Sunday, February 25, 2007
What you don't learn at Sandhurst
The Sunday Observer has a good look at the new skill set Prince Harry will have to quickly learn when he arrives in Iraq. Not part of your normal military curriculum but essential to survival.
'I always look out for the little kid holding his ears,' he says by way of explanation. 'When I saw that in Afghanistan [where Choate served before Iraq] you knew in a few seconds you were going to hear the boom. The kids are sponges, you know. They are always aware what's going on around them.'I hope he learns his lessons well, for his men as well as himself.
Soon a young officer more famous for partying than for soldiering - Prince Harry - will have to learn a set of skills not taught at Sandhurst. Choate's skills. He will have to learn how to survive the roads - where bombs are hidden in roadside rubbish piles and beneath the surface of the road, dug into old craters and hidden under carrion. To look for weapons that can be detonated by a command wire, by a hidden triggerman, remotely or by passive infrared.
The skills he will have to learn are in part an exacting exercise in memorising tiny changes in the environment: an old bomb crater on the road filled in, rubbish that appears where it did not exist before, a new oil drum among a roadside cluster, or one of the ubiquitous roadside concrete 'Jersey barriers' being moved.
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