I hadn't realised just how tired the swim had made me until we had been running for a while and I found myself flagging. It took some concentration on my body and some concerted effort before I felt my body starting to adjust again as it flushed all the toxins.
I {tasted} how the rest of my Finger were doing, and when I saw that they were battling as much as I had been, I did the same for them as I had done for myself.
We eventually completed the run back where we had started at the big rock. S'Alor had taken himself off into the bush when we started swimming, letting me know he had no need to practise, he was a {fine} swimmer, thank you very much.
It was a lot easier this time, both because all the warriors in my Finger now knew how to swim and because it was down-stream back to the base. When we got back to the base, Hand Evans dismissed us for brunch.
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After brunch, all of the ‘knuckles’ were called aside by Hand Evans while the rest were formed up and started to practice normal sword drills in formation under the cadre's watchful eye.
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“Knuckleheads,” Hand Evans began, “we are going to start teaching new concepts, drills and formations to you, so that you can teach them to your Fingers. The schedule to start with is going to be PT in the mornings, then a lecture for you after brunch at 10h00 till about 14h30. After that you will have time to instruct your Fingers until 16h00. Supper is from 16h00 to 16h30. You will then be able to work with your Finger on drills and problems experienced during the day stopping at 20h00. After that you have personal time with lights out at 22h30.”
“There will be no formal inspections of the Barracks, but be aware that you are responsible for them and that means that the punishment is yours if they aren't spick and span. I suggest you hold your own ad hoc inspections to ensure that we never have trouble about this.”
“Depending on how things go, we will switch to a night program where everything will be reversed. Yes Desrae?”
“Hand Evans, how will we know that things are on schedule?” asked Desrae.
“We will tell you,” Hand Evans answered. "When we determine that you are up to scratch, we will schedule a break and then start the night phase. When that is completed, we will have an evaluation and then we will look at a few possible specialisations. Please understand, our normal schedule for this second phase is four weeks minimum. We have been speculating though that if you can get your ‘Sword Dance’ technique to work for you, you might be able to progress slightly faster. From what I saw of the hair loss earlier, I suspect that won't be any trouble at all… "
Everyone laughed at that.
“Right, lets begin with the order of march when crossing hostile country,” and with that start Hand Evans launched into his lecture.
I had to pay very careful attention to what he said because I had come to realise that a lot of what I ‘knew’ from my previous military experience could get me into trouble. I had to remember that there were no mortars, patrol or otherwise, to provide a quick response to an ambush or to assist in breaking contact. There were no fire-support missions or casevacs, no transport vehicles to handle logistics and no battle-taxis aka Infantry Combat Vehicles. Everything here was done on foot at the pace that the slowest warriors could move. The essentials were the same, the same principles and concepts, I just had to remember that the assumptions based on motorised or mechanised infantry had to be re-evaluated and thought through in the light of the current situation.
Hand Evans introduced us to the concept of the ‘Tactical Decision Exercise’ and told us that as we progressed, we could be presented with a scenario at any time and have to come up with a solution on the spot. This was tied initially into the broader concept of the way that the Hand would move and fight, so there was very little scope for individual Finger decision making. The one place where this was different was in the skirmish line.
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When the Hand was moving tactically through hostile terrain, one of the Fingers would act as a skirmish line a short distance ahead of the Hand, and if they hit contact, their job was to delay the attack for long enough for the rest of the Hand to prepare for battle. One of the other Fingers was responsible for protection of the HQ element. The HQ element would be where any odds and sods would travel with the Hand, to ensure that they didn't interfere with its smooth running. Depending on the terrain, there were various formations that the Hand could travel in.
Generally in forested or bushy areas, this would be with less seperation between individuals. Finger formations would generally be line ahead or a 2-up-T formation. Each Hand would be close enough to at least one other Hand so that they could provide mutual support in need. For more open terrain such as desert or savannah, the formations would be a lot more open and dispersed, concentrating only for obstacle crossing and to confront a mutual threat.
With this very broad outline, we were dismissed to join the rest of the Hand for us to start working with them as Fingers.
My first priority was to teach my Finger the Sword Dance, and in the process start to bind them into a unit that would think and act together. I had really struggled on the swim and run to do any more than to maintain contact between the members of the Finger. There was certainly no team as there had been with my original Finger.
I started off by going up into Battle Mode and then pulling the Finger up with me, then I began on the simplest sword drills, one after another until they started to flow together into the beginnings of the Sword Dance. When we reached this point after about an hour, it was as if I had broken through a brick wall.
After that it started to go a lot faster as I didn't need to do quite as much controlling, but could rather just ‘show’ and have the Finger members pick it up with less and less direct control from me.
By the time 16h00 rolled around, the Finger was performing pretty well. I could see that it was still going to take a lot of working together to get the fluidity and control that I had come to expect, but it was a solid start that could be built on.
I had considered dropping in instruction similar to the way that S'Alor had shown me how to push instructions to their bodies to lose their hair and modify their characteristics, but I was feeling guilty about that. S'Alors' cavalier attitude had crossed over to me and had influenced me to feel the same way about it that he did. If I had thought about it first, I would never have done what I had without at the very least obtaining permission first. I thought that it smacked of mind control or domination and it was a violation of privacy that I would object to strenuously if it had been done to me without my permission. I also considered that it would be more efficient in the long run for the warriors in my Finger, and others, to learn how to take this sort of instruction with the least amount of interference with their minds on the part of the instructor.
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After supper, I got together with the other knuckles and we decided to do a Sword Dance of our own. While we were busy with that, I explained my thinking about the mental instruction and the rest agreed that we needed to ensure that we started out on the moral high ground, so that as we developed this further those who came afterwards would have a good example to follow. We also agreed it just made good sense to act morally.
While we were busy, we also shared our impressions and memories of the lecture that we had received from Hand Evans. I found that this was extremely useful as it helped me to commit what we had learnt to memory and there were things that each of us had missed that one of the others had picked up on, so we filled in each other's blanks in this way.
During the Sword Dance, S'Alor joined us mentally, and he had some pithy and pointed comments to make on the practicality of quite a few of the things that we had been taught.
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This set the schedule for the next few week's activities. Every day we followed Hand Evans' program and learnt like crazy from what he and others had to teach us. At the same time, we were teaching others what we had learnt which tended to force us to think the lessons through and remember them. There is nothing that teaches you a subject like having to teach someone else.
After two weeks of this, I felt that my Finger was finally fully competent, just having to have a few sharp corners smoothed, and I was starting to hope for something a little different and challenging.