Reporter Rachael Misstear fires her first shot – not in anger – as she joins the Territorial Army on exercise on the Rock of Gibraltar. This article was the last of her dispatches for the Carmarthen Journal.

Guns have never been something I cared for; especially not after thinking I’d taken Eldmer Gill’s eye out with an air rifle when I was 13.

Of course I hadn’t, it was only air, but after I shot at his eye he wailed like I’d blinded him.

I cried. My brother’s best friend hated me, and I decided guns were for soldiers.

But 12 years later, and surrounded by soldiers from the Territorial Army, there was a sudden urge to pull one more trigger.

Since, I had been invited to join the Territorial Army on a training exercise in Gibraltar, which included learning how to handle a rifle, I needed no further excuse.

I’m sure Eldmer must have forgiven me by now.

It was day two with the Territorial Army’s Pembroke Yeomanry Squadron, a Carmarthenshire-based TA’s unit, part of 157 Wales and West Midlands Support Regiment, Royal Logistics Corps Volunteers.

Men and women, volunteer soldiers from across Carmarthenshire, had flown out to start a fortnight’s training.

Something about their discipline, their uniforms and the professional way they responded to orders, sparked excitement in me.

I had been taken with two other reporters to a simulated war zone, a village with no residents, which looked and felt like a ghost town.

Soldiers were loading their rifles and being told by their commanders to storm the buildings, flush out terrorists and protect the civilians.

If I hadn’t been reassured this wasn’t real I’d have cried. My tough new guise of ‘Private’ Misstear would have wilted like the sun-frazzled flowers along the Gibraltar coastline.

With a nose as red as crimson and my sunglasses stuck to my face, I shuddered at the sound of gunfire coming from within the walls of the Spanish-style houses.

Sergeant-Major ‘Gunny’ MacDonald told me how the village had been created by the military in Gibraltar for specialist training.

Soldiers were sneaking, diving under walls and waiting patiently for their orders, and remaining vigilant for the enemy.

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