This Wednesday our regular training session covered the practice of line searches on open moorland. Although not a technically demanding skill, nevertheless line searching does require some practice and awareness, especially when searching moorland terrain.

Meeting at Hordern Stoops on a damp evening, team members practiced by searching a nearby patch of land for plastic milk cartons – first working with distances of 2 metres between searchers, then 4 metres apart. The exercise then moved onto more open, hilly land to search for two exercise casualties in the form of two team members who hid themselves on the moor. With the line working with searchers at distances of 10m apart, the two people were soon found – but they were very well hidden!

As is sometimes typical with our training exercises, we then find that we get to put the training into practice very shortly afterwards. Tonight was no exception – in fact the real life practice began before the exercise had really completed. One team member (who shall remain nameless) managed to lose their mobile phone on the moorland in the first practice area.

Of course, the phone was in silent mode, so any attempts to locate it by ringing it were not possible!

Everyone present then began a detailed line search of the probable area, working shoulder to shoulder, and thankfully managed to find the missing phone before the bad weather came in!