Army

Once again, Sutton Valence was to the fore in the 4th Division Patrols Competition, coming second this year and bringing back three Silver medals. We came 7th in the 4th Division shoot, and 2nd overall in the Kent Schools Rifle Association meeting, with Cpl. Katie Slaughter winning 2nd best shot. At last we won the Tr-School Shooting Competition against ourneighbours, King's Canterbury and St. Edmund's Canterbury, displacing St. Edmund's from a long string ofwins. Cpl. Chris Thomson was 2nd overall in this with Cadet James Parrett coming 3rd. At Bisley, we came away with three cups, including the Queens Regiment cup, eight silver spoons and L/ Cpl Andrew West in the Bisley "Cadet 100". Our Captain was Sgt. Alison Brannan. Within school, Westminster won the boys' Assault Course Competition and Valence won the girls'; whilst Sutton took the Drill Cup again. The beautiful March and Shoot cup, presented by Mr. & Mrs. Norris, in memory of their daughter Becky (an exCCF Cadet who died in a tragic accident with Oxford University OTC), was competed for, forthe first time, this summer. The competition took place in the Pippingford/Crowborough area, and a number of teams became directionally dysfunctional and locationally challenged, with a dire tendency to veer North all the time, possibly following that little needle on the compass. The result was a win for Westminster and Valence who proved strong enough to resist the magnetic attraction ofNorth. Sadly, we could no longer use the assault boats, since the Navy has decided that they are too dangerous for cadets, so that we had to build a floating bridge instead. The O.C. cheated by doing his duty of crossing it before anyone noticed and had a go at overturning it with him on it (or off it for preference). The Mereworth Woods Field Day was enlivened at 0300 hrs by Sgt. Pete Graham (from 7 Cadet Training Team) rewarding a number of sleepless cadets by givingthem a drill parade at rifting pace, to encourage them to sleep. It worked. We said sad farewells to Captain Ray Sabine (and his illegal beard), Flt. Lieut. Caroline Midwood (and her illegal Fortnum and Mason hampers) and Dr. Ian Gray (and his illegal dog). We shall be much more legal now. We gained Captain Paul Collins, who used to run his own Cadet Contingent in Australia. At Adventure training in the Lake District we had some weather (rather a lot of it), but great fun was had by all. Lieut. Anne Wilkinson wielded a mean camera. (We have all developed"Wilkinsontwitch", which means that when you are doing anything particularly stupid, you have to look around to see if that camera has caught you.) Flt Lt. Kay Jackson won a unit award for getting her minibus out ofa fix, but we do not ask her how it got there! As I write, an expanded and refurbished outdoor •22 range seems within our grasp and should be operational by the end of 1996.