In my current WIP, one of the MCs (2nd Lt.,Grenadier Guards) is sent, with the regiment on a training exercise at the Army Training Ground in Thetford. When they're on an exercise like that:
1. How long are they usually there for?
2. If they are there for a while, do they get leave?
Any answers greatly appreciated.
I'm an ex-infantry soldier from Canada and we're pretty much the same as the Brits so, here's some insights from my own experience:
1) Length of ex: That really depends on the nature of the exercise and the training objectives. For example, each May in Canada we would head off to Wainwright Alberta for a HUGE exercise with the entire division and it could last up to two months. An advance party from each unit would go out usually two weeks before the main body arrived to set up a bivouac which is really a kind of modular tent city. When the main body arrived there would be platoon, company and battalion combat team training from basically 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM each day, seven days a week. The last three weeks of an exercise of this scope would be tactical operations where you are out in the bush, camouflaged and sleeping under the stars in a shell scrape or a hootchie (ground sheet with bungie cord strapped between a couple of trees). That final ex would culminate usually in a large live fire operation and then it was "End-Ex", we went back to bivouac and got on fresh rations again. We'd start tearing down and back to base.
A winter exercise usually was entirely tactical and lasted about two to three weeks. No bivouac, everyone sleeping in ten-man tents.
2) Leave: in short - no. There are "rec runs", or "recreation runs" where you can go to the nearest town and get hammered then wander back into your bivouac hopefully without Military Police escort. Leave usually occurred AFTER an exercise once we got back to our units and where the CO woulds "stand down" the battalion for a week or two.
Hope that helps.
