Army Pathfinder students invade McNab’s Island
Posted Jul 30, 2013 07:50:49 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HRM is the target of an invasion this morning and McNab’s Island is the landing site.
A team of soldiers training to be Pathfinders, a special team in the Canadian military, is conducting an amphibious landing.
It’s one of the final tests for the group which has been training across Canada for weeks.
Course director Captain Cullen Downey told News 95.7 today’s exercise will see the students receive their orders on the HMCS Preserver and then they’ll have to carry out the preparations and landing at the island under the watchful eyes of instructors.
“They’ll do their rehearsals and preparatory actions on the ship, then students will be going through a lot of stuff on the water; working on their transition from water to land,” he explained. “They’ll step off using small boats provided by the Navy, in order to insert onto McNab’s Island, and then from there they’ll march to a predetermined beach site where they’ll do a suitability assessment to ensure it’s suitable for a main body of soldiers to arrive.”
The specialist’s motto is, “First in, last out.”
“We’re the first ones in, in order to set the conditions and we guide a main body through parachute means, or amphibious means or through helicopters,” said Downey. “We will guide them into an area of operations and then we will get them out before we extract ourselves.”
While classified as army, a large part of the Pathfinders’ job is to be the liaison between all three branches of our armed forces.
