Recently in military Category

Today is laundry and packing day. On Saturday I'm leaving to participate in my sixth International Four Days March in Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

It's probably going to be a bit tough. I'm not as well trained this year as I was last year and 160 kilometres is no less than 160 kilometres. No short cuts are available if you want the medal, which I want.

The Vierdaagskruis is special because it's a royal dutch medal which means you're allowed to wear it to a Swedish uniform. Wearable medals are by definition important :)

The fantastic woman holding the record, Annie Berkhout, is participating this year as well. She must be 88 years old by now and is marching in Nijmegen for the 67th time!

I thought there would be a letter waiting for me at home, telling if I got accepted to the next Kosovo Force or not... but my door-mat was empty when I got home from Gothenburg earlier today. Two of my friends already received their answers, one guy got a no and the other one is on the reserve-list.

So the fact that I haven't yet received any message might be a good sign... or not... Maybe they waited and sended the letters of acceptance last! I really want to go so pliiiz, bring me a positive answer!

Cooperative Jaguar 03 started three days ago in Karup in Denmark. 25 Swedes are participating in this fictitious NATO-led staff exercise. Except Swedish military personell, participants come from nine NATO-members (Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the United States) and eight NATO partner nations (Azebaijan, Estonia, Lativia, Lithuania, Moldova, Finland and Romania). All together about 500 soldiers.

The aim is to exercise a combined joint crisis response operation under UN mandate. Some of the things that will be practised: crises response planning, providing assistence to humanitarian operations, sustainability operations and force protection and security.

I guess that can come in handy when the war in Iraq is over...

The homepage looks very much like a weblog, each article is categorized and you can also leave comments on every text. I read some of the articles and learned that Karup Air Station was build by the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War, that all Danish pilotes get their basic flying traing here and that the commanding officer, Colonel Stig Østergaard, is an old Draken-pilote :)

Something called pMachine is being used to manage the website. Never heard of...

The Swedish crown princess Victoria, who currently is taking a part in a military training program at Swedint in Södertälje (the place where all Swedish personell for the overseas forces are trained) ran the famous fälttest* ("fieldtest") on 4.45 minutes.

I'm impressed!

That's really good! A lot of the guys I made my military traning with didn't manage that!

Boy, I'm really impressed! For a infantry soldier, the time limit is 5.30 and I finnshed in 5.38 (which I don't consider too bad for someone like me). To apply for the military academy the time limit is 6 minutes and for staff service personnel (for example in the overseas forces), it's 7 minutes.

* Doing a fieldtest is running 1000 meter in uniform and with all the equipment a soldier needs including weapon. The extra weight is about 14 kg.

According to Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish Armed Forces has gotten its first pilot case regarding female veils. A member of the Swedish female defenceorganization SKBR decided that she, on religious grounds, wanted to wear a veil. Participating in a course at Eksjö garnision she was taken aside and told she had to put the veil away or she couldn't continue the course.

This is interesting!

Swedish state television (SVT) was recently criticized because they wouldn't let a female reporter host a tv-show because she was wearing a veil. The veil would distract the viewers, according to SVT.

Passing McDonald's the other day I saw one of their employees wearing a headscarve with the McD-logo on.

So how will the Swedish Armed Forces deal with this? Would a headscarve in the same fabric as the Swedish uniform be okay? In about a month, this issue will be brought up at a meeting in the headquarters. I will definately monitor the outcome of these discussions.

"Swedish journalists don't cover wars very good. Half of them haven't done military service and the rest are women"

This is what our journalism teacher said when we were discussion the possibility of a war against Iraq.

I found it interesting since:
a) I have done military service
b) I am a woman

But I didn't get myself involved in any discussion with him, I am probably just an exception that proves the rule. Watching the news today (Aktuellt in SVT at 21.00) I learned that 500 journalists are participating in a military training program in the US which is preparing them for covering the war on Iraq.

These journalists will be given the opportunity to follow the American troops all the way to the front line. But of course there will be restrictions, they cannot write anything they like. They must keep to certain rules, for example not writing about on-going missions or revealing too much details.

This might be something for the Swedish Army to copy?! Military training camps for journalists. I could be the drill sergent ;)

BTW, I saw the movie "No Man's Land" yesterday and decided never to get involved in tv-journalism. Especially not from war zones.