Moderators - Field Day question.
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I always thought that a Brigade Field Day was a training exercise to prepare for a forthcoming battle and not leisure.
Perhaps you can confirm this or otherwise and correct me if I am wrong about this.Posted
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
I think it depends on context, Marie. On the face of it, I would assume it had more to do with leisure than preparation for a battle, but different authors probably use it in different ways. Is there a specific instance you're asking about?
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deehar
in response to marie.eklidvirginmedia.com's comment.
When I was in the Cadet Corps, many many years ago, a Field Day meant being bussed into the countryside for mock attacks with blanks and thunderflashes. The attack strategy seemed a bit WW1 even then - walk towards the enemy with rifles at port arms and only use up your blanks over the last ten yards. Officers would encourage the stragglers by throwing thunderflashes behind them.
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Ral, I had been reading an article re Training to be a soldier as under - part of the Article:
"In the Army and often in other branches, the last few days of basic training are used to conduct a field training exercise where recruits can practice the skills they have learned over the past several weeks of training.
After a few weeks of this, training began to get more advanced. Soldiers began to learn the basics of movement in the field and were introduced to night operations and route marching. Later would come weapons handling, marksmanship and digging trenches."
The above could have been taking place in the Army Training Camps though.
https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/training-to-be-a-soldier
Another article mentioned the following:
“…A field training exercise, generally shortened to the acronym "FTX", describes a coordinated exercise conducted by military units for training purpose..”
So I wondered if a Field Training Day was a training exercise.
PS Maybe we should just have a tag for #fieldday if one is not sure of the context?
Posted
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by
cyngast
moderator
in response to marie.eklidvirginmedia.com's comment.
I would say that a Field Training Day should be tagged using the Training tag under Unit Activity. That is all that is needed. I do this whenever there is mention of tactical exercises, field exercises, or field training.
Schools sometimes hold Field Days that are devoted to athletic competitions and I have seen that term used the same way in a few diaries. However, I've never had any difficulty sorting out that these days were the type of event that would fall under the Sport & Leisure tag under Army Life. We already have a hashtag to further describe those types of activities.
So, no, I don't see a need for a new hashtag to denote a field day.
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Thanks for our reply Cynthia, as mentioned I had been tagging field days as training. I forgot to mention that a long time ago when tagging a diary Field Day had been tagged as leisure, which made me wonder about it, although I tagged it then it as training.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
Definitely agree with Cynthia. For me, a field day tends to conjure up images of sports and similar, whereas field exercises would definitely be training. But generally it's easy enough to work out the context from the diary.
@deehar, I have very similar memories from my cadet days!
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