On the 18th - 20th March, we had our annual "operation dragnet", which is when we camp over a weekend with the focus being the Saturday, On the Saturday, the PL's/Senior Scouts/Young Leaders, leave their patrols. The Patrols - normally led by their APL's, spend the day hiking using army ration packs whereas the others "hunter patrol" go around in full combats and hunt the patrols by either taking their lives (cotton wrapped around their wrists) or preferably taking the nicer items from their ration packs.
We arrived on Friday evening and set up our tents which was pretty quick considering most of the scouts hadn't pitched a tent since last may!
We then went into the hut at the site (Briaslands) where we split up into our patrols, I was in the hunter patrol which consisted of: Me, codename :NEXUS (because I'm a techy) Tom, codename :TOMAHAWK (speaks for itself) Finn, codename :FINNBAR (again, speaks for itself) Alex, codename :HARDNUT (because he got hit by car and the car broke not him!) Simon, codename :PAPA BEAR and Simon's Land rover, codename :THE PIG.
After deciding the all important code names, we looked at the route - the "normal" patrols were not allowed to see this until the morning and were currently packing their day bags.
After we had planned some of the places where we would intercept them we also packed our day bags and set up all the equipment ready for breakfast on Sunday before going to bed.
On Saturday morning we had breakfast from our ration packs and after sorting out the radios etc...the first patrol - the hawks set out....in the wrong direction so our first job as hunter patrol was to find them and set them right. All the radios had already stopped working so although we could speak to the leaders via Alex's mobile phone we couldn't speak to any of the patrols. After going down the road for quite a while we were picked up by Simon in "the pig" and were dropped off at the top of a closed road, we quickly made our way down on foot - without the leaders, and wen't a little way along the footpath the patrols would be coming along although we had already mist two.
The two patrols that were left - Merlins and Kestrels were successfully intercepted and had lives taken off them. We were then driven in the pig passed wick to a section of four fields which no patrols had passed through yet and set up our first ambush in the area, first we looked around the area and then hid behind a tree and intercepted the first patrol which was the hawks - the patrol that had gone the wrong way at the start, this time we decided to take food, sweets etc.. instead of the their lives so we could ambush them again later.
The next patrol, the kestrels, came through in a similar fashion.
We then reorganized our strategy for the next patrol, I moved to the other side of the road to see them coming and the others changed fields to an easier place to ambush from, unfortunately because the next patrol - the eagles - had got lost and came from the wrong direction and therefore saw us before we saw them, despite this small hiccup we successfully ambushed them and sent them on there way. By this time it was 1:00pm and therefore the last patrol, the merlin's, would have to set up a poncho and trangia for lunch, so we chose one of the middle fields and cooked our lunch as well whilst 'dancing' to some epic music. The leaders then dropped by briefly and then left us to pack up get into positions for the final patrol. We then ambushed them very successfully much to my APL's annoy-ens (it was my patrol). We were about to leave when we realized that Finn had lost one of his radio's so we had to spend ages looking for it, eventually we decided that one of the Merlin's (my patrol) had stolen it and got in James's car. James dropped us by the A46, we then went along some fields in the opposite direction to which the patrols should have been coming in towards st. Catherine's. We found a perfect field and set up a perfect ambush but 1 hour later and the patrols still hadn't come, so we were sent up to charmy down airfield to look for them before being told that they had got so lost that they were miles away. We then went through some farms (and barbed wire fences!) to reach James again. We then drove to Upton Cheyney where we ambushed (or walked into and took them by slightly more surprise then they took us by) the Eagles. We then walked up the path and hid deep into a hedge. It was all going very well until we realized that the eagles were the last patrol. We then went back to the campsite before being sent out to find the Merlin's with James. They were hopelessly lost and kept telling us over and over that they were stuck in a barbed wire compound. It wasn't helped by the fact that they could only speak over the radio in two second intervals because their battery was dying. I then had the idea of contacting them via the radio that they took from Finn earlier and managed to get them to turn it on and from that determined roughly where they were.When we arrived we went over to a nearby cow shed where we presumed they were, were we found they farmer who unlocked all the land for us where we found them. Most of the patrol then went back in James' car but because there wasn't enough room, me, Tom, Alex and Matthias walked. We were almost back when James came to pick us for the rest of the way back. When we got back we went up to the campfire for fish and chips which were very nice except the chip shop had got the order wrong and there wasn't any for James. We spoke quite late and went to bed at about 11:00.
The next morning we cooked breakfast in patrols on gas and ate (full English). We then did archery and the blind fold trail before going to lunch. We then took down our tents and loaded up our kit before leaving at 4:30
