Limber boys of eight years old are going to kick a ball loudly on Saturday morning when a sturdy growl becomes audible. Between the trees row, along the practice fields of multifunctional center De Steen in the village of Heerewaarden, something that looks like a cannon run appears. Immediately afterwards the silhouette of a soldier follows on top of the vehicle. Then the whole becomes visible: a moving armored pile player who moves along the Dorpsweg together with two other Houwitsers and other armored vehicles.
The shouting of the young football players is screaming into a excited screaming while they run to the road. Surprised, their parents turn around. Instinctively, one after the other pulls a cell phone out of the jacket pocket, and starts filming. “Impressive, all that army equipment,” says football father Gregory Ochel. “Gosh, the ground is vibrating completely here,” replies Edwin Schraaij, rubbing his foot over the ground again. “It is quite powerful what comes along here,” said Schraaij, also a football father.
Seven Houwitsers, ten other armored vehicles, a storage tank that can drag away broken vehicles and load a few dozen trucks with 155-millimetermiti and fuel, left on Saturday morning at eight o’clock from the barracks in Oirschot. That happened in five groups – the army speaks of ‘packages’ – to minimize the number of blockages on the road. Around two o’clock in the afternoon – more than an hour later than planned – they reached Stroe via highways but above all a lot of roads, about 120 kilometers to the north. Normally it is a ride of almost an hour and a half, now more than a morning has been pulled out.
Excercise Ferocious Bison (Woeste Bison) must learn to move the eleventh department in Oirschot well on the public road with heavy equipment in order to get as close as possible to the battlefield. “The Netherlands has no large training grounds on which mechanized units can be moved over longer distances and on which you can practice,” said a press release from Defense. “Artillery units always occur about large distances. Practicing the logistics that comes with this is therefore essential.”
The second column of Ferocious Bison on the A12 at the Maanderbroek junction. Photo Dieuwertje Bravenboer
Camouflage
While the first armor’s hougest player squeezes himself among the barriers of the barracks in Orischot, Jan-Pieter Tiedink waves his troops. “Of course these vehicles will stand out,” says the officer, himself painted with the well -known, green camouflage colors. “But being visible to society – no matter how valuable in itself – is really a secondary goal. For us, the most important thing is: practicing driving on the public road and everything that comes with it.”
He lists point -by -way: passing roundabouts with heavy, wide vehicles such as the Houwitsers, through narrow streets, checking whether keeping bridges and viaducts are high enough, coordinating everything well with the Marechaussee that keeps the other traffic remotely. “Our drivers never do this. They only have experience on the heathland or other parts of the training ground. For the use of a war situation, that is totally not realistic.”
A military column on the highway in the context of army exercise Ferocious Bison. Photo Dieuwertje Bravenboer
The superior walks to one of the waiting Houwitzers to show the adjustments needed for the exercise. The caterpillars with metal would tear the asphalt from inner and highways. “The metal itself would not benefit from it,” said the officer. “That is why we have mounted rubber pads a few centimeters wide on the metal to protect both asphalt and vehicle. The pads will be pretty worn out when we arrive,” he estimates.
Party
“Well, for the army, such an exercise is of course one big party,” Peace Activist and Pacifist Willem de Haan over the phone. “They can show all their things. And they want to be important.” But De Haan himself thinks it is “Really-arranged. If you want to practice, should this be on the middle of the road? With those masks on? That make-up on your face? What a show, what a theater!” In vain, De Haan Zatatermorgen detected the social media for signals that pointed to emerging protests from like -minded people along the roads to Stroe and ‘t Harde.
Yes, those make -up and masks are really necessary, Supreme Tiedink responds a little later when he calls around two from Stroe to report on the course of the ride. “If you want to bring people in the mindset to be combined, they really need it. The camouflage is an inextricable part of the preparation for the fight in the evening and night, something that we will also practice in the coming days.”
The second column on the A12 at the Maanderbroek junction.
Dieuwertje Bravenboer
Just as Tiedink Opomde Opsomde’s goals in the morning, the superior walks past the results and learning moments in the afternoon. “Rotondes and narrow roads required a lot of our rich arts but went fine.” Accidents such as Friday with an army jeep and a passenger car at Breda did not occur.
However, the Houwitsers will arrive less quickly than hoped for a possible battlefield. Its speed was too optimistic estimated by the planners; Not 70 kilometers per hour, at most 55. Now the column arrived more than an hour later than the official schedule indicated in Stroe.
Finally, Tiedink and his men noticed extra caution at the other traffic. “Low -passing passenger cars often stood on their brakes and kept extra distance. If they caught us on a Driebans highway, they would ride all the way to the left. You could tell that they had to get used to us.”
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