By popular demand (someone asked, literally one person) I will be regaling you with the tail of “that one time when...” I stopped an entire company of exercising troops just by being in front of them.

Context is King.
It is year two of a four-year project documenting the training of City of Edinburgh's Universities Officer Training Corp (CEUOTC) and I am on exercise with the first years on what is known as FTX. The Fully Tactical eXercise ( I was once told the reason it uses the X and not the E in exercise is that 'Army!..now shut up') where the training they have learnt up to now is put to use in an arduous exercise where they are expected to use the full range of skills.
As ordered the weather is an interesting mix of wet, snow, sunshine and wind which is pretty standard in the west coast of Scotland on the Garelochhead training area and makes for suitably character-building experience all round.
What is interesting about this exercise over others is how it is arranged. It is not a series of lessons or practices. From the moment they deploy until End X is called the troops are to carry out their mission against a pre-deployed enemy. It is essentially a test.
I was there to document this test but as I had found out from last years FTX and my own experiences there was a very big difference between photographing troops that would be at a predetermined location and times versus troops that would autonomously decide their own course of action. I decided to stay with the troops for the first part of the exercise then go to the positions that were occupied with the opposing forces in the second half. That way I get to photograph the people involved and then the action....what could go wrong. Through all of this one of the most important things was to not interfere with what was going on around me. To minimise the observer effect. By doing this I could gauge how they were progressing and see who was keen and who was just there to get through it. The keen ones always gave opportunities for images and this would be very helpful for future events.

So what actually happened?

The first few parts of the exercise went quite well. Deployment and setting up a harbour area from which to conduct patrols was achieved fairly quickly and while I attempted to get a few images here and there the reality was I had to wait until morning to do any of my work.

Shots using the light from the near Naval base as the troop deploy into the exercise…no thats not sunset thats flood lights.

No light means no photos and using a flash would utterly cripple their night vision for hours and actually damage the night sights they had with them.
When I finally did start in earnest the first few skirmishes had already taken place so I was left to go from section to section to try and capture the people involved.

Day 1 ended and again darkness fell.
The final day came about and is standard on these types of things there was a dawn attack. This is where things began to fall apart.
You see, the general idea is that while you are engaging an enemy you don't move unless you have to suppress the enemy while you sneak around the side and then attack their position from another angle. Fire and manoeuvre. Sounds great but today one of the commanders had misread the terrain and had led his platoon 20m up a cliff with no way of getting to the enemy. In the ensuing confusion, the suppressing platoon was left to suppress the increasingly bored enemy indefinitely. This platoon was burning through ammunition at an alarming rate. While there was plenty to go around, getting it in magazines to them was difficult for the first years who hadn't really had too much experience 'bombing up' (the act of putting ammunition into rifle magazines to be used) which lead to the front section (the guys actually closest to the enemy) running out of ammunition! The enemy (usually third or fourth years) took advantage of this and counter-attacked and our front section was declared dead by the training staff.
My arrangement with the Army had so far been I'll provide the pictures, you provide the war. This was put aside as I started helping to load magazines at speed. I got about 10 done in the time it took the first year to do about 3. This was not going well. I could hear the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) attempts to 'motivate' people from 300m away and that was something we didn't need to be documented. I took photos of the front section that had been wiped out for their posterity and left that position. I knew that on the way back the troops were to be ambushed so I took up a position on the road next to one of the ambush points and waited.

Caught in the counter attack he died horribly…so he told me.

Then waited some more.
I was there for over an hour. Where the F**k were they?

The call, 'Mr Archbold! a word...' came as a bit of surprise as I hadn't seen or heard the RSM come up behind me (I swear he just appears from a puff of smoke!) and because when the RSM says that you, it is usually followed up by a stern talking to. He asked me to take cover. I was slightly confused and I asked why (rule 1:- never ask the RSM why) and he explained in no uncertain terms that I had become a 'combat indicator' and the entire company of exercising troops was lined up just over the next hill 200m away pointing everything they had at my location as every time they saw me their "shit went sideways". I had delayed everything by about an hour.
The RSM vanished and I went around the next corner before doubling back to that position but this time approaching on my belt buckle.
The attack went in and once it was suitably underway I came out from cover to get my close shots.