A monumental effort has seen thousands of British Army personnel and hundreds of their vehicles arrive in Germany for Nato’s Exercise Steadfast Defender.

Exercise Brilliant Jump One saw personnel deploy to Germany from the UK, whilst Exercise Brilliant Jump Two will see them move off from Germany and head to Poland.

At the front is 7th Brigade, known as the Desert Rats, leading the charge.

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B Company, 2nd Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment, is part of the light mechanised combat team spearheading Nato’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force.

This whole section of the exercise is about projecting the force across Europe with the kit they need to join the fight.

Major Simon Cox, Commander of B Company, the Royal Anglian Regiment, told Forces News they are very high readiness forces “held at 48 hours’ notice to move to respond to events in Europe”.

“We’re at the forefront of any Nato activity in Europe at the moment,” he said.

“We are predominantly in the Foxhound and Jackal vehicles, so we would move slightly behind a recce screen, forwards as the spearhead force.

“For the first phase of this exercise, the challenge is logistics, getting us deployed, thousands of people and hundreds of people from the UK to Poland. 

“The real learning point for us has been about how we get there because it’s really important that we get there ready to fight if needs be.”

But Germany is not even the starting line for what is a 90,000-personnel effort to show Nato’s deployability across Europe.

The British Army must still get to Poland for the start of Exercise Steadfast Defender.

Lieutenant Colonel John Anthistle, Commander, Enabling Group South, told Forces News that Sennelager is “a jewel in our crown” and perfect for helping get the troops across Europe.

“It’s a base that we disinvested in because we obviously left Germany and we closed it down to a very small capacity. 

“But as you can see from how we’re operating here right now, the strategic location of it, the fact we’ve got ready access to a training area, the easy access, the road networks and the rail networks and the airports close by, we’re using all of those to bring in 7 Brigade into theatre and then push forwards. 

“It’s a real great example of how this strategic location is absolutely perfect for us and something that we absolutely need to maintain.”

Lt Col Anthistle also stressed that the important detail in this section of the exercise is scale.

“When you’re operating on somewhere like Salisbury Plain, you roll out of your camps almost into your back garden, as it were, onto Salisbury Plain, and you exercise around sort of 30, 40, 50 kilometres, and you come back in again,” he said.

“Here we’re talking about operating over 1,000 kilometres just to reach the start line.

“We’re facilitating their movement through the entirety of Germany,” he said.

Having travelled from the UK to Emden, Germany, they were driven to Sennelager where they were given a thorough check before the next leg of their journey.

Corporal Tomas Bennett, 1 Battalion, REME, told Forces News it is vital they do the checks now because it is a lot harder to repair or maintain vehicles when on the exercise.

“It goes from this nice light environment to pitch black,” he said. “You see a little bit of dull red light in front of you… and your weapon system is right next to you.

“When things are going off in the training serials, you’ll have gunfire in the background… you’ll have to down tools, turn the light off and then go into positions to then do the soldiering role. 

“So it is quite literally going from one job role to another like a flick of a light switch.”