An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir October 2019 www.dfmagazine.ie 18 | BY LT FERGAL FITZGERALD (AR), 27 INF BN – PHOTOS BY CPL DIARMUID CONNON (AR), 1 MIC, DFTC T he Vierdaagse (4 Daagse) Marches is an annual event held in Nijmegen in July every year which sees entrants undertaking one of four different distance categories 30km, 40km, 40km (Military) and 50km each day for 4 days. The first Vierdaagse took place in 1909 with 300 soldiers completing a 150km march via a series of garrisons. Various different routes came and went before the Vierdaagse found a permanent home in the southern city of Nijmegen on the river Waal in 1925. Popular with military and civilian participants alike, the event has grown to become one of the biggest of its kind anywhere in the world, with an average of 42,000 marchers completing the event each year. Military participants must carry a minimum weight of 10kg throughout the march and have two choices: enter as an individual or a part of a team, which must comprise of at least 11 members. Individuals have significant flexibility on how they approach their march, including their rest stops and their pace. Teams, however, have a strict departure time and must remain as a group at all times, particularly when reaching control points where the whole team must be present or face disqualification. In 2018, five members of the Army Reserve completed the marches as individuals and set about returning to Nijmegen this year with the first Defence Forces team to participate in the event. A notice was placed in An Cosantóir looking for anyone interested in finding out more to attend a briefing in DFTC in January, and from there the team grew to 19 from all three services, with a mix of PDF and RDF members. With a commit- ment of one combined training weekend each month, along with individual training, each member of our team clocked up a minimum of 300km before arriving in Nijmegen. Our training took place throughout Ireland, generally making use of the fantastic network of greenways including: the Old Rail Trail (Athlone and Moate); Westport Greenway; Darkness into light (Galway); Waterford Greenway; Cork to Blackrock Greenway; and the Grand Canal towpath While marches of 15km and 20km posed no difficulty for the team, the further we progressed the longer and more challeng- ing the distances became. Three of our training sessions includ- ed back-to-back marches covering distances of 51km, 65km and 80km over two days. These longer marches proved invaluable to the team and our ability to march on tired legs stood us in good stead for the event itself. One of our biggest fears was the ongoing European heat wave with temperatures reaching the low 30°Cs; not something we could train or prepare for in Ireland! Thankfully, the heat wave passed just before we departed. Flying out of Dublin on 13 July, we reached our military accom- modation in the purpose-built Camp Heumensoord later that evening. The camp was an impressive model of efficiency. Built over the previous four weeks from scratch, the camp consisted of a series of large accommodation marquees and ablutions, a dining tent, medical tent and recreation tents. Approximately 5,500 military participants – permanent, reserve and retired (never former!) soldiers from 31 countries settled in and pre- pared for the week ahead. Sunday morning commenced in true military fashion with a parade on the main square and a flag-raising ceremony, with every member of our team drawing great pride on seeing the Irish flag taking its place among the 30 other nations present in the camp. After the ceremony, we boarded transport to the Canadian War Cemetery, located in nearby Groesbeek. With 2,338 Canadi- an soldiers interred there, the Canadian team, numbering some 500 members, held its annual remembrance ceremony and invited each military delegation occupying Camp Heumensoord to attend and lay a wreath on behalf of their home nation. Every day saw numbers in the camp swell as more and more delegations arrived. Monday was the final cut off and the teams participated in the official opening of Vierdaagse, with a parade through Nijmegen and a short ceremony in the centre of town. The remainder of Monday was spent sorting kit before get-

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