A cold wind howls over the dead grass here at the Edmonton Garrison's firing range Wednesday. Sgt. Ryan Vigar of the Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) stands ready in a long line with six fellow soldiers, weapons locked and loaded, as they wait for the signal.
"Standby!" cries the range commander.
"Standby! GO!"
Vigar and the others charge across the prairie at top speed, eager to make range and gun down the paper targets some 300 metres away.
"Change your sights! Change your sights!" Vigar shouts, as he readies his C7 rifle.
Brass and clouds of cordite fly as they open fire, producing firecracker pops and puffs of smoke. Then, hearts pounding, they sprint forward and do it again.
Fifty rounds, several sprints and six or so minutes later, Vigar barely seems winded – and that's despite several hours of intense competition earlier in the day.
"I'm a little tired, but I'm good."
Herculean task
A Gibbons resident, Vigar was one of about 200 troops at the Edmonton Garrison who took part in Exercise Herakles Ram this week – a three-day contest of accuracy and athleticism.
The event saw troops from the 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (which includes the Strathconas) compete to see who would take home a badass trophy: a real ram's skull mounted on a fibreglass mountain.
This was the first time the base has held this event in many years, said Col. Trevor Cadieu, commander of 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (1 CMBG). He and the rest of the senior staff revived it as a way to have troops reinvest in the basics of soldiering after years of specialized combat in Afghanistan.
The contest consisted of two parts spread over three days.
Part 1 was a relatively relaxed shooting contest where teams of 20 shot C9 machine guns, C7 rifles and Browning 9mm pistols at stationary targets from various ranges, with points given for accuracy.
Part 2, which Vigar's squad did Wednesday, was the march-and-shoot – a herculean task that challenged troops to run many kilometres and navigate an obstacle course before shooting various targets, all while under the clock and wearing about 40 pounds of gear.
Vigar says his squad started the day with a helicopter flight to Hawrelak Park at about 7 a.m., there to run about three kilometres.
About a third of that run was done wearing a gas mask, testing the troop's ability to handle chemical warfare. That's not easy, given the mask's thick filter.
"Put four straws together and breath in as hard as you can," Vigar said of the experience.
After treating a mock wounded soldier and hauling him to an extraction zone, it was back to the base for the obstacle course. As choppers roared just metres overhead, Vigar and his squad-mates climbed, crawled, leapt and ran their way through an 18-element gauntlet that included walls, ladders and pits.
"Speed alone isn't going to get you through it," Vigar said – rushing makes for costly mistakes and game-ending injuries, which was why he and his squad took it slow and careful.
"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."
One 2.7 kilometre run later, and it was time to start shooting. Armed with 40 rifle and 10 pistol rounds, Vigar and his team had to hit the centre of a man-sized target from 300 metres away 10 times in 30 seconds. They then had to sprint to 200, 100, and 25 metres, taking an additional 10 shots at each range.
Vigar said he had to aim about a foot to the side of his targets to hit them Wednesday due to the winds. He also traced a figure eight in the air with his weapon to steady his aim before each shot.
Teams were scored based on their total time and accuracy, with penalties assessed for missed shots and unused bullets.
It was the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry that took home the trophy in the end, 1 CMBG spokesman Capt. Brian Kominar said Thursday.
About 20 of the event's top scorers will now train to represent the base at the Canadian Armed Forces Small Arms Concentration event in Ottawa this September. That event has troops do everything they did today in the march-and-shoot, except much faster.
Vigar said everyone in this event was really skilled and fit. He's done the base's gruelling Mountain Man race a few times, for example, and he and a few squad-mates were prepping for the Canadian Death Race this summer.
"I like testing my own skills, testing my skills against other people. When these kind of things come around, I like taking advantage of them in order to do something fun and exciting in the army."
