132 Aviation Supply Squadron Royal Logistics Corps

London Poppy Day 22

Charity work is something 132 Sqn always embraces, this time participating in London Poppy Day 22 (LPD). LPD is an annual event organised by the Royal British Legion (RBL) to help raise funds for The Poppy appeal. Every city in the UK has a similar day but the LPD is by far the biggest and raises the most money for the RBL. On LPD over 2500 service personnel and many more civilian volunteers head into the capital, to every railway station, on one day, to raise money.

A team of 25 personnel from Wattisham Flying station, led up by a SSgt from 132 Sqn, set off from Stowmarket at 0500hrs and headed into London. By around 0700hrs the volunteers had arrived at Farringdon Station and were stood with buckets at the ready to begin collecting.

Although it was a long day for the volunteers, everyone seemed to enjoy engaging with people and talking to them about different things to do with service life. Clearly some people in London still love to stop and chat. At 1900hrs the collecting stopped, all the money was collected by RBL staff and the team packed up. They were definitely ready for a quick bite to eat and a drink (or two) at the afterparty in Leadenhall Market, before heading to the train to Wattisham.

A huge thanks to all the personnel that volunteered their own time to help collect on the day. A staggering £11,868.15 was raised in just 12hrs, beating the previous totals.

Ex Knees Bend 22

Looking back at all the exercises that the Sqn has taken part in this year; Ex KNEES BEND was on a different scale, however created the same challenges. A group of novice skiers departed for Norway to compete in the RLC Ski Championships (Alpine). The team would have to drive through Europe before making it to Hemsedal Ski Resort, located in Hallingdal, Norway. Over a period of 3 weeks the team learnt many different disciplines that make-up Alpine ski racing, such as Super G, Giant Slalom, Slalom and Team Events.

Our team of complete novices started training with the basic drills, walking on snow with ski boots on up and down the hill, stopping, turning, control, falling, getting back up, body placement and positioning. With each new day came a different slope with slopes starting from 620m to 1,450m. Training took place for 5 days a week from 8am to 3pm with PT session on every other day. All this was done under the guidance of trained and experienced personnel of RLC Ski team and the UNIQ Snowsports trainers, who put together a great competition.

The Squadron continues to sustain 1 Aviation Brigade Combat Team as part of the BSG, whilst supporting the transition of the army Apache Helicopter (AH) E model and sustaining the legacy AH Mk 1 with aviation spares. Although the Squadron has been busy with support to AH within Wattisham Flying station and in the deployed space, we have been extremely busy with a number of other tasks including support to Ex CERBERUS 22 which saw both the OC and 2IC deploy for several weeks supporting the BCT validation.

Battlefield Study Tour

Some members of the Sqn took some time to visit Arhem and Oosterbeek, Netherlands, the area of Operation Market Garden. It was time to relive the operation that was fought by 1st British Airborne Divisions and its allies of 101 US Airborne Division and the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade against the German forces.

The troops had an enlightening experience and learned many lessons on this BFS, however as logisticians, the main lesson to take away was prior planning and preparation with good intelligence is critical to supply troops.

Overall, our team, was awarded a CO’s coin for persevering and never giving up, having started every race towards the back of the field