Crusader 80

Crusdader 80 was my first FTX although I was by no means unfamiliar with exercises as a member of C Sqn, QRIH at RAC Demo Sqn, Warminster. I remember the long drive from Tidworth to Southampton when we took the entire regiment of tanks along the Winchester bypass. Getting on the Dana Futura and heading out for Zeebrugge.

When we did our halt parade the officers mess waiters in best bib and tucker handed out Buck's Fizz to everyone. Unfortunately a picture was taken by someone from the Scum or some other redtop and was frontline news: "The Champagne Hussars Go To War." Our Colonel made it clear to us that the event was never to be discussed again.

We made a right mess of the newly macadamed car park in Zeebrugge too. Whose idea was it to line the tanks up at a 180 degree angle to the main gate then?

bigmal wrote:

This was my first Exercise, too, we spent most of it parked in farm yards, with many trips out to fix ailing Chieftains.
Well, we were FRG.
Enjoyed it.

Hehe, FRG. You spent most of your time whinging, when you weren't whinging you were kipping.

I was with HQ REME 3rd Armd Div on this exercise and spent most of my time on radio duty. But the fun thing was a few of us had to sleep in an old pig sty and the smell would make your eyes water. After a few hours sleeping there I went on radio stag and the 2i/c a Canadian officer said what the hell is that smell? Pigs said I and smiled.

Then the driver for CREME walked in and the Major looked at him and said pigs? The driver looked at me with a blank expression and said whats with him sarge? I said he is a Muslim really and has this thingy about pigs, the Major heard this and threw his hat at me LOL.

SteveB0456 wrote:

I remember this one we were engineer support and spent the entire 3/4 weeks parked next to a main line railway where every hour on the hour an express train rumbled by at a great rate of knots
Wasn't there are another big exercise a couple of years later in 82 I seem to remember working with the yanks on that one and we mobilised the TA as well

1982 was exercise "get off of our islands" AKA The Falklands war. Not so much an exercise, more sort of "the real thing"

Bins Newman wrote:

SteveB0456 wrote:

I remember this one we were engineer support and spent the entire 3/4 weeks parked next to a main line railway where every hour on the hour an express train rumbled by at a great rate of knots
Wasn't there are another big exercise a couple of years later in 82 I seem to remember working with the yanks on that one and we mobilised the TA as well

1982 was exercise "get off of our islands" AKA The Falklands war.  Not so much an exercise, more sort of "the real thing"

You won't find anyone here disputing that but by then Crusader was long gone.

Crusader 80, "Spearpoint" involved the whole of 1 (Br) Corps. Huge requirement for umpires. Since 3 Armd Div's GDP area was on the flank, the entire division played umpire. Every unit umpires one level up. So Div HQ will have umpired Corps HQ; Task Force HQs will have umpired Div HQs; major units umpired Task Force HQs and so on.

And so it came to pass that Command Troop 15/19H umpired HQ Task Force Hotel in 4 Div.

I was a Control Signaller AFV Class 1 and commanded a rebro Ferret mark 1. Apart from running my only ever rebroadcast ( "Hello all stations this is 4H6, this is an automatic rebroadcast net. Out." ), I just had radio stags in the back of the brand new Sultan ACVs.

CO 15/19H had more on than usual, so whenever he went roving in his FFR, he took me to lead him and map read from my Ferret. No pressure.

Because Spearpoint was so big, 3 Div deployed a week early and CPXed all the major events, including the deployment of 2 US Armored Division via Reforger.

Middle of the pretend parachute drop. "Hello Zero this is Uniform [made up callsign]. Noduff. A helicopter has crashed at grid [made up MapCo reference]" . The world turned to chaos. The umpire (from the timbre of his voice probably a LtCol) did everything by the book.

Half an hour later, and the world and his father has been thrown into a rescue. But nobody can find the wreck. The umpire's father is called into question by the senior officer on the exercise (GOC 3 Armd Div?) and questions asked as to his map reading ability.

"What makes you think a helicopter has crashed at this grid reference?"
"It says so in the Pink," mumbles a half colonel who sounds like he's been humiliated beyond the pale.

As a result, thereafter VP decreed that a NoDuff message from a Pink be prefixed, for example, "Exercise SpearPoint NoDuff" .

On the upside, come the actual Reforger phase in Spearpoint itself, I had a ringside seat for the parachute drop, parked next to the CO.

AlienFTM wrote:

Crusader 80, "Spearpoint" involved the whole of 1 (Br) Corps. Huge requirement for umpires. Since 3 Armd Div's GDP area was on the flank, the entire division played umpire. Every unit umpires one level up. So Div HQ will have umpired Corps HQ; Task Force HQs will have umpired Div HQs; major units umpired Task Force HQs and so on.


As a result, thereafter VP decreed that a NoDuff message from a Pink be prefixed, for example, "Exercise SpearPoint NoDuff" .

On the upside, come the actual Reforger phase in Spearpoint itself, I had a ringside seat for the parachute drop, parked next to the CO.

I was with 7 Armd Bde who had been ferried over from Southampton. I was in a slit trench with a dismounted GPMG (our cupola MG) when the US 2nd (Hell on Wheels) Div did their parachute jump. Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it somewhere near Hildesheim? Anyway, the overhead electric cables, strung from many pylons, were suddenly festooned with wriggling Septic parachutists who had become entangled. We were left wondering who had told the pilots of the Galaxies to drop them there.

Then an umpire drove up in a swb Landrover and informed us all with a sombre face that we'd just been hit with a tactical nuke and weren't able to fire on the Orange forces who were dangling overhead.

Hussar100 wrote:

AlienFTM wrote:

Crusader 80, "Spearpoint" involved the whole of 1 (Br) Corps. Huge requirement for umpires. Since 3 Armd Div's GDP area was on the flank, the entire division played umpire. Every unit umpires one level up. So Div HQ will have umpired Corps HQ; Task Force HQs will have umpired Div HQs; major units umpired Task Force HQs and so on.


As a result, thereafter VP decreed that a NoDuff message from a Pink be prefixed, for example, "Exercise SpearPoint NoDuff" .

On the upside, come the actual Reforger phase in Spearpoint itself, I had a ringside seat for the parachute drop, parked next to the CO.

I was with 7 Armd Bde who had been ferried over from Southampton.  I was in a slit trench with a dismounted GPMG (our cupola MG) when the US 2nd (Hell on Wheels) Div did their parachute jump.  Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it somewhere near Hildesheim?  Anyway, the overhead electric cables, strung from many pylons, were suddenly festooned with wriggling Septic parachutists who had become entangled. We were left wondering who had told the pilots of the Galaxies to drop them there.

Then an umpire drove up in a swb Landrover and informed us all with a sombre face that we'd just been hit with a tactical nuke and weren't able to fire on the Orange forces who were dangling overhead.

Indeed. 1 and 2 Divs covered the Aller/Leine gap and the ex climaxed with Orange being drawn into a killing zone West of Hildesheim and Hangover and slaughtered

[quote="AlienFTM"]

Hussar100 wrote:

AlienFTM wrote:

Crusader 80, "Spearpoint" involved the whole of 1 (Br) Corps. Huge requirement for umpires. Since 3 Armd Div's GDP area was on the flank, the entire division played umpire. Every unit umpires one level up. So Div HQ will have umpired Corps HQ; Task Force HQs will have umpired Div HQs; major units umpired Task Force HQs and so on.

Indeed. 1 and 2 Divs covered the Aller/Leine gap and the ex climaxed with Orange being drawn into a killing zone West of Hildesheim and Hangover and slaughtered

I don't remember much slaughtering going on tbh. Perhaps it was the Apfelcorn.

We did have a bad experience after endex. Our troop was routed along an autobahn to get to the mustering area. Of course we all had the flashing lights on stalks stuffed into the IR socket on each cupola. Our Charlie tank started to have mechanical problems, later diagnosed as a gearbox problem (unusually) but it was trying to limp onto the hard shoulder when a BMW driven by a Boxhead slapped straight into the back of it. The driver was "tot" on impact, he got one of the towhooks straight in the gob.

Now the funny thing is, the crew had been at the Apfelcorn and weren't entirely with it so the driver (one Dom Kane) got out and fetched the wrecking bar from the toolbin and commenced trying to prise said BMW from the back before somebody stopped him.

Then monkeys arrived and set up a road block. One of them came over to find out what had happened. Turns out he was a septic and when our Tp Sgt spoke to him he realized we were Brits (even if almost 100% Irish) and within 30 seconds these guys disappeared up the autobhan. I think it was about 30 minutes before the proper monkeys arrived and in the meantime we just sat there with the Charlie c/s and it's attachment sticking out into the autobahn.

Tbf  Spearpoint didn't end at all well. 2 US Armored (Hell on Wheels) found themselves in Hildesheim city centre toe to toe with the German Panzerdivision (can't remember which. Also can't remember who was Blue or Orange: both swapped sides through the exercise depending on the exigencies of the exercise phase) and relived 1945.

Upshot, the Manöverschaden bill was smashed with three days left, EndEx was called and everyone went home. Stand fast 15/19H. Our trains back to Paderborn were booked for three days hence, and Deutsche Bundesbahn needed to move heaven and earth to clear the exercise area.

So having been first out for the pre-exercise CPX, Javelin, we were also last home after three days in the woods.

AlienFTM wrote:

Tbf  Spearpoint didn't end at all well. 2 US Armored (Hell on Wheels) found themselves in Hildesheim city centre toe to toe with the German Panzerdivision (can't remember which. Also can't remember who was Blue or Orange: both swapped sides through the exercise depending on the exigencies of the exercise phase) and relived 1945.

Upshot, the Manöverschaden bill was smashed with three days left, EndEx was called and everyone went home. Stand fast 15/19H. Our trains back to Paderborn were booked for three days hence, and Deutsche Bundesbahn needed to move heaven and earth to clear the exercise area.

So having been first out for the pre-exercise CPX, Javelin, we were also last home after three days in the woods.

I believe it was the Chinook crash which caused Endex to happen. For our part we went to Rheinsalen Camp into what turned out to be a brigade harbour area. Trips were organized to Hamburg etc but I didn't go. Me, Pete Stevenson and Mickey Shearer all went into Soltau and got a Jaeger schnitzel and a few bears in a gasthoff before heading out to see if we could pick up any girls. We went to the Country Club where a notice stood at the front desk saying "No English Soldiers" and were refused admittance. We protested that we were Irish, not English. Still no chance. So we were walking down the street and found a place called "Die Rote Lantern" and it look really smart so we tried to get in. All the doors were closed but there was a bell which we rang. A little hatch opened in the door at eye level and we explained we wanted beer. The doorman told us it wasn't a pub but instead was a "Puffhaus". Pete Stevenson, thinking he was going to get bummed, turned and ran and I never saw him again until next day. Me and Mickey found somewhere else but got separated and by the time I wanted to go back I couldn't find transport until I spotted a four tonner sat by the road. The lads invited me onboard. All was well until somebody said in a very dark voice, "Somebody here isn't from 3 Queens". The bloke beside me told me I'd been rumbled and gave me a couple of hints to say which platoon and company I was in but I was busted. Then they picked me up and tossed me over the tailgate. Quite fortunately, as I was dusting myself down, a Landrover came along with a red cross on the side of it and he was going back to the harbour too. So I suppose all's well that ends well.