Canadian Special Operations Regiment training at Camp Pendleton, California

David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen posts on his time with the trooops (internal links added by me):

CANADIAN SPEC OPS REGIMENT AT HEARTBREAK RIDGE

I've been in sunny California over the last few days as the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) puts its latest candidates through their paces. Course SOBQ 0702 started in November at CFB Petawawa and is coming to an end soon. It started with around 90 folks and expects to graduate around 40 give or take, says course instructor J.F. who is from Bas St-Laurent, Quebec. (As in the past I have been asked not to identify people by their full names for security reasons). The candidates have had a full slate of instruction in shooting, insertion, patrolling, demolition, direct action and close-quarter battle skills among other techniques.

The general sense among the candidates is that the 23-week course is extremely hard but well worth the effort.....the common comment is that it has been a long haul. The commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Jamie Hammond arrives on Friday to view a couple of days of training.

The unit has travelled to the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton at Oceanside to do its training (it's pretty hard to do most of this instruction in the snow at CFB Petawawa). The candidates are housed in Second World War- era quonset huts which, by the way, were featured in the Clint Eastwood film Heartbreak Ridge. The huts don't appear to have changed much since the war..... film buffs among the candidates can stand on the spot where Eastwood crushed "Fagetti's" sunglasses or live in the hut where Clint pummeled the "Swede" into submission.

Driving around the base you get a real sense of U.S. military might. There's a 100,000 folks on the base here......on the way to see the Canadians on a range (it took 45 minutes to reach one of the many ranges in the back 40 here), we drove past a single depot with 20 M777 howitzers (our Army has them too) and later a hundred or so Humvees, some MRAPs, etc. [Super] Cobra gunships are a pretty common sight flying the skies here as well as twin-rotor choppers, I haven't seen the flight line but I'm told it's quite an impressive array of airpower. Any ways, you get the picture.