Cadet 150 Ipswich

Posted by admin on Sunday 6 June 2010 under 2010 | Be the First to Comment

The 150th anniversary of the cadet forces was celebrated in true cadet style on Sunday 6th June with a series of games in Chantry Park, designed to establish once and for all who the best force were, Air, Army or Sea?

The day was opened by the Mayoress of Ipswich, Sue Goldsmith, who was introduced to the teams and wished everyone luck.

The games started off badly with 188 coming last in the Land Rover pull but our luck picked up and we came second in the egg throw. Cadets had to take turns throwing an egg between pairs, with each successful catch they took a pace away from each other until someone failed to catch the egg, resulting in an eggy cadet and the end of their game! The third game was put on hold while the local search and rescue helicopter landed in the arena with the pilots and winch staff showed cadets and members of the public around the aircraft.

The third game involved catapults and water balloons, two cadets from each team fired the water balloons at ten cadets from another team, creating human ten pin bowling! Air cadets won their first event of the day and everyone was happy that they didn’t get drenched. The penultimate game was the extended three legged race, seven people had their legs tied together and had to get from A to B each while holding buckets of water that were also conveniently full of holes. The team with the most water in the container at the end of the course won. Everyone who took part, plus some of the spectators, got absolutely soaked but it proved to be the second consecutive win for Air cadets and put us in the lead with just one game to go!

The crowds and cadets were kept in suspense a little longer as the Army (the real ones) were put through their paces with their heavy artillery and fired off several blank rounds over the park with incredible speed and accuracy. Next up to show what they were made of were the Marine Commandos. Their display team put on a hand-to-hand combat show with a variety of weapons from a knife and metal baseball bat to bare fists and nunchucks. They were doing some real damage to each other, when they finished they took their shirts off and bruises were blooming already! The last stunt of the day was a parachutist with a very patriotic UK flag parachute that landed with quite a bump in the arena.

Finally it was time for the last game, Battleships. A game of potluck where blind folded people threw water balloons at people that were somewhere in front of them! We came 2nd, which meant that over all the Air cadets, and Army cadets came joint 1st with the Sea cadets picking up 3rd place. The prize for coming 1st was a mountain bike and new jackets for the team members but as there was a joint winner the jackets were shared out between the two teams and the bike is going to be auctioned off on September 11th at the Cadet 150 dinner.

Submitted by Cadet Corporal Bev Goodchild.