Stan_Deesey
LE
No, it was a TA thing. The training team ran the AP course over a series of weekends, as well as the ´full´ two week course, (it was 16 days when I did it).Dont know about then, but now there's separate Assault Pioneer and Assault Trooper courses (I'm not 100% certain on the name of the troopers course, but I think that's it), so that's maybe the difference
The weekend modules were for soldiers who couldn´t take time off for the two week course, or who needed the two weeks every year for their annual camp.
There was a woman on my course who didn´t do the whole 16 days. She joined us after about a week. As I remember this was due to her work commitments, so presumably she completed the other modules at weekends.
There wasn´t much of the AP course that was relevant for us in a Yeomanry regiment. We didn´t need to be trained in watermanship as our regiment had no boats. Ditto water supply: if we ever deployed then our water would be supplied by the pioneers of the infantry brigade we were attached to. The knowledge of field fortifications, mines and demolitions was useful, but other things were just nice to know, so probably not worth having cavalry troopers taking up places.
I would imagine that pioneer skills would be useful for an assault troop or support troop within a recce squadron, but mine didn´t have one. I´ve never heard the term assault trooper before.
During my time in the TA the only holes I dug were to defecate into.
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