6 RIFLES Medics are deployed to Armenia on a Defence Engagement task, working alongside the Kansas National Guard in order to deliver medical training to the Armenian Fire Service. Private (Pte) Rachel Ward highlights her initial impression of the deployment so far.
The low point of my first day was when I was teaching the fire-fighters about assessing a patient’s breathing. I had just finished a sentence and was waiting for the translator to speak to the Armenians when she turned to the two Americans I was working with and said “please can someone translate her to me?”. Despite being English, it seemed my English was less understandable than the Americans.
Teaching gets underway.
However, my spirits were lifted when we got back to the boarding school and everyone turned up in the sports hall to do yoga with Pte Cox, as part of our evening team building activities. There was some resistance from the team to turn up but that changed when we all watched the Staff Sergeant fall on his head several times!
The next morning we all woke up relaxed from yoga, apart from Cpl Scott whose body didn’t necessarily agree with the previous night’s activities. We travelled to our various fire stations, where we were focusing on teaching them an effective method for assessing casualties. Cpl Pike and LCpl Lake were both at Gyumri and whilst they were there the fire station received a call out. The fire-fighters returned with numerous pictures and this allowed the medics to further understand what the fire fighters do and their capabilities.
Cpl Scott was working in Artik, teaching the fire fighters CBRN. As he is an extremely dynamic teacher he quickly got very hot so asked the chief if he could open the window. The chief delegated this to another fire fighter who disappeared out of the room for a few minutes. He then returned to the classroom and proceeded to remove the entire window frame from the wall.
After four days of teaching we rotated and the following day we set off to our new fire stations where would spend the next four days teaching. Today marked the Armenian holiday of Vardavar, the celebration of water. The tradition is to pour water over each other to clean your sins. We began our lessons as normal, and took a break at 11.00. As we sat outside the fire station eating apricots from their trees, a little boy, no older than 5, came into the fire station and started firing his water pistol at one of the fire-fighters. The fire-fighters disappeared into the station and returned armed with water bottles and buckets. A few more children came and joined in with the water fight which was quite harmless until the chief emerged from the fire station with the fire hose.
For the next 30 minutes everyone proceeded to run around the fire station throwing water at each other and got completely drenched.
The Armenian holiday of Vardavar in full swing.
Post-water fight morale was very high and we continued with our teaching. The fire fighters were more engaged and participated more actively in our lessons. We then took a break for a traditional Armenian BBQ lunch. Whilst we were in the middle of our BBQ, Capt Patching and Cpl Pike arrived. We told them about this morning’s water fight and together made a plan to get revenge on the chief.
I went with one of the fire fighters to get some water for the attack, however whilst in the fire station we decided to change our target to Capt Patching. We managed to corner her and proceeded to throw water over her, I think this is the only time I will get away with throwing 3 litres of water over our boss. This led to another hour long water fight; after losing again we finally learnt that fire fighters are always going to win a water fight. After having numerous buckets of water thrown over us we decided to make a tactical retreat to the car and return to the boarding school that we were staying at.
When we arrived at the boarding school we were all exhausted from the day’s events, so an early night was in order.
By Pte Ward (with a little help from Pte Cox, LCpl Lake, Cpl Pike and Cpl Scott)