physical output as “Yoda” put them through their paces with an overview of casualty extraction methods. Very well done, he succeeded at showing the soldiers how to use their emotions to better their output (i.e. using anger and frustration to push you a little harder through that physically difficult task). Once good and sweaty the training transitioned to a troop favoured topic, offensive tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) in an urban environment. B-Coy members ran through various training techniques that allowed them to work on their fluidity and speed in approaching, entering and securing a building.
The professional development session culminated in B-Coy moving through the RMR basement clearing all unlocked rooms in an effort to make their way to the parade square where a mock building consisting of several rooms was set-up. What made this opportunity different from the other urban training that B-Coy has conducted this training year is that “Yoda” is also a war dog handler and he acted in this role during this raid. B-Coy members stacked on rooms and followed trained K9s into rooms as they methodically cleared the route to and the objective. It was very impressive to witness how efficiently the dogs were able to react to the movements and orders of the advancing soldiers and fill what can only be described as a very symbiotic relationship between K9 and sub-unit. The dogs sprinting forward to act as scouts, prepared to attack opposition with soldiers following closely behind to cover their four legged teammates.
All in all the professional development session was very well received and will surely be talked about by those present as one of the year’s highlight activities. B-Coy will definitely have to consider running similar type training events in the future.
