_________image_________ Opposite: Photos before and during the destruction of Park Farm buildings in October 1984, and a look at Park Farm in the summer of 1990. The following passage is written next to the 1984 pictures in Camp’s History Scrapbooks: 1 CER EX PANDA BEAR, OCT 84 - On hearing that Park Farm was to be demolished, Maj Fred Noseworthy, CO 1 CER, organized a no-notice exercise for his unit from CFB Chilliwack. The demo team arrived by Hercules aircraft at Airfield 21 early in the hours of 9 October and deployed to a hide by 447 Sqn Chinook helicopters. On 9 and 10 October, the unit recced the site at ni and set approxiamtly 1000 kg of explosives. The unit was not aware that they were demolishing Park Farm, the exercise security having been well kept! On the morning of 11 October Gen Clive Milner arrived to execute the demolition and Park Farm was no more. The site is still referred to as Park Farm. Brigadier General Clive Milner, interviewed by Dan Duda in Calgary in 1988 remembers training at Wainwright in the late 1950’s. The thing that most impressed him about the training fields there was the freedom to shoot tanks, in those days a Centurion with a 20 pound, virtually uninhibited. There were no constraints as to long distance firing. One particular incident that stands out in Milner’s memory was in 1960 during a regiment move to a new assembly area. “The whole regiment was moving alongside Khaki route, and in those days the tanks weren’t allowed to drive on the route, you had to drive them parallel. We had been travelling for some distance and it got dark… the dust was incredible; everybody had their scarves up around their face.” Milner’s driver spoke over the intercom suggesting they had run over something and insisted they check it out. “So we stopped the troop. By then, of course we had gone a couple more hundred metres with all four of my tanks. We climbed out of the tank and walked back. There in the center of the tank trail was a soldier on his knees and I can vividly recall looking at this lad as he turned his head up and looked up to me with two white lines through the thick grey dust on his face. Tears were rolling down his face. I thought, ’My God, what have we done now’ and he said, ’Look, look what you guys have done.’ I could barely see anything. And as I stooped over and looked closer, there was the remains of a motorcycle. You could see, it was about as thick as a book. What he had done, he was an MP traffic controller at a junction and he had parked his motorcycle at what he thought was off the road, which it was to him, but it was in the middle of the tank track and we had come along and I think the whole regiment had rolled over his Triumph 500 cc motorcycle.” A similar close call was experienced later on in the same exercise when the regiment, working closely with the infantry, was told to pull off of position. Tactics required a high speed reverse which is what Milner’s tank proceeded to do. “Part way down the hill there was a grind, sparks flying and we went a few more feet and I finally got the tank stopped. We walked back up to what was - had been - a 3/4 ton truck, the CQ of the Infantry Company that we were supporting. He’d come up with replenishement for the Infantry on the beach, pulled his 3/4 ton behind this clump of bushes sideways on the hill. The configuration of a 3/4 ton is very box-like. Where the engine compartment was, it was right down level with the ground. My tank had backed right back, right down in front of the wind screen and the CQ and his driver were still sitting indside the 3/4 ton. I’ve never seen two more terrified people in all my life. They were locked in, we had to take a crowbar to pry the door open to get them out of the cab.” These were two situations where loss of life was certainly a possibility and proof that extreme caution and communication is essential in the training field as well as a war zone. Milner states that his views from troop leader to general haven’t really changed. In fact, it’s confirmed that Wainwright is “the best damn training area that I have ever been in and I still maintain that. From a troop leader to a platoon commander, company commander’s point of view, it ’s outstanding. From a battle group command, an infantry NCO, an armoured regimental CO, he can do whatever he needs to do to train his battle group.”