REPUBLIC OF RESISTANCE!

ONCE AGAIN WE FIND OURSELVES STRAYING SOMEWHAT INTO THE POLITICISED REALM AS IS INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO AVOID GIVEN THE STATE OF THE WORLD AT TIMES AS OF LATE, ESPECIALLY FOR STEWBACCA WHO’S BRINGING US FURTHER NEWS FROM THE HIVE OF ACTIVITY THAT IS TAIWAN IN RECENT MONTHS. WITH AN INCREASING FOCUS ON STRENGTHENING NOT ONLY NATIONAL DEFENCE ON A MILITARY OR OFFICIAL LEVEL, BUT WITH NUMEROUS GRASS ROOTS OR ‘SELF-HELP’ GROUPS SPRINGING UP ISLAND-WIDE TO PROVIDE STRONGER COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS AND ACHIEVE GOALS ON A LOCAL LEVEL AS WELL AS IMPROVE PEOPLE’S ABILITIES TO DEAL WITH NATURAL DISASTERS AND EVERYDAY INCIDENTS. AS A RESULT HE NOW BRINGS THINGS UP TO DATE.

It’s been a while (nearly a year at this point) since I last delved into the local movements regarding Taiwanese people’s desires to stand up and fight if the day comes, with our Team’s activities at CAMP66 covered back in ‘Airsoft Central Gets Real’ in Issue 149, although ‘Military’ Anny Wu was also good enough to cover a whole weekend of such activities in her ‘SUT - Small Units, Big Ideas’ article more recently in Issue 155.

Suffice to say, nobody is resting on their laurels here on island, particularly the younger generations, but with the recent election results maintaining the democratic progressive party’s control of the presidency, and Tsai Ying Wen’s departure after two terms set for May when her successor Lai Ching Te coming into office with a similar, if not stronger mindset towards Taiwan’s individual identity and desire to defend its democracy, it seems everyone is coming to the realisation that resilience is a virtue we can all develop.

From the more overtly firearms training related activities I cover back in ‘Behind Every Blade Of Grass’ way back in Issue 143 in 2022, to more generalised training that looks to prepare people for disaster relief and self-rescue after likely injuries sustained from events whether they be man-made or general results of living on the pacific rim of fire; earthquakes are still something I have to get used to that were never a thing back in Blighty! Many people from all facets of life are actively seeking out training and paying with their own time and money to better themselves and become more of an asset if things arise.

In previous years I’ve taken more of an observer’s role in terms of reporting what others have been organising and participating with however, having gained permanent residency this time last year and seen not only the continuing Ukraine situation and its impact on people here and “them’ns” across the strait no doubt learning lessons from the repercussions against Russia and modifying their calculus ongoing, and now the situation in Israel/Gaza as well as numerous other places, it has become somewhat of an unavoidable fact of life we must all face… the world doesn’t half seem to be going to S@#* a bit as of late!

With that in mind not only my usual skirmish teammates, many of whom have made long-term lives for themselves here, have families to consider, or in a few cases have even straight up changed nationality to integrate, we all feel this is just as much our concern; “Taiwan may not be our home country, but it is our home, and it is a country”, as I like to put it. Among other groups locally, we have begun broadening our activities and I have been moving between various circles or groups to help enable such efforts and bring ideas and people together.

A Group Like No Other

Some time back I happened to meet a likeminded fellow foreigner here who has been here considerably longer than me, but who has more experiences related to active military service, as well as in live fire competitive shooting, and who has also spent a great deal of time as a photographer and videographer not only in some hairy situations overseas, but integrating with local aboriginal tribes and telling their stories, usually themselves being at odds somewhat with the mainstream government and ‘Chinese’ Taiwanese who came over and settled after the civil war of early and mid-previous century.

Eventually within our growing mutual friend and acquaintance group we realised there were a decent number of foreigners or English speaking Taiwanese who wanted to undertake basic skill at arms training but had no prior experience and didn’t want to pay hand over fist for somewhat expensive specialised training for enthusiasts the likes of which I have reported on before, as well as not being comfortable in those kind of training environments.

Thus from the middle of last year we’ve been holding ‘pistol training’ classes, usually with some additional SMG/Carbine work thrown in for fun wrap up experiences at the end of each lesson, to help demystify safe weapons handling for many who are total beginners, and obviously have extremely limited or no opportunity to get hands on with guns in Taiwan unless they have prior experience or service locally or overseas.

Nonetheless it’s been very rewarding ‘giving back’ and potentially helping to grow the community and diversity of people who are now more comfortable and confident in themselves and their own abilities; we’ve taken some who have never had any experience of guns whatsoever and had them confidently and consistently printing fairly tight groups on paper IPSC targets at 10m by then end of the first lesson, with my friend providing the lead instruction and range control, while I coach some of the total beginners and provide the tools with my own ever growing collection of GBB pistols and support gear such as magazines, pouches and holsters, with many of our students deciding to buy their own equipment to train with in class and their own time to maintain their skills.

Of course we are not seeking to train people in paramilitary skills and have to make clear that while there are a number of outfits of local ex or serving military personnel doing so it would be a very grey area for foreigners to start doing so outside of the now overt services personnel from other forces who are doing so legitimately. We’re very much not training soldiers, just giving people who want it a useful skill set and basic familiarity with the safe handling and operation of small arms should the day come they find one as a ‘battlefield pick up’ or

“FROM THE MORE OVERTLY FIREARMS TRAINING RELATED ACTIVITIES I COVER BACK IN ‘BEHIND EVERY BLADE OF GRASS’ WAY BACK IN ISSUE 143 IN 2022, TO MORE GENERALISED TRAINING THAT LOOKS TO PREPARE PEOPLE FOR DISASTER RELIEF AND SELF-RESCUE AFTER LIKELY INJURIES SUSTAINED FROM EVENTS WHETHER THEY BE MAN-MADE OR GENERAL RESULTS OF LIVING ON THE PACIFIC RIM OF FIRE” otherwise and are forced to defend themselves or others with it if things do go kinetic here.

As a result of these classes we were both, along with some other foreign friends in different disciplines, drawn in to cooperation with Academia Formosana, one of the larger local (and predominantly aboriginal and religiously pertinent self-help organisations) focused on preparing their own community to help itself in the face of any disasters, with improved medical and trauma training, along with more specialist communications, intelligence, information warfare and other such fields which are finding wide interest island-wide from those who want to better prepare themselves for a shifting global and local situation.

Drills And Skills

In October we had the privilege of being invited along to their first drill on the coast of Taiwan, with a variety of active and former services personnel and very experienced airsofters essentially acting as BluFor and invading OpFor to provide ‘atmosphere personnel’ for a myriad of self-help organisations from every region of the island to test their capabilities and work together in a patchwork of medic units, planners and liaisons for active service forces that would operate in such areas during an enemy action.

Again the focus is not so much on fighting the battle itself in this case, but for civilian assistance units surviving it and making informed decisions under stress; over the course of a weekend as observers we saw a genuine and marked improvement in the situational awareness and planning capabilities of the self-help groups as a result of the mock battle unfolding around them and previous decisions made and their outcomes, with all parties regrouping and debriefing after each phase of the action to talk about lessons learned and how to implement them.

Further to this, in mid-January we were all invited as guest speakers to discuss our own aspects and observations of the weekend and what we saw in terms of improvements and accomplishments, and where the next action could lead. Suffice to say the participants were all refreshingly frank with their own self-assessments, acknowledging where things went wrong, which can be a culturally enforced rarity at times here. It certainly feels rewarding and encouraging; as I told the participants on stage that such a diverse and widespread group of people islandwide are all moving with like-minded purpose and converging on the same ideas, actions and outcomes. As a result I made a lot of new friends in the local community with experiences in medical training and defence training as a result.

One of the guys present is an experienced EMT who has also been overseas to help with care in conflict zones, and more recently to Poland for extensive tactical training with some of his friends, and there are still a significant number of Taiwanese who have gone to Ukraine to help out with trauma care or direct frontline efforts (something that along with the helpful initiatives during COVID have no doubt bolstered Taiwan’s international image and capital on a wider basis) the continuing argument here being that ‘if we are not prepared to fight for ourselves and others, why would anyone else come to our aid?’

Of course the Ministry of Defence has increased mandatory national service terms back up to a full year, and as of writing numerous stories are circulating on local mainstream and social media of the first year long service cadre’s final assessment and the improvements in training and national defence reform that many see as long overdue; progress, even if slow, is progress, long may it continue here.

As a result of meeting him I managed to organise his first English language delivered ‘stop the bleed’ course making use of his extensive abilities and great personable nature and teaching capabilities to take the core foreign element of our team for basic trauma training.

I’ve done multiple courses throughout my life as a result of university sports group administration and in professional settings due to the hazardous nature of some of my past employment, but it’s nonetheless

EXPERIENCE OF GUNS WHATSOEVER AND HAD THEM CONFIDENTLY AND CONSISTENTLY PRINTING FAIRLY TIGHT GROUPS ON PAPER IPSC TARGETS AT 10M” an ever-changing landscape with medical and first response training being a constantly updated syllabus.

We all came away with a much greater understanding, especially thanks to his use of excellent ‘bleed simulator’ props that really challenge you to make effective use of the theoretical skills learned and discussed. All too often first aid training is a verbal class or basic demonstration of how to react to situations, but when there really is red fluid pouring from a mock injury and you have to put an end to it under pressure, it is a much more valuable learning experience!

Continuation Training

Further to these efforts we had a decent turnout of around a third of the team joining an inaugural training session for our group making use of contacts and resources within the serving or ex forces community locally who provided further basic skill at arms training to try and bring up the skill and safety awareness level of all of those who attended.

While some of us have received training from military personnel in the past, but not necessarily seen active service for various reasons, it nonetheless helps to go over the fundamentals en masse and have more qualified people relay ideas or updated doctrines to us all. Again, a full morning spent in the classroom environment and afternoon out on the range at the ‘Pewniversity’ site I mentioned back in Issue 159.

We all came away enthused and wanting to develop our skills and improve our abilities, even if just for the airsoft aspect and being able to work around each other with a better awareness of safe handling in groups in future, and we also have more plans that the ‘head shed’ have been discussing for incorporating lessons learned into more advanced MilSim games or other events. Personally I like the idea of the live fire ‘InRange’ style brutality matches you can find on Youtube where people are doing competitive shooting but in full gear and having to deal with battlefield-themed challenges and encumbrances rather than just shooting as quickly and effectively as they can against the clock - there are plenty of ideas floating around the team and a core group of us that are pushing for more from ourselves and each other to make us more useful and resilient on the field but also if hazardous situations do end up finding us out here.

Similarly, the organisers of Academia Formosana are also interested in cooperating with us as further OpFor to challenge and cut the teeth of their own people and further share and develop skills, which is an exciting prospect to be involved with.

Beyond our own activities there are also an increasing corps of people in every major city (and even elsewhere) who are taking to local parks in the evenings to disseminate disaster relief, trauma, triage, casevac, TCCC/TECC, telecomms, and basic tactical training to their related groups, building everyone’s skills and cross-training each other to improve the overall level of preparedness for anything that might arise in our lives here. Ranging from the likes of school or university groups, community centres, or just likeminded adults who find each other by word of mouth or through social media pages that help to coalesce those seeking ‘self-help’ groups with some going as far as being ‘preppers’ with loadouts or go bags prepared of basic survival and medical supplies.

Some of these are even becoming popular items on local online selling outlets for people to purchase essentials in a convenient pack that can be kept at home or in their offices or vehicles - or all three - to ensure nobody is caught short, especially important considering the population density of Taiwan and the fact that everyone has to drink bottled/stored and purified water due to the nature of the plumbing and tropical environment, if infrastructure fails here, people could find themselves in trouble fairly rapidly - there’s been an noticeable uptick in attendees to ‘Kuma Academy’ - one of the largest domestic training organisations, as well as CAMP66 where we were filmed previously, and numerous other similar groups or NGOs.

Our group have been working towards preparedness on this level and I’m in the process of sourcing legitimate imported Combat Application Tourniquets (CATs) one thing stressed in our ‘stop the bleed’ training was to beware of imitations or ‘training’ versions as these can cause more problems or complications if used in real situations! Make sure you have appropriate equipment and not the unashamed knock offs, most apparently coming from some of the unscrupulous types across the water, fellow shooters!

So, that’s somewhat of the landscape as it stands recently, the incursions of the PLAAF and now even encroachment of civilian airliners and recently harassment of civilian vessels operating within Taiwanese waters close to the mainland have all been a cause for concern, along with the somewhat alarming ‘missile launch’ alerts we received as a result of a mistranslation some weeks ago as a Chinese satellite launch tracked high over our airspace; evidently the warning systems work, at least… just a little too well at times!

In the usual fashion these mishaps were taken with a somewhat gallows humour mentality I’ve come to expect from people here; the constant threats seem to bother the outside world and get sensationalised by foreign media a lot more than people here seem to care about. Hopefully nothing will come of it all, but, if the worst occurs, we should at least all be a little more confident and prepared to hold out on our ‘porcupine island’.

As I relayed not too long ago when asked about my stance on such things… Tell them if they come for me, I’m right where I’m supposed to be…

Many thanks again to ‘Jerry’ Cheng-Yi Wu (IG @ Jerrywugaga) for his excellent supporting photos of our training session at ‘Pewniversity’. AA